Midnight in Paris
Written and Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, and Marion Cotillard
Warning: this post is spoilerific. If you haven’t yet seen the movie Midnight in Paris, but intend to, you’d probably best skip this post. Second warning: this is not a full, regular review, but rather a discussion/question of one key point.
Late last year, a friend suggested I’d enjoy the movie. I don’t even remember it being in the theatres (so obviously, I missed it) [it was released in June 2011, and made more than $50 million in the US and $100 million worldwide]. I wrote down the title, but when the copy arrived in the library, I couldn’t recall exactly why she thought I’d like it. So I watched it knowing nothing about it except that it had been recommended to me.
I was surprised it was a Woody Allen film, because I don’t usually connect with his work. But it was about a writer in Paris, so that was a good hook for me. It had Rachel McAdams, who I really like (so it was difficult watching her playing such an unlikable character, but heck, she is an actress). And it was a fantasy, which I usually cotton to. In this case, the fantasy was that the main character was a financially successful writer, and that he was engaged to Rachel McAdams (okay, enough snark).
In the movie, Gil (Owen Wilson), the writer, is a successful Hollywood script writer, but he’s yearning for something more fulfilling. He’s writing his first novel while on a trip to Paris with his fiancee, Inez (McAdams) and her parents. They’re snooty, wealthy, ugly Americans, while Gil is, at heart, a loveable Bohemian writer who just happens to be financially well off. One night, he stumbles into a rift in time (well, it’s a 1920 Peugeot Landaulet [gorgeous old car] that picks him up at midnight) and winds up in Paris in the 1920s, where he meets the Fitzgeralds, Cole Porter, and Ernest Hemingway (the literary crowd he’s always idolized), has his novel reviewed by Gertrude Stein, interacts with Dali, Man Ray, and Bunuel, and so on and on. It’s every would-be writer’s wish fulfillment. He also meets an aspiring costume designer, Adriana, who is a hanger-on with the literarati, the artists’ muse and lover. Gil falls in love with her (and she with him), and they have something of a relationship. Then, one night, while they’re out walking, they stumble into another time rift (this time, it’s a horse-drawn carriage) that takes them to 1890s Paris (the era Adriana idolizes), where they meet Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, and Degas.
After watching it on DVD a few weeks ago, the film is now on cable, so I’ve rewatched pieces of it several times recently (it’s on in the background as I’m writing this). The thing that has me thinking about the film right now is the end. Specifically, Adriana decides to stay in her golden age, to design costumes for the ballet. Gil, however, can’t bring himself to stay with her, nor for that matter to stay in the 1920s. He returns to his (our) present, and decides to leave his fiancee and stay in Paris to write. So in the most overt interpretation, he’s breaking his bonds to the materialistic world with which he doesn’t connect, and making the decision to live where and how he ought to. But I’ve been wondering if his decision is actually showing that Adriana has the courage of her convictions—dropping everything and the world she knows for the world of her dreams—while he is unable to. He’s showing courage, but very little (is this an echo of his conversation with Hemingway, who was able to risk his life fighting in war in order to write real life?).
I guess it’s a good movie, since I’m still thinking about it. But is Gil weak for staying in Paris in 2010, rather than in 1920?