Midnight in Paris – Directed by Woody Allen

This filmmaker has twenty four Academy Award nominations and has won four of them. But the name Woody Allen always spelled boredom to me for many years. Most film buffs would strangle me for this but it is true.

The year was 2007, is when I began to expand my horizons in cinema. I started to watch and collect movies extensively, sometimes going by the movies' and sometimes by the filmmaker’s repertoire. Woody Allen was always on the list of filmmakers whose films I wanted to watch. I had three of his most famous works Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters. If my memory serves me right, I watched Annie Hall and Manhattan and I was bored to death. I hate to watch the so called "art house" films made in the Indian regional languages, as most of them stretch reality to extreme levels and I always thought that these filmmakers don’t care much for the audience. Watching Woody Allen’s these two films reminded me of this genre, except that these films were rom coms, a genre that I love. After this, I actually deleted all three movies and never looked back… until now.

I watched Midnight in Paris last year. It was such a beautiful film that I was totally drawn into the world of the protagonist, Gil Pender played by Owen Wilson. To be more specific I was drawn by a single character so much that I ignored the film and started researching about that particular character. That character was of the famous writer Earnest Hemingway, which led me to read one of his nonfiction works and also write a post in this blog – ( http://pradeepsrants.blogspot.in/2013/10/the-written-word.html )

I watched the movie again and remembered how I totally ignored this movie, and did not write about this classic. So here are my reactions, after going through a wonderful and romantic experience for the second time.

The story is set in Paris, 2010. Gil Pender is a screenwriter from Hollywood who is working on his first novel. He is with his fiancée Inez, played by Rachel Mc Adams. They both are visiting Paris with Inez’s wealthy parents. Gil is in love with Paris, he loves everything about the city. He wants to move to Paris once they get married, but Inez prefers to move to Malibu, back in the USA. Gil gets drunk one night and wanders off leaving his fiancée with some friends. He wanders around the streets of Paris. He gets lost and sits helplessly on a street side. Its midnight, an old car comes down the street and stops near Gil. The passengers in the car, who are dressed in vintage clothing, ask Gil to join them. Gil goes with them to a party.  There he realizes that he has been transported to the past, to the 1920’s. An era he loves and admires for its famous artists, poets, writers… The story transports us to the past and present with the protagonist of the film. We travel with his apprehensions, confusion, amusement, love and finally with him, we reach his destiny.

Even though the movie is set in Paris, and the lead character is obsessed about the city, the movie gets you hooked onto the characters and the story. The photography never distracts you from the story and that’s one of the biggest strengths of this film. The opening sequence of the film is a lengthy montage of the city of Paris. It feels like the filmmaker is making a statement - “Yes, it is Paris. Now stop watching the city and watch the people I created.”

To accompany the mood, the background score is spot on, with its minimalist music. The music imbibes you with nostalgia, romance and of course comedy. The movie had four Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Director, and Art Direction and won the Oscar for Best original Screenplay. After watching Midnight in Paris I had to rethink my opinions about the Filmmaker. I’m going to watch his famous works again and maybe this time I’ll enjoy them as it was meant to be.

The movie has some inspiring dialogues and conversations; here is one which inspired me the most.

Gil: Hi Mr. Hemingway.

Ernest Hemingway: The assignment was to take the hill. There were four of us, five if you counted Vicente, but he had lost his hand when a grenade went off and couldn't fight as could when I first met him. And he was young and brave, and the hill was soggy from days of rain. And it sloped down toward a road and there were many German soldiers on the road. And the idea was to aim for the first group, and if our aim was true we could delay them.

Gil: Were you scared?

Ernest Hemingway: Of what?

Gil: Of getting killed.

Ernest Hemingway: You'll never write well if you fear dying. Do you?

Gil: Yeah, I do. I'd say probably, might be my greatest fear actually.

Ernest Hemingway: It's something all men before you have done, all men will do.

Gil: I know, I know.

Ernest Hemingway: Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?

Gil: Actually, my fiancé is pretty sexy.

Ernest Hemingway: And when you make love to her you feel true and beautiful passion. And you for at least that moment lose your fear of death.

Gil: No, that doesn't happen.

Ernest Hemingway: I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, or not loving well, which is the same thing. And when the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face like some rhino hunters I know, or Belmonte, who's truly brave. It is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds, until the return that it does to all men. And then you must make really good love again. Think about it.

“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” – This is true for cinema too. The films that become your favorite depend largely on how one relates to its characters and their journey.  What makes me love Midnight in Paris the most is my personal journey, as I used to dream about studying art in Paris. 

Cheers

Pradeep Kumar