Movie Review: Midnight in Paris
Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something distinctly cozy about Woody Allen movies. The white-on-black opening credits, almost always scored to a classic jazz cut; the neurotic, self-defeating protagonist; and the urban (traditionally Manhattan) setting serve as formal signifiers, allowing the audience to relax into the world of the movie like a comfortable old pair of shoes. Allen’s movies never quite feel contemporary. They always seem to exist in some state of prior longing, where music and literature never quite picked up again after the great depression. Of course, this longing exists for a world few (if any) audience members recognize or could recall. The emotional texture of a Woody Allen film is similar to that of a romantic’s voyage through the past, where it doesn’t matter how much better things really were then, but rather, just that they haunt us now. Think about Martin Landau reflecting on his religious upbringing in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Or Allen himself opining on the life-affirming pleasures of a Marx brothers film in Hannah and Her Sisters. Hell, even Allen’s most famous film, Annie Hall, is a memory piece.
Which is why in hindsight, I’m somewhat surprised it took the guy this long to make a movie outright about nostalgia — though perhaps hardcore Stardust Memories partisans may argue that he’s been down this road before. Midnight in Paris, Allen’s latest film, and perhaps his loveliest in at least a decade, tackles this topic more explicitly than anything else the man has done before. Of course the protagonist/pseudo-Woody-surrogate Gil (an effectively, charmingly mannered Owen Wilson) is writing a sure-to-be under-appreciated book about a man who owns a nostalgia shop. Of course Gil has to literally go back in time (in a nifty feat of magical realism) before he can recognize the ostensibly desirable yet ultimately corrosive effects of living in the past. And of course, like all Allen creations, there characters go on at erudite lengths about their own personal philosophies regarding the film’s main thesis. Obvious? Sure. But no matter.
Allen’s script is all the more effective because it outwardly establishes the themes, creates the world in question (which I do not intend to spoil fully in this review), and allows everything to play out accordingly. It is a considerably more frothy and gentle affair than much of Allen’s later work (notably the misanthropic You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger), yet this is welcome considering the film cultivates an atmosphere most similar to spending an afternoon at the beach with an old friend who happens to be well versed in his Fitzgerald. Of course, it goes without saying that the film is quite funny too. It’s a perfect summer movie for the New Yorker crowd.
We live in a world where nostalgia is omnipresent, especially at the cinema. Our multiplexes are littered with incarnations of comic book heroes, board game adaptations, and most troublingly perhaps, reboots of reboots of great movies past. Even the lone original blockbuster thus far this summer, J.J. Abrams’ Super 8, owes considerably to Amblin classics of thirty years previous, with that central wistfulness being a vital part of its appeal. Whenever a heralded auteur releases a new film, discussion immediately centers around how said production fits into the context of said director’s body of work. However, Midnight in Paris, a film undoubtedly subject to the lattermost critical impulse, dares to buck the trend in this sense. Here is a movie which captures the ephemeral appeal of nostalgia, while illustrating the danger of it becoming anything more. It’s a simple little cinematic hat trick, but a powerful one, more delicate than it appears.
Living in the past may be inherently immature — but it sure is a nice place to visit every once in a while. Based on his thoroughly entertaining new film, evidently the Woodman feels the same way about the tricky emotional quicksand that is nostalgia. Like that comfortable old pair of shoes, there’s something just cozy about it, but it’s a coziness that is dangerous to mistake for home.
