Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”: To the Past or Present?
Imagine living in the best of both worlds, one of today, and the other of an era which inspires you the most. Woody Allen encapsulates this in one of his most enthralling movies, “Midnight in Paris”. Protagonist Gil — played by Owen Wilson — is a Hollywood screenwriter who is desperate to visit the “sizzling Paris of the 1920s”. Luckily, he gets to do just that (Berger). “Midnight in Paris” tells the story of Gil and his beautiful fiancée, Inez, played by Rachel McAdams, and their eventful trip to Paris alongside Inez’s parents. Gil and Inez seems to be the perfect couple, completely in love with each other, and a Malibu beach house already being planned for them to spend the rest of their lives in. But both start questioning themselves as Gil realizes that maybe what he really loves is Paris in the rain (Ebert).
The movie begins with the landscape of Paris, from the start of sunrise to the dim lights of midnight. While walking alone on one night, an antique car stops in front of Gil (Bradshaw), and he is invited in by the couple that turns out to be F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald. Gil immediately joins and they go back in time as the car continues to drive. Allen makes no attempt to explain how the setting changes abruptly, simply because none is needed (Ebert). There is no need for anyone to decide whether what is happening is logical or imaginary, because all is magic. Gil is swept away and plunged into a party where he listens to Cole Porter, and meets an intoxicated Ernest Hemingway in a bar near the scene. The night becomes more exciting to Gil when Hemingway promises that he would persuade Gertrude Stein to read the manuscript of a novel that Gil is working on.
So then every night, Gil leaves reality, enters the 1920s, and meets the legends that make the era as exhilarating as it is. He dances with Josephine Baker, meets T.S. Elliot, and falls in love in Picasso’s mistress, Adriana, who moved to Paris from Bordeaux in hopes to learn fashion from Coco Chanel. He also sits down and discusses topics of life with the surrealists of the time; Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, and Man Ray.
The movie often assumes that the audiences know all these lives and understand their paths, which can sometimes be confusing to those who do not (Berger). The key to what makes “Midnight in Paris” appealing is Owen Wilson, who also portrays Allen’s own characteristics. Gil is an enthusiastic, sincere, and wishful person who admires these icons of the 1920s, and a lot of viewers find a deep connection to him. One of them being myself. After watching “Midnight in Paris”, I fall in love with Europe and the Arts all over again. Just like Gil, one of my biggest dreams is to be able to live in a place that appreciates the culture of art, and to be able to meet artists from past movements, such as; Neoclassical, Romantic, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism.
In the movie, Gil and his newly found romance, Adriana, visits the Belle Époque, which Adriana finds as Paris’s Golden Age. There, they meet Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas, who all believes that the Renaissance was the best era in Paris. Gil realizes that everyone may have different opinions on which era is considered to be the golden era, or the “dull” present. For Gil, the 1920s is what he considers the Golden Age, but he ends up thinking that he should be embracing the present for what it is. Adriana decides to stay in the 1890s and they part. As for Inez, both became aware of their incompetence amongst each other and finally break up.
Gil decides to stay in the present world, because life keeps moving forward anyways. Although he enjoys his time in the 1920s, what is important is to make the “dull” present meaningful and epic just like every other Golden Ages. Much like Gil, I find that the past will always have an impact on me as well as my art making skills, but it is also important to recognize how to make the best out of what we already have today. In the beginning of the movie, Gil feels that he is living in the wrong time. In a sense, Woody Allen is asking the audience; what would you do if you could go back in a time and place that you think is better than where and when you live now?
As for myself, watching Gil’s character reminds me of my own admiration of the Old Masters. Take Adriana, for example, who refuses to stay in the 1920s — where she belongs — and decides to live even further in the past. While some might agree with her choices, I believe that there is much to look forward to in the present and future, and although the world works in different ways now, the past will always be a part that shapes the now, the same way of how the older ways of making art will always shape me of who I have become as an artist. However, the present life that some of us find “dull”, also shapes who we are as a person.
Allen did not make this a movie that everyone can relate to. Some might not understand how exciting and intoxicating it is to feel like we are visiting our own Golden Age, because their Golden Age might be the present. “Midnight in Paris” is a romantic comedy that has a thoughtful idea in the middle, and a revelation that is not too heavy-handed. The movie itself is not hard to understand, because there really is not much to break down, other than the fact that reality and imagination comes hand in hand. Whether you will fall in love all over again with Paris, or you will swept up by the aches of the artists in the dreamy city of Paris.
