Catching up with 2011: Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is fantastical, whimsical yarn of magical realism that is his best comedic work since the criminally underrated Anything Else. The film’s tone is actually more akin to Everyone Says I love You, though, another underrated Allen film, as Own Wilson’s wide-eyed performance and amazement and just general agog nature is so infectious that even the most cynical of Allen fans would find something to admire in the film. Midnight in Paris is best when it deals with the past. Allen’s protagonist Gil (Owen Wilson channeling his inner Wood-man) is an appropriately lost person (he’s very much like Jay Gatsby in that regard) seeking solace in the magic of Paris under the lights (and preferably in the rain) considering the film places him among the most famous members of the Lost Generation. Stein, Hemingway, the Fitzgerald’s, et al slip in and out of the narrative giving the film its charming allure (especially for this lit major). The allusions to the Lost Generation, the music of Cole Porter, the flappers, the fashion, the way it’s all filmed in an nostalgic light…it all makes Midnight in Paris one of my favorite movies of 2011. The stuff set in the modern day with Gil’s fiancée (Rachel McAdams) is less affective, however, and a bit clunky (why are these two getting married exactly?), but it’s harmless enough, and Michael Sheen’s character – referred to as the “pedant” in the film, which I found funny because I know guys like that – provides enough laughs (albeit too easy considering this is a Woody Allen movie; he should be above resorting to jokes about Tea Party members) to keep it from sinking the film.
Every scene involving Gil and the crew from the ‘20s is rife with the kind of time-travel humor one expects from that kind of comedy and the usual Allen sprinklings of bon mot. One of my very favorite scenes is when Gil explains where he’s from and the eras that he’s travelling between to both Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel, and how Ned’s story doesn’t make the surrealists so much as flinch. There’s also a scene where Gil buys a book in French and has a tour guide read it to him in English on a bench; it’s a beautiful scene from the present day scenes that rivals the best scenes from the ‘20s. Also great (and really charming and beautiful) is Marion Cotillard as Adriana. She and Wilson have a really sweet scene at the end that is the catalyst for Gil’s epiphany. Cotillard’s smile, charm, and just general happiness, is as equally infectious as Wilson’s. Sweet and charming and obviously filmed by a man who loves Paris – those opening postcard images is one of my very favorite openings of any movie in 2011 – Midnight in Paris works because of its beautiful and nostalgic and magical scenes from 1920 and the way the film so effortlessly moves along and elicits laughs and smiles. I loved it.
