Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen revisits magic and nostalgia

On Wednesday, I saw Woody Allen’s latest film at the Filmhouse. I love the familiarity that comes with each of his films, and Midnight in Paris offers plenty that is familiar. Motifs recurrent throughout Woody’s career resurface here, to my delight. We have a love affair with a city (à la Manhattan), a magical plot device (The Purple Rose of Cairo, Alice) and Americans abroad (Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Thematic similarities emerge too, romantic and nostalgic.

Owen Wilson plays Gil, a struggling writer visiting Paris with his materialistic fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. They meet Paul (Michael Sheen), an insufferable intellectual know-all. He shepherds them around museums, instructing them on why they should like things and arguing with Carla Bruni. Altogether, these supporting characters are a well-played, amusing gallery of snobs. But Gil is a denizen of nostalgia shops (as is his novel’s main character), embracing the flotsam of the Jazz Age – he wants to escape. And then, when he goes on midnight strolls away from his gross companions, he magically finds himself transported to 1920s Paris...

Over the past ten years, Woody’s films have been variable in quality, to say the least. Midnight in Paris is a pleasing peak, but unfortunately some problems recur, eroding a little the on-screen veneer illuminating the City of Light. In particular, the dialogue in certain sections is clumsy or under-developed; we are aware when Woody is not engaged. The earlier scenes suffer particularly, pesky story set-up resulting in speech which obviously serves only as exposition  (“Let’s have a toast to your new business venture here”).

It means the film takes a little while to generate real warmth, despite all those cosy shots of Paris plunging us into the world Gil idolizes before we even reach the 1920s. In fact, once we are transported, there is still plenty of exposition to get through, and it is occasionally a bit of a drag. After meeting several idols (the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein), Gil is still so surprised.

I guess one would be.

But I willed him to relax and enjoy it – the idea had been hatched and now itched to fly. Happily, he did relax; with him, so did I. The film improved, the flow eased, as Gil became involved with these famous characters. The requisite love story began to blossom, and the comic asides seemed fresher (for instance Adrien Brody’s Dalí – broad, but zingy).

And so, with this enjoyable (and beautifully photographed) world opened up, some familiar Woody Allen themes make themselves welcome. How love, beauty and art are always worth struggling for, and how the terrifying abyss of the Universe can be banished when one embraces wonderful things. Owen Wilson (whose performance is very enjoyable) makes such a speech at one of the film’s best moments, echoing Woody’s epiphanies in Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan, even Love and Death.

And then there’s nostalgia. Woody Allen freely admits in interviews that the Manhattan of his New York films is a fantasy. It is as he likes to imagine it, or as he remembers it from old movies. His own childhood is romanticized in this way in Radio Days (more on that film another time). The same goes for Paris. What adds interest here is that the main character is actively engaging in the nostalgia, entering into the past from the outside. He wants to inhabit 1920s Paris, but ultimately he can only be a tourist – his ‘nostalgia shop’ perspective keeping him at bay (“I know someone who collects these in Beverley Hills”). Clever twists on the time travel theme reiterate this.

The past might be a magical place, but even Woody Allen knows the magic is only obtained when it’s become just that: past.

7.5