Directed/Written By: Woody Allen
Starring: Owen Wilson as Gil, Rachel McAdams as Inez, Marion Cotillard as Adriana
Latter-day Woody Allen — and this distinction from early-day Annie Hall Woody Allen is important, I think — is a writer-director whose films are often compulsively indulgent portraits of upper-class Europe. In Vicki Cristina Barcelona, his protagonists attend art galleries, spend long vacations in exotic locales and embark on oh-so-treacherous journeys of self-discovery — seemingly because they have little to occupy their time. In Match Point, his characters spend their free time attending more art galleries, ruminating over Dostoyevskian existentialist philosophy, attend operas in the best theaters and in the best seats, and casually collecting vintage cars. In his latest film Midnight In Paris, his characters too attend exclusive art galleries, flaunt their knowledge of philosophical pseudo-intellectualisms, live in premier lodgings, and sulk over not being adequately knowledgeable in art history. Now, I’m not particularly opposed to films revolving around ‘upper-class’ interest (Kiarostami’s Certified Copy has a script simply overflowing with bourgeois philosophical banter, and I love it 4realz), neither am I films that are brimming with artsy esoterica (in Match Point, the purposeful detailing of bourgeois life is actually fundamental in the film’s goal to expose the underlying primitivity of the cultured individual). But Midnight In Paris is both aimlessly pretentious and gratuitously esoteric — a film that sucks up to pseudo-intellectuals and performs the hitherto impossible task of baffling both idiots and intellectuals alike.
The film’s very premise is esoteric in nature: Gil travels back to 1920s Paris and meets up with iconic artists such as Ernest Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Luis Bunuel et al. For anyone who doesn’t know them, Allen’s not-so-carefully embedded network of references would prove meaningless. Dali’s vision of a subject with “only one tear down the cheek”, for instance, is a reference to the surrealistic tradition of embracing asymmetry. Naturally, people who take pride in flaunting their knowledge would laugh at this point — even though getting the reference does not actually translate to some underlying joke. Those who don’t get the reference would not laugh because they don’t get the ‘joke’, and those who have an equal wealth of knowledge and intelligence would not laugh either — because there is no joke to begin with. I think this basically exemplifies what I don’t like about much of the humor in the film: it brings out the self-important know-it-all in semi-knowledgeable people, and gives them an opportunity to laugh and feel special. Even his dialogue feels awkwardly pretentious:
Inez: Come on, we should quit the ‘idle chatter’ because we’re gonna be late.
Inez’s Mom: ‘Nevertheless’, I don’t think your idea of having him followed is very practical.
Of course, if the film had then gone on to knowingly mock this brand of pretentious bullshit — in true George Carlin fashion –I would be totes in love with it. After all, Allen’s films work best when they are self-aware; Allen’s magnum opus Annie Hall succeeds mostly because of his self-deprecating dissection of Alvy Singer’s neuroticism. But Midnight In Paris has a script that seems genuinely unaware of its cringe factor.
But even if I were okay with Allen’s pretentious execution, why on earth would witnessing the rivalry between Zelda Fitzgerald and Hemingway, or listening to Cole Porter singing a song be particularly interesting? As an audience, we understand Gil’s fascination of watching his idols come to life. But we also know that we’re watching a film, and therefore hardly share his excitement. The history trips would’ve been so much more interesting if the film had debunked some myths surrounding the icons portrayed, or if some revisionist element were introduced. I mean, Allen’s caricatures of Hemingway (‘the tortured artist’) and Dali (‘the eccentric genius’) were occasionally entertaining, but they aren’t enough to make Gil’s ‘magical’ trips…well, magical.
And even though the film is already by nature extremely esoteric, Allen makes a lot of bewildering concessions that come across as half-hearted and overly simplistic. The inclusion of Dali and Bunuel to make a fantastically general point about surrealism and how it expands the imagination is, for one, incredibly insulting. I assume Allen deliberately chose to bring them both into the movie at the same time because of their collaboration on the arthouse tour de force Un Chien Andalou, but there is no explicit exploration of that suggestion here. Allen simply raises a possibility, then shits all over it. Bravo, Woody Allen. Bravo.
The plot of the film is also offensively predictable for any filmmaker, let alone Woody Allen. It begins with Inez dismissing Gil’s romantic fantasies of Paris-in-the-rain, proceeds with making Inez look like a total bitch, introduces Gabrielle (as sweet and beautiful as Parisians get), introduces Adriana (the quintessentially enigmatic beauty that never ends up with the likeable protagonist), breaks up Gil and Inez (as though we never saw it coming), and ends with Gil and Gabrielle walking (IN THE RAIN) towards a happy, happy future of perpetual nostalgia. Sometimes, predictability of plot is comforting – as it is in Lars and the Real Girl, or City Lights – but at other times (like in Midnight In Paris), it is off-putting, anti-climactic and just plain boring.
The philosophical ramblings in the film are hardly worthy of an intellectual of Allen’s stature either. The intellectual premise of the film is firmly grounded in the problem of existential disillusionment, which is something that has been consistently explored in his works. However, Allen fails to explore this thematic framework as powerfully as he does in Match Point, or as ambivalently as he does in Vicki Cristina Barcelona. Instead, he skirts around the topic like he has nothing much to say, aimlessly invokes various discursive concepts like ‘Golden Age Thinking’, then descends into brainless camp and saccharine sentimentality. Admittedly, nostalgia as a manifestation of a perpetual dissatisfaction with the present is an intriguing premise, but without development and/or exploration, it is neither interesting nor powerful enough to sustain an entire movie. Often, the ‘intellectual’ banter here comes across as a very watered-down, dumbed-down Bergman ripoff. Unless you’re inventive, articulate and skilful enough to make intellectualism something accessible (as Bergman does effortlessly), um…don’t do it kthx xoxo
I’m not finished complaining though; the character development here is awful too. Inez, for one, is shockingly superficial. In Match Point, where Scarlett Johannsen basically plays a variation of Inez, her death necessitates our sympathy. Therefore, she is allowed to be as whiny and needy as possible, because no matter what she does, we will still be on her side mourning for her. Here, however, there is no attempt to humanize Inez at all. She whines constantly. She belittles Gil everytime she has a line. She sucks up to ‘pseudo-intellectual’ Paul. She almost accuses the hotel maid of stealing. She doesn’t even feel sad when Gil breaks up with her. She just whines some more. Belittles some more. Bitches some more. But it’s not just her. Everyone apart from Gil is flat and unrealistic. Paul has the potential to become a wonderful character, but Allen cruelly obliterates him from the film after the first half, as though he himself wants the film to become a total dud. Thankfully, though, this film does have some redeeming factors.
Owen Wilson, best known for his invariable slapstick shtick in countless B-rated critical bombs, is quite wonderful here. He captures the Woody Allen persona with incredible accuracy and performs the remarkable task of imitation without ever once descending into unintentional parody. Wilson’s Gil is brimming with introverted tentativeness and ambivalent self-effacement, possesses a genuine fascination for the world, and awkwardly asserts his presence with an artist’s pride. His performance is endlessly marvelous and effortlessly funny, and I’m genuinely surprised he didn’t manage to garner an Oscar nomination for it. Adrien Brody’s campy cameo as Salvador Dali is pretty awesome too; it’s just a shame his role wasn’t particularly huge.
As always with latter-day Allen films, Allen’s use of music is exquisite and his cinematography is stunning. The ending, which is uncharacteristically sweet and pretty, is also a wonderful thing in itself — even if it is an inadequate apology for an awful film.
Ultimately, this movie is bearable, pseudo-intellectual fodder that reads and feels like a Woody Allen film; it’s just not a very good one. Not a very good one at all.
KevinScale Rating: 2.5/5
therein, Therin. 