When Dreams Meet Reality

Rating: 8/10 (12 April 2012)

I should not have liked this movie. Everything in me screams not to like it, and has prevented me from actually watching it until now - Academy Award nominations notwithstanding. I don't really care very much for Woody Allen's movies. His work too often seems to be a reflection of his own quirks and neuroses, and the result is that I find myself being irritated by him rather than admiring his work. And, to be honest, I don't really care much for Owen Wilson as an actor. I find it hard for some reason to take him seriously. He strikes me as lightweight and flaky, lacking in depth, not altogether present in many of his roles. And yet, in "Midnight In Paris," Allen as director and Wilson as star work wonderfully together. Allen does a grand job of recreating Paris in primarily two (but actually as many as four in the course of the movie) eras. Paris comes across not only as a city of lights, but as a city of dreams. It captivates; it draws. And Wilson fits the story perfectly.
He plays Gil Pender, an American screenwriter but really an aspiring novelist. He's visiting Paris with his fiancé Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. Gil and Inez don't work together. That's clear from the start. Why they're together is a bit of a mystery. He likes walking through Paris in the rain; she just wants to stay dry - maybe a reflection of the difficult match between a dreamer and someone with no imagination? Her parents don't care for him - they seem to think he's beneath her; so does she to be honest. There's an aristocratic snobbishness about them that Gil doesn't share. He wants to write; he dreams of living in the past, when Paris was a haven for writers and artists of various sorts. When Inez and Gil meet up with Paul & Carol (old friends of Inez, whom Gil admits he's not really taken with) I really felt myself drawn to Gil. He was the target of repeated putdowns by the "pedantic" (that's the word that was very appropriately used) arrogance of Paul, who's a self-proclaimed expert on everything. As Inez is more and more drawn to Paul's snooty intellectualism, Gil is more and more drawn away from her, and begins to wander Paris late at night, when he is suddenly and inexplicably transported into the Paris of the 1920's - his idea of the golden age - where he meets famous writers and artists - Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald, Picasso and Dali among others. He's increasingly drawn to this life and this age, and especially to Adriana (Marion Cotillard) and returns night after night.
The movie is a nostalgia trip, and yet it's a nostalgia trip that has a purpose. You see, as much as I don't like to admit it, Paul was right when he said, "nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present... the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one's living in - it's a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present." Nostalgia is a form of denial. You really can't escape the present with all its problems, no matter how hard you try. Gil has to come to understand that. His life isn't what he wants it to be; the people around him aren't the people he wants around him. He needs to come to terms with that. One of the great insights he discovers through his growing relationship with Adriana is that while she lives in the 1920's - his golden age - she has a golden age that's in the 1890's. Through that, he finally realizes that he has to live in the present because no matter where he goes in the past, there will always be a golden age to look back to and to yearn for, so unless he can learn to be satisfied with where and when he is, he can never be truly satisfied. The journey of self- discovery is an interesting and enjoyable and thought-provoking one.
Allen made one mistake. It was around the detective hired by Inez's father to find out what Gil was doing at night. Without giving it away, the ultimate fate of the detective (who's a very minor character) seemed out of place - an unnecessary and far too deliberate and obvious attempt to draw a laugh out of the viewer; so obvious that it drew no laugh from me. I just wondered why the scene was included. It served no purpose. I'm not entirely sure why Allen included that scene. It weakened the movie, and coming near the end, it stays in the memory of the viewer. Aside from that one scene, though, this was a very good movie. Certainly one of the most enjoyable movies made by Woody Allen that I've ever seen. (8/10)