Midnight in Paris

I don’t use the word often, but this movie was…delightful, actually.  It is not complete reality, nor complete fantasy either.  I would call Midnight in Paris a hybrid between Back to the Future, Chronicles of Narnia, and (another one of director Woody Allen’s movies) Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  It is similar to the latter because the manner in which Allen directs is pretty unique, so you can tell you are watching one of his movies.  But also like Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris is about Americans traveling to Europe, with complicated love triangles ensuing.  In Chronicles of Narnia, the main characters walk through a closet and enter into the completely different realm of Narnia;  the main character of Midnight hops into a Parisian cab at midnight to enter his ‘fantasy’ land.  But unlike Narnia, the land is not completely different than the one he is in.  He just goes back in time to Paris in the 1920s, hence the reference to Back to the Future.

You can’t question logic in this movie, in order to enjoy it you just have to accept that Gil (played very well by Owen Wilson), travels to old school Paris each night at midnight and gets to canoodle with all his literary and artistic heroes.  It’s not too difficult to stop trying to figure out why and how this is happening because you will get wrapped up in how beautiful 1920s Paris (great job of costumes, lighting and filming), and all the life and vibrancy of the characters- you have Ernest Hemingway, Zelda Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, Salvadore Dali, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso (and solid actors like Kathy Bates and Adrien Brody)… In the end things do come full circle and you understand what the movie is about.  I won’t say much more because it’s better just to see it and understand the message for yourself.

I will warn about one Inception-type moment though- when Gil is hanging out with his 1920s-Paris love interest Adriana, played by Marion Cotillard. (Gil’s modern-day love interest is his fiance, Inez, played by Rachel McAdams. Fun Fact: you get to see Rachel McAdams fall for her current boyfriend, actor Michael Sheen, they started dating during filming of the Midnight.  There must be something in the air during Woody Allen filming, because Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem fell for each other during Vicky Cristina).  ANYWAYS, I didn’t realize it at the time, but Gil and Adriana- who are in the 20s- actually time travel back even further into Paris’ history, where Adriana decides she wants to stay and not return.  That moment when she is begging Gil to stay with her, and the fact that Gil had now double time traveled- started to freak me out.  I felt like I was back in Inception, watching the same actress, Cotillard, beg Leo DiCaprio to go wherever the hell she wanted (still don’t understand or have closure from Inception).  Luckily, this was a fleeting moment in Midnight, with Gil promptly returning back to modern day and realizing what he needs to do with his life.

Besides the brief Inception flashback, I wonder if anyone else had the same thoughts I did while watching Midnight in Paris (probably not).   Even though time-traveling to Paris in the 1920s and meeting all those famous writers and artists in their prime is not a dream of mine, I felt so excited for Gil, and almost vicariously living through him because his dreams were literally coming true.  Both his waking/daydreams and his night dreams.   You know when you’re sleeping and have an amazing dream, maybe you are hanging out with a famous celebrity or working with them- something unobtainable is happening… and then of course you have to wake up to the disappointment of it not being real.  Well here you have this guy living out scenarios that were day-dreams and also very well might have been previous night dreams of his.  But he wasn’t waking up!  He got to go back and continue the dream each night.  I love the concept, and it got me thinking what would be my own Midnight in Paris– what era would I like to travel back to and re-live.  The first place that came to mind was not the 60’s, not the 70s…but London in the early 1980s.  Part of me has always wished I could have been in my late teens/early 20s during that time, instead of a Rainbow Brite-totin-Mr. Roger’s-watchin child.   Specifically, I wish I could have been ‘of age’ in London when the band The Smiths first formed in 1982.  And I was going to small dive bars and watching them perform before making it big.  And my friends and I could talk to them, hang out with them and watch them in their prime.  We would go see other bands of the same era too, like Joy Division.  Would be so amazing to see London during that time….

I also made a decision at the end of Midnight in Paris that I want to travel to Paris this year.  I usually prefer to travel to beach spots more so than cities with museums and architecture, and my original destination was Jamaica.  I don’t know if it was the way in which Woody Allen filmed the city, or the fact that I saw Jay-Z and Kanye perform “N*ggas in Paris” about eight damn times in a row last month…but I’m going to Paris.

Verdict- I enjoyed Midnight in Paris, it is a unique film worth watching.