"Allen doesn't want to step out of his box long enough for any of this to truly matter."
Have you ever watched a movie and immediately forgotten everything about it by the time you arrived home?
That's not to say Midnight in Paris is a bad film. It really isn't.
It's just utterly forgettable in nearly every way possible.
The movie was written and directed by Woody Allen, who has been very hit and miss over the last twenty years or so. If you've never seen a Woody Allen film before, Midnight in Paris is really not where you should start. Allen requires a certain taste and understanding that one has to work their way up to.
Woody Allen is a brilliant writer and director, who often spends more time lost in his own thoughts and ideas than any one person should. He does this so much that his work often feels heavy handed in such a way that one can't help but mentally move forward, waiting for Allen to catch back up. When he does find the resolve, or reach the punch line, it's brilliant.
Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris
Midnight in Paris is a Woody Allen film, through and through. The characters are utterly predictable in every sense, there's a complicated plot of love in which two people realize they weren't meant for one another, and at its core, its central character falls in love with a city rather than a person. Grand gestures are made to let the audience know just how much they should, too, love the city. It's Allen doing what Allen does, conveying a narrative built around human emotion tied to a particular place at a particular time.
But with Paris, Allen bends his cliche storytelling to a whole new level.
Midnight in Paris stars Owen Wilson as Gil, a man visiting Paris with his fiance and her parents. Gil is a screenwriter busy working on a novel rather than a script. His disgust with Hollywood fuels his need to write something more profound, though his time in Paris ignites something inside of him completely new.
As the clock strikes midnight, Gil is transported back in time to a younger version of Paris, filled with historical figures like Zelda and F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein. It's a writers dream come true, with Gil now able to ask these greats to read his current work in progress and offer help.
By morning, Gil is mysteriously transported back to the present, where his relationship with his fiance becomes troubled. Each night, Gil seemingly jumps back in time to spend the evening lost in Paris with his newfound friends. These are people that he adored prior to meeting them, so this chance time traveling experience is ideal for Gil.
Unfortunately, Allen doesn't want to step out of his box long enough for any of this to truly matter.
Gil has millions of life lessons that he could learn from Hemingway, true talent to embed himself in with the Fitzgeralds, but rather spends his time chasing an unspoken love. It's here where Allen hides within himself, never fully questioning true human emotion or empathy. Allen wants Gil to fall in love with the city more than the people in it, which seems bewildering considering the company he keeps.
There's a love story within the past Paris which Allen uses to propel the plot of the film, but it all hinges on whether or not you believe a man could ignore the fact that he is in another time period and all he cares about is a woman he just met.
As such, none of his interactions are important enough to leave the audience caring about them once the film has ended. These historical figures are only entertaining for fleeting moments, long enough for Allen to deliver the punchline and move back to the romance story at hand.
Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris
This might be okay, if the outcome of the romance triangle wasn't telegraphed two hours before the end of the film arrives. There's no subtlety in where the story is going or how it will get there, and as such it feels like you're merely waiting for it to arrive while Hemingway occasionally makes a smart remake that leaves a smile on your face. Then back to more waiting.
By the time the credits role, Allen has merely told you a story you don't ultimately care about nor do you believe, filled with bland characters that are only interesting for their brief time on screen. Nothing here is realistic, and as such you can't relate to anything happening.
What you can do, if you love to write, is be swept up in the people that Gil gets to meet and wonder why he didn't bask in their presence like you would have.
Midnight in Paris is easily Woody Allen's best work in years. Allen hasn't made a film that qualified as a genuine "Woody Allen" entry, instead saving his better work for Match Point and Vicky Christina Barcelona.
Once again being immersed in the world of strung together sentences, poetic rants, and excruciating awkward emotions told through a quirky tale, Woody Allen finally delivers.
Owen Wilson plays Allen's well known lead, sporting a fiancé and a deep yearning to feel something of value in his life. The tension between Gil (Owen Wilson) and his fiancé (Rachel McAdams) is slowly apparent over the narrative, becoming an obvious rift that Gil is yet to recognize.
Slowly, as he progresses through Paris in the '20s during his magical adventures, Gil not only awakens to himself, but the realization of his current relationship as it is. This is achieved through wondrous interactions with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. These are the highlights on-screen, seeing Hemingway recite prose or Fitzgerald chase Zelda as she wildly flails from emotion to emotion, is simply entertaining.
Gil's slow understanding of his longing for a "golden age" to live in, being stuck in the past, and yearning for something of value is crystalized through intellectualizing with history's greatest writers, and a young woman (Marion Cotillard) who captures Gil's golden age imagination. As it turns out, she too has a bit in common with Gil, ultimately providing a catharsis Gil needs to wake up.
Midnight in Paris is one of Allen's more accessible flicks, pulling away from deep and profound thoughts of loneliness and the human condition, instead digging out only shallow waters for a fun ride that is full of intrigue and mystery, lighter on profound rants and Allen's signature sullen wisdom on love and those who partake in it.
