Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Film Review: Midnight in Paris


You’ve got to give him credit. Woody Allen, the bespectacled septuagenarian conteur, has served up his latest, ‘Midnight in Paris’, an obeisance to art, literature, music and Paris. Allen gently plunders the human tendency of dissatisfaction with the present and yearning for the past, using la ville lumiere as a backdrop.
Hollywood hack screenwriter Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is in Paris with his insipid, annoying fiancĂ©e Inez (Rachel McAdams), unhappy with the way his successful career has impeded him from penning a real serious novel and disappointed by the way that life is moving in contemporary times. On a midnight walk in one of the charming serpentine Parisian lanes, he finds himself in the ‘Golden Age’, an era suffused with incandescent golden light, where he rubs shoulders with F.Scott Fitzgerald and his mercurial wife Zelda, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali, Picasso and others. He’s living his dream (and mine too). His love for the art, literature and music is frequently a source of mockery by Inez and her incessantly critical friend, Paul who scorns,” Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present.”
His ecstasy at inhabiting an ebullient world in the past is juxtaposed with his increasing unhappiness with the present, as he falls in love with Adriana (Marion Cotillard), Picasso’s mistress whose got Modigliani and Braque on her resume too and who, we find, feels just as unhappy in her own time period.
The film’s frames are teeming with artistic legends, someone of them played by present day stalwarts as well, a sort of a who’s- who list of famous people. Adrien Brody inhabits the skin of a rhinoceros obsessed Salvador Dali with ease, Kathy Bates ‘s rendition of Gertrude Stein is perfect, Allison Pill as the spunky Zelda is delightful and Ernest Hemingway played by Corey Stoll is sombre and reflective.
Owen Wilson is like a blonder and younger Wood Allen, replete with Allen-esque inflections, mannerisms. It works. He’s immensely likeable and charming and his zealousness is infectious. Martin Sheen as the “pedantic” Mr-Know –It-All Paul is very enjoyable to watch. Marion Cotillard is alluring and enchanting.
Cinematographer Darius Khondji has masterfully differentiated between the two worlds, by giving the past a soft, rich gilded texture, and the present a clear, pristine quality. Production designer Anne Seibel and costume designer Sonia Grande have succeeded in bringing the past to life.
Unlike some of his previous work, which employs the use of a protagonist with an ‘I hate life’ sign on his forehead (usually with Allen himself playing this character), this film is surprisingly cheerful.
Allen’s writing aims at light chuckles rather than anything more substantial and cerebral that he is known for.
We always feel a sense of discontent every now and then at living in the present, often going “Oh, how I wish” while craving to go back to relive the time passages already past. Gil echoes this sentiment with “That's what the present is. It's a little unsatisfying because life is unsatisfying”.

A tender, period(s) piece and clearly one of Woody Allen’s better films, Midnight in Paris has all the weight of a feather and the enchantment of a wistful daydream.