I'm not a fan of Woody Allen. I'm not prepared to say a lot about this movie, or Vicki, Christina, Barcelona. Which I've seen twice and thought was okay.
I once said to my screenwriting lecturer that Allen was a neurotic and he asked me why I thought that. Um, he's not? Maybe I've seen too many exaggerated parodies of the man and he's actually well adjusted, but looking at the characters he creates and the stories he writes (and seems to rewrite in various forms), how could he not be at least nervy?
Midnight In Paris looked interesting based on the trailer. I do like Owen Wilson when he's doing serious Wes Anderson characters. I prefer Luke Wilson, personally. However, Owen Wilson is gormless in Midnight In Paris. He's a successful screenwriter who wants to be an author who flunked out of English, in Paris with his fiance and her rich parents to shop for furniture because that's how the rich furnish their houses. He's dragged around the sites by a pretentious friend and their partner. Rachel McAdams, who I think is a pretty great actress, does well as the spoiled brat who doesn't understand Wilson's character and why he'd want to be a struggling author. So off the bat, she's not the right one for him. This is the key to story lines which feature some sort of infidelity. The person cheated on is usually not so great and the new object of desire who's threatening the existing relationship turns out to be the "one".
By some twist of magic realism, Wilson's character, Gil, ends up in a car and is transported rather smoothly into 1920s Paris, where he meets a variety of famous authors, painters and philosophers, who just sort of happen to all know one another. And all the actors picked to play these figures seem to fit - Tom Hiddleston as F Scott Fitzgerald, Adrien Brody as Dali and Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein - they work. You can believe it. But in my egotistical writer mind I was expecting this novel of Gil's, presented to Hemmingway and Stein, would be laughed at, Hemmingway from the outset refusing to read it, as if it's bad, he'll get angry and if it's good, he'll get jealous and hate it more. Case in point, this is a writer's mind on display, at least an insecure one. Yet in true Allen fashion, the novel is considered "good" and Stein then goes on to give Gil some valuable feedback.
There was a show from the UK called Goodnight Sweetheart, in which a hapless man finds a hidden portal back to the Blitz era and falls for a woman who owns a pub. The series plays out as him basically living a double life and cultivating an affair with the woman from the 40s while he's still with his wife in the present day. It was a great show, I liked it, I didn't like when they changed the actresses for both the female leads. All that being said, Midnight in Paris reminded me of this when Gil mentions the protagonist of his novel owns an antique/nostalgia store (the theme of the film centered around the notion of nostalgia and all its pitfalls and limitations). At that point I couldn't help thinking shades of Goodnight Sweetheart had ended up in this film. Doubtful, but it stopped me from viewing this as a completely original idea, especially since Gil falls for another woman, Picasso's mistress, and tries to have an affair with her. Of course it transpires his fiance is quite possibly having an affair herself, again nullifying Gil's actions and guilt because these types of stories always have a tit for tat justification for cheating. And the fiance is also bitchy, bratty and mean. Perfect.
Putting all this aside, all I see here in this narrative is a writer's wet dream about being loved and admired by his supposed idols. Gil is immediately accepted in this world and everyone loves him, his writing is admired, it inspires Picasso's mistress to fall in love with him. So if you're not a writer, you may not consider this to be an ego trip narrative. If you are, how can you not see it as anything but that? I kind of wish it were possible for Allen to go back and meet his heroes, and when they discover what sort of person he is (he cheated on Mia Farrow and took up with his much younger adopted daughter) perhaps he would be crushed and ridiculed. The major problem with Allen is he's surrounded by devotees and too many actors want to work with him. He's a decent film maker, I don't think he's an exceptional screen writer if he can't move from the same topic of morality, mortality and infidelity. I don't think his comedy is astoundingly funny; humorous maybe, not riotously funny. And I don't think it's intended to be laugh out loud hilarious. It's clever, but in that annoying way of being too self aware and pretentious. I'd never call him a humble person. It's a well made film, he does make Paris look particularly gorgeous and illuminating, and inviting. There's a particular attention to detail and a subtlety about the transitions from past to present. It definitely derives all its tension from the various neuroses of the characters playing off one another. But it rubs me up the wrong way on too many levels.
I didn't hate the film. I just saw it for what it was, a joyride through Allen's ego.
No comments:
Post a Comment