Midnight in Paris (2011)
Review of Midnight in Paris (2011), directed by Woody Allen
The first time I watched this film was in my high school literary class, right before we were about to graduate. Our literary teacher wanted to show us a film that incorporated writers in some capacity, and so she ended up deciding upon Midnight in Paris.
Apparently it was our writing program’s tradition to show this movie every single year, which is interesting considering you might or might not learn something about craft depending on how much you pay attention.
Anyways, I was bored on a rainy Friday, and so I sat down to watch this yet again. While I wish I could travel to Paris, COVID-19 is still a thing and I don’t have a stable income yet. And so I watched Midnight in Paris again because I was nostalgic for a time when I was reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and I wanted to live with the Lost Generation writers in dirty, cafe-ridden Paris in the twenties. Midnight in Paris is perfect to stoke those flames, plus with some great shots.
Content
Our main character’s name is Gil and he’s a successful Hollywood screenwriter on a trip to Paris with his fiancé and her conservative family. Gil really wants to not be a screenwriter and instead wants to be a novelist, but his fiancé and her family very much disagree with his lifestyle decisions.
We see cracks in this marriage from the get-go; Gil wants to live in Paris but Inez wants to live in Malibu. Gil wants to write a novel while Inez puts him down.
Could also have some things to say about how the central woman in this film is depicted—she falls into an archetype of certain women in film, one who plagues the male hero with her demands. She’s also depicted as having pseudo-intellectual friends while the male hero sees through it.
The time-travel segments of this film was based on Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast and we see an entire cast of characters that were unique to the Paris art and literary scene at the time. We see the big names like Dali, the Fitzgeralds, Stein, and Hemingway, but we also see some names that make my heart swell and swing. We stan Djuna Barnes in this house and think she needs absolutely more recognition than she has received in mainstream media. Same with Josephine Baker.
This split narrative between the present day and the past with the American writers tends to be absolutely fascinating in regards to the character development. It is reminiscent of how we often dream about meeting our favorite writers as well as how we garner inspiration from them.
While in this film it turns out to be a positive experience, I think it’s also very important to remember how we romanticize meeting our heroes. And that’s what this film does. Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds were problematic in many ways and they have their faults.
We do crack at this concept of nostalgia in the film and learning to enjoy the present moment, which is pretty wholesome.
Cinematic-wise, this is a pretty good film. There’s nice ambiance and coloring, some good shots scattered throughout, and the backgrounds of the historic setting tend to be quite nice to the eye.
Overall Thoughts
It’s a good film, but I kind of wish now I could watch a film purely about the Lost Generation and their antics in post-war Paris. I can completely relate to Owen Wilson’s Gil throughout as he attempts to follow his dreams and meets all of his writing idols.
That truly is a writer’s dream, but I approach this topic with caution, especially considering how many of the people that Gil idolizes also have a lot of problems that impaired their personal and writing lives. There’s some really nice shots of Paris that made me want to visit there. Besides that, it’s a decent movie to fill time with.
