I'm embarrassed to admit I've never been to Paris. In fact, the vivid image that comes to mind when I think of that city is the painting "Cafe Terrace at Night" by Vincent van Gogh. That beautiful work, for me, has always captured what Paris must be like on a warm summer night after a few glasses of wine. Cobblestone streets, warm light spilling out of cafe windows, dark skies and bright stars.
This is how I picture that city in my mind, however unrealistic that may be.
The main character in the film “Midnight in Paris” has a similar attitude towards Paris.
Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) and his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) have tagged along with her parents on a business trip to the French capital.
Gil, a successful screenwriter in Hollywood, is putting the final touches on a novel about someone who works in a “nostalgia shop” that sells curiosities and memorabilia from the past.
The protagonist in Gil’s book is really an expression of himself. He’s in love with
Paris, especially in the rain, and feels he would have been better suited to living in an earlier time and place – most likely as an expat writer or artist in the 1920s living in Paris.
Inez, entertains his efforts to write a book but makes him promise that when it fails, which she seems certain it will, he’ll go back to screen writing, which seems to offer a prestige and security she enjoys.
From conversations with her wealthy parents, furniture shopping, or the time they spend with Inez's “pseudo intellectual” friends, it quickly becomes clear Gil and his fiancee have little in common.
When trying to describe their commonalities ("not the big things, more the little things"), Gil can only say they both like Indian food. But then realizes, no, they both only like the “naan” bread that comes with Indian food.
That seems to be where the similarities end.
But soon, those issues fade into the background as Gil accidentally discovers a portal that takes him into the past, allowing him to walk through the streets of Paris in the 1920s and to meet people like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso. Hemingway’s editor even agrees to read Gil's book.
This is where the film could take a silly, sci-fi turn that would be completely out of place in a Woody Allen film. But somehow it doesn’t become that at all. As someone who has devoured Hemingway, Fitzgerald and read about those fantastic days when Paris was a new frontier for American artists and writers, I was rapt with Allen's subtle portrayal of the era, which somehow does feel like a doorway into a van Gogh painting or a short story by Hemingway.
Not surprisingly, Gil is also enthralled. These are the heroes of his Golden Age, and to sit and drink with them, discuss literature and big ideas, is a dream come true. He even meets a beautiful girl named Adriana (Marion Cotillard), and somehow manages to win her affection despite her attachment to both Hemingway and Picasso.
They seem to be kindred spirits, but an interesting wedge develops when they manage to travel back even further, to the late 1800s, which, as it turns out, is the era Adriana looks back to as her own personal Golden Age.
This provides a valuable lesson to Gil about the futility of looking to the past for an elusive sense of happiness or belonging. But it’s not the true message of the film. That lesson is delivered by Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), the literary agent or editor who agrees to read his book.
“You have a good voice,” she tells him after reading the book. But, she adds, it’s too dreary and depressing.
An artist’s responsibility is not to sink people into the depths of despair, Stein says, but to provide hope and the promise of something better through their paintings, stories or songs.
This is the key message for Gil, the one that inspires him not only to rewrite his book but also to rewrite the story of his own life (the 2011 version) and pursue the things that truly matter.
Hemingway’s words also help drive home the lesson: "No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure," he says, or preaches, really, in an impassioned rant.
The realization he has with Adriana, along with the wise words from Hemingway and Stein, inspire Gil to live his own live with new courage and hope.
Though we may not all look back with a deep sense of nostalgia for the past as Gil does, there are lessons here for all of us about the value of finding inspiration in our own context – while still being able to appreciate the beauty of Paris in the rain.
Oh yeah, and Carla Bruni is also in this film, playing a tour guide who befriends Gil. And she's great in the role.
