Review – Midnight in Paris (2011)

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At some point, nearly every lover of stories has desired to meet their favorite, typically long-dead, author and pepper him with questions about, well, everything.

“What was it like the first time you stepped through the wardrobe?
“What more can you tell us about the Shire?”
“Can you teach me to write like that?”

While authors’ works will usually be our only access to their minds, this doesn’t stop us from dreaming what it would be like to have tea with the Inklings or ride a steamboat with Sam Clemons, so, when my wife and I stumbled upon a movie about a modern-day author who goes back in time to visit the likes of Hemmingway and Fitzgerald, we were naturally thrilled. After two days of fighting with our internet and desperately glancing at Netflix’s reminder that the movie was leaving in three days, we finally got Midnight in Paris to play uninterrupted.

I want to tell you that the movie instantly entered our top 10. I want to tell you that the narrative was so exquisite that it held us breathless. I want to tell you that the characters made us cry with so much passion that we instantly purchased a copy for ourselves and every story lover we know.

What I really want to tell you is that I have no idea why this is all suddenly sounding like Lemony Snicket…..

Since none of the above actually happened, I’ll spare you the agony every detail would bring and instead focus on a few bits which unfortunately doomed this film. But lest you think that the whole picture is gloomy, we’ll touch on a few moments that worked well.

A brief summary (including spoilers – beware!)

Written and directed by Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris is the tale of a middle-aged American writer (Gil, played by Owen Wilson) visiting Paris with his fiancée and her family. While Gil is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, his desperate dream is to write a novel of excellence…despite his fiancée’s lack of encouragement and general disrespect. In fact, Gil can’t even provide a convincing answer for why they are getting married, other than the fact that they both enjoy Indian cuisine.

Whilst roaming Paris after dark, Gil is inexplicably transported to 1920’s Paris where he becomes acquainted with many of the famous artists of the time, such as Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso. Naturally, his friends in the present think he’s a loon, and Gil continues to seek solace every night with his literary idols. Since this is a time travel flick, Gil meets a woman (Adriana, played by Marion Cotillard) from the ’20’s who admires him, and they somewhat accidentally begin to fall in love with each other. To Gil’s chagrin, Adriana desires 1890’s Paris just as much as he pines for the ’20’s, and after they are (again, without explanation) transported back to the ’90’s, she decides to stay.

Gil suddenly realizes that he must make the best of his life in the 2010’s, decides to leave his overbearing fiancée, and dwell permanently in his beloved city. As all quasi-romances would have it, the picture closes just as Gil begins the first step towards a relationship with a Parisian woman who happens to share similar interests.

The stakes aren’t high enough to make the plot interesting.

In the best stories, the stakes for the protagonist steadily increase throughout the narrative to the point where if he fails, his world will collapse with a thunderous crash, usually with collateral damage. If Luke Skywalker doesn’t destroy the Death Star, not only is the Rebel Alliance finished, hope in the galaxy perishes. If Buzz and Woody can’t escape Sid, can’t light the rocket, can’t free themselves from the rocket, they are at best doomed to slavery at Sid’s, or at worst, annihilation.

For Gil…if he can’t finish his novel (or if it’s a flop)…..he’ll have to go back to being a successful Hollywood writer. That…kind of sounds like fun. While it may be a drag for Gil, we’re never told why being a successful Hollywood writer is a bad thing for him. Does he work for evil studio bosses? Is he stereotyped into writing a genre he hates? All we know is that he’d rather be writing novels and that he’s got a great fall back. Not very compelling.

The plot isn’t strong.

One of the easiest ways to think of plot is that it is the relationship between the character’s desire and goals, and the conflicts and barriers that arise to prevent them. Simply put, the stronger the desire, the harder it should be for the protagonist to fulfill it. In Midnight in Paris, nothing is truly preventing Gil from writing his novel. It kinda seems like he has writer’s block, but when we learn that he’s already completed a 400-page draft, that doesn’t seem to be a likely culprit.

It could be that his fiancée’s nagging and disrespect could be hindering him. But again, he’s got that aforementioned draft completed. Clearly, he’s still writing. Or maybe his novel simply isn’t good? Easy plot fix – let’s have Gertrude Stein look over Gil’s work without hesitation – twice! If the driving plot element is Gil’s novel, I’m struggling to find any deeper-than-surface-level hardships preventing him from finishing his passion project.

Gil’s climactic decision is a non-choice.

Most stories contain a moment where the protagonist must make an irrevocable, climactic decision which ultimately thrusts the story to it’s final moments and we learn whether the hero is successful or not. In order to be dramatic and tension-filled, this decision should be a hard one for the protagonist – one where victory is not ensured. Continuing with our Star Wars examples, in the final moments of A New Hope, Luke has to choose between the “safe” action of utilizing his targeting computer as he attempts to destroy the Death Star, or to listen to his mentor’s admonishment to use instead use the force. Either action is loaded with risks, and it is up to the hero to make the best possible, albeit difficult, choice.

This decision should never be an easy one. Another example: in Monster’s Inc, Sully must choose between keeping his beloved Boo hidden within Monstroplis, or sending her back to Earth. Option one might make Sully happy, but it would keep the city in a state of panic, not to mention prevent Boo from returning to her real home. Option two is much more emotionally difficult, but allows Monstroplis to return to a much-needed norm.

What stories should never do is present the protagonist with a climactic choice like this:

1. Take Door #1 and die a horrible death at the hand’s of one’s worst enemy to the benefit of no one.
2. Or take Door #2 and be happily reunited with the love of one’s life, to the joy of everyone.

This is a non-choice. There’s no tension. There’s nothing to set apart the story as unique. There’s no way to present the story’s theme in a truthful way.

Which brings us to our friend, Gil. As the film closes, Gil confronts the following choices:

1. Travel back to California (which he doesn’t care for) with his fiancée (who treats him so terribly we don’t want them together anyway) and likely shelve his novel while he continues writing screenplays (which he hates).
2. Or, he can stay in Paris (which he has been talking about doing the entire movie) without his fiancée (who treats him so terribly we don’t want them together anyway) and work on his novel (which is his passion project).

Hmmmm……

We don’t really know why Gil loves the 1920’s

Sure, Gil is a writer, but that doesn’t automatically mean that all writers simply adore the age of Hemingway. Some (myself included) couldn’t care less for A Farewell to Arms (although I admit that the novel is very well-written). Why the 1920’s? Why not the era of Mark Twain? Or the crazy science fiction era that embraces the latter half of the twentieth century? Or even Plato? That would have been fun!

I know I’m nitpicking at this point; in the end it doesn’t really matter why Gil loved the ’20’s so much, but it would have added a much needed layer to his character, which desperately lacked depth. At some point, we need to understand at least part of the protagonist’s motivation, and the deeper we can delve the better. While we don’t necessarily need to know what Hemingway and Fitzgerald meant to Gil, the audience needs to know why writing a novel was so important to him, since that is the spine of his story.

The theme is “nice”.

“Nice” is a truly atrocious word choice, but in this case, I can’t think of a more appropriate one. Near the end of his journey, Gil has an epiphany: nostalgia is present in every era, and one must choose to make the best of and live fully within one’s own time. Good thought, “nice” idea, right? Except we’re not given a good enough reason for why Gil actually believes that his suddenly embraced truth is the right one.

Sure, we see that his 1920’s wanna-be lover obsesses over the 1890’s, which in turn makes him see the flaw in his own thinking that the ’20’s (or any other previous time) are “the best”. But this one moment is not powerful enough to single-handedly overcome the delight of the film’s previous blasts of nostalgia of the age of Hemingway and Co., especially when Gil has yet to confront any of his twenty-first century struggles. In short, the theme suddenly whacks us over the head, instead of gracefully imbuing itself and growing throughout the entire narrative.

But…if you’re going to watch this film, Hemingway’s the reason to do it.

Disclosure: I certainly don’t know enough about Hemingway to vouch for the historical accuracy of Corey Stoll’s portrayal of one of the 20th century’s most famous authors. Nevertheless, each of Gil’s encounters with Hemingway (and all of the 1920’s historical figures, for that matter) is a thrill to behold. Hemingway offers encouragement by way of insult, just as we’d expect. The Fitzgerald’s (F. Scott and Zelda, especially Zelda) are as crazy as we’ve imagined. And Mr. Picasso is a pure nut. Of course, this is how the filmmakers chose to portray these historical figures, and there wasn’t enough time in the film to truly peel apart their layers to see what made them work, but these moments saved Midnight in Paris from being a stellar waste of time.

Despite the narrative being taped together by some of the flimsiest storytelling we’d seen in a while, we’ll still always look fondly upon the time we spent in 1920’s Paris with Gil, while simultaneous despising nearly every scene based within the 2010’s. Which is, ironically, exactly the opposite of what the movie’s theme was seeking to convey.

Movie Rating: 3