Conceited

Rating: 3/10 (10 April 2012)

Allen's conceit, if this movie is anything to go by, appears boundless. Or maybe his advance into dotage has seriously diminished his powers. It's not that he lacks imagination or flair, it's simply that he has applied his skills to a movie that ultimately has no warmth and no lasting worth.
The movie does have a message -- the timeless "There's no place like home". Other movies have taken that moral and ended up with more convincing results. "Wizard of Oz", for example, comes to mind. In "Midnight In Paris", home refers to the present time the lead character inhabits, 2010, but he would prefer to live in a previous era, the 1920s in Paris. And he happens upon a method to whisk him back to that era -- a carriage which appears on a dim Paris street at the stroke of midnight.
I happily suspended disbelief to see where the story would take me. What eventuated, and what destroyed the suspension, was the name-dropping exercise involving most of the famous artistic characters who passed through Paris in the 1920s. Allen intentionally manipulates the audience by pandering to their need to appear knowledgeable in front of friends. At every entrance of another noted artist, a murmur sweeps through the audience as people in the know are unable to restrain the urge to tell their neighbour who the new kid is. "That's Cole Porter at the piano and there's Picasso."
And this is where I hark back to Allen's conceit. Well, two conceits. The first, that a dull, would-be writer could somehow befriend the likes of Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemmingway and Gertrude Stein. The second, that Allan is so taken with his own persona, so enamoured with his importance as an actor, that this movie just has to have himself in the starring role -- but being much to old to play the lead in this movie, he clones himself. Like "Mini-Me" from an Austin Powers movie (except this Mini-Me is the same size as the original), this film's cloned Woody Allen walks and talks just like the real thing. And just like the real thing, the clone is irresistible to every gorgeous young woman he meets. Allen's fetish for young women is clearly on display.
Entertainment at a superficial level is what this movie is about. On the surface it is not difficult to enjoy this film. The cinematography is clean and elegant: very little unnecessary camera movement, and no out-of-focus foreground that every camera hack overuses because they learnt at film school that that's how you give depth to a scene. The sound is crisp and appropriate, with little evidence of overly-zealous foley artists at work. And the basic story -- time travel -- is always of interest.
Scratch the surface, however, and pus oozes. This film is diseased. The acting is mediocre, especially by Allen's clone; and the story itself, though inherently interesting, is undone by its ludicrous proposition -- that a dull American would be of interest to some of the most creative people of the 20th century. Pre-production, Allen was let down by people who should have put their awe aside and warned him: "Hey Woody, it's probably not a good idea to clone yourself for the lead role. And rehashing scenes from "Manhattan" are you sure that's a good idea?"
The disease is narcissism. It's quite okay to feature yourself in the lead role of movies when the lead is an ordinary bloke surrounded by friends; it's highly suss to keep doing that when you are much too old to play the roles, and instead, hire a young clone and set yourself amongst the rich, the famous, and the gorgeous.
Having Hemingway in this film reminded me of a story about fantasy, lies, and Hemingway, in the book "Why We Lie" by Dorothy Rowe. The quote talks about the principles Hemingway used to guide his work:
"The first –- derived from newspaper experience which had trained him to report only what he had witnessed directly –- was that fiction must be founded on real emotional and intellectual experience and be faithful to actuality, but must also be transformed and heightened by the imagination until it becomes truer than mere factual events Engaging an audience and telling the truth requires considerable skill, particularly if you put the truth you want to tell into some kind of fantasy. You have to make sure that you never lose sight of the difference between the truth you want to tell and the fantasy. Only then can you control both elements of your material". (p147)
Unfortunately, Allen did lose control of this film because he lost sight of the difference between truth and fantasy.
Woody Allen was 75 when he directed this movie. If this is all he is now capable of he should step aside from writing and directing, and limit himself to producing. Bow out gracefully, in other words, before more movie failures expose his declining powers to even his most devoted fans.
Woody, if you feel driven to continue writing movies that star yourself, write them for a man of your age. Here's an idea:
1. An elderly Woody Allen realises his creative powers are diminishing.
2. While wandering the streets of New York at night with three friends, talking about his mental decline, Woody heads off into the darkness by himself.
3. He jumps in one of those horse-pulled carriages that roam New York and ends up back in 1979 on the set of "Manhattan".
4. The older Woody and the younger Woody interact in some interesting way.
Forget the science fiction, forget the women young enough to be your granddaughters. Act your age and your movies will probably turn out okay.