Pure nostalgia porn!

Rating: 8/10 (1 March 2017)

Midnight in Paris is one of the most refreshing films I have seen recently and I cannot exactly specify what elements make it just right, but it just feels right. The nostalgic symphonies and the enchanting landscape of la Parie have all coalesced in the perfect mix that make Midnight in Paris an enchanting cinematic experience.
Here we see Owen Wilson portraying an aspiring novelist Gil Pender having a miserable time in one of the most magical cities in the world: La Parie. He's a "Hollywood hire" (as he ever so humbly describes himself) who's struggling to finish his novel and to make matters worse, his fiancée seems more enamored of her faux intellectual friend Paul(who may I add was brilliantly portrayed by Michael Sheen) than she does of Gil. But Gil inhabits in a dream of his own and nothing, not the prospect of losing Inez to Paul or the spite of his in-laws, bothers him as much as the realization that he belongs in the past, 'the golden age', as he calls it, of Paris. Pretty much a fish out of water, one night after having one too many drinks a despondent Gil wanders the streets of Paris. And just as the bell chimes midnight Gil's bland existence takes an unforeseeable turn as he discovers that he has flown through time to the era of his dreams, his golden age. And he finds himself socializing with all the artistic legends he ever looked up to, like Ernest Hemmingway, Pablo Picasso, T.S. Elliot, Cole Porter, Salvatore Dali and so on. As an ecstatic child loses himself in his favorite toy-store, we also see a somewhat dazed Gil in a state of pure spellbound glee as he finds himself acquainting these historic figures.
There's a charming simplicity at the heart of Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen has not tried to recreate the world as it were at that time but rather throughout he remains true to romantic rendition of Gil's imagination . And I think that we can that the larger than life characters with all their amusing eccentricities can be accounted for to that particular line of thought. As for Wilson, I applaud him for exuding such immeasurable joy and personality into a role of the disheartened and defeatist romantic that is Gil.
As much fun as it was to see Gil mingle with his heroes, I would say that the soul of the movie are the thoughtful explorations at the core of romanticism. I believe we all at some level like to be in a state of blissful denial. As Gil so astutely observes in the final moments, life is unsatisfying. And it is here that that untainted bliss drives us forward and inspires us to take only the best that life has to offer.
A wonderful treat for the eyes and the mind, Midnight in Paris embodies a subtle yet mesmerizing beauty.