Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011)

[jbeall]

Lucky synergy, I guess: I moved to Montgomery, AL about five months ago and live a block off of Zelda Rd. And I happened to be reading the Dover Thrift edition of Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, the cover of which features the painting hanging over Stein's head in the scenes from this film. I loved Midnight in Paris, but I think it had to do with Allen's film presenting Paris in its best possible light. It feels casual and 'minor,' but I was drawn in in a way I hadn't been by a rom-com in a long, long time.

[domino harvey]

Is there a less generous living filmmaker than Woody Allen? Blue Jasmine is, like all of his other recent work, a film steeped in hate, in uncut misanthropy and pettiness.

Yeah, like, God, fuck the greatest authors and figures of the early 20th century for being nice to Owen Wilson's character. And when Wilson finally found happiness by accepting the present? Fucking misanthropic as fuck, dude. Oh wait, what's your argument again?

[FerdinandGriffon]

Midnight in Paris is a fantasy. Most of the film takes place in dreams. And the ending,

Spoiler

though it takes place in reality, is an extension of this, as it shows Wilson turning his back on his fiancee and his life in general in favor of a flirtation with a pretty girl he doesn't know at all. Which is not a problem in and of itself, but here it's inextricably tied in with an explicit reality/fantasy dichotomy. Also, since the key scene in this plotline takes place on a bridge and Allen is obsessed with Russian literature, I'm pretty sure the whole thing is a reference to Dostoevsky's White Nights, except Allen has perversely allowed the guy to get the girl and fantasy to win the day.

[domino harvey]

But how is that evidence of the film being misanthropic or steeped in hate or pettiness?

Spoiler

And you are doing some selective memory there, because Rachel McAdams is flirting with Michael Sheen and is of course revealed to be cheating with him the entire time

[FerdinandGriffon]

The focus in Midnight is on an idealized past, not the present. When the present or future is shown, it is with the same hatred and pettiness that Allen depicts it in his other recent films.

Spoiler

The fiancee and especially her parents are monsters, hypocrites, liars, and above all, really annoying. Though Wilson's conflict is in the present and about his future, he resolves it by retreating into the past. Not into his dreams of expatriate Paris, of course, but by walking off with their real-life surrogate: the younger French girl who works in the puces, who miraculously lives surrounded by and saturated by the idealized past. This symbolic relationship with the past is her only distinguishing feature (past Seydoux's extraordinary good looks); she doesn't have the screentime to become anything more than that.

[domino harvey]

But the parents you are decrying are minor, C-string characters within the narrative, and really only exist within the narrative to bolster the positive and welcoming attributes of the historical figures Wilson encounters. You are focusing on one element to decry the whole as misanthropic, which is just bizarre since the film's very structure counters this reading. Your reading of Wilson's relationship is grossly inaccurate, I might add-- he's the bad guy because he doesn't want to stay with the rich unfaithful fiancee who does not love him and whom he does not love? Is Cary Grant the bad guy in Holiday?

[FerdinandGriffon]

Nostalgia has always been an integral part of Allen's cinema. At this point in his career there is no way to separate it from his misanthropy. Midnight in Paris, though it emphasizes nostalgia, heavily implies the obverse side of this coin, which is a disdain for the present.

Yes, the parents are tools in the present which Allen uses to bolster the positive attributes of the historical figures, and therefore to strengthen the dichotomy between past and present on which the film's argument rests. As I said before, Wilson's choice is not in itself problematic if removed from the symbolic structure of the film and considered as a purely real world decision. The trouble is that it is in a film which has an explicit allegorical structure. Holiday does not have this structure. Wilson's choice is not reflective of an individual psychology but of a larger worldview, which, I would argue, is consistent with that on display in all of Allen's other recent films, up to and including Blue Jasmine.

[domino harvey]

You are talking around what you claimed, though. Point blank: How is Midnight in Paris

Misanthropic? The film's ultimate message is one which rejects nostalgia as an overarching drive, with Wilson choosing the present and Cotillard choosing the past. Wilson's happiness at the end is not in question

Hateful? Wilson and the majority of the historical figures are painted in a positive light throughout and the film is a romantic comedy with a happy ending

Petty?

You are practicing the worst pseudo-intellectual pick-and-choose pruning imaginable, selectively ignoring the parts of the text which refute your claim because you don't want to back down from what sounds like a great and edgy thesis ("All recent Woody Allen films are hateful!")

[FerdinandGriffon]

Misanthropic? The film's ultimate message is one which rejects nostalgia as an overarching drive, with Wilson choosing the present and Cotillard choosing the past. Wilson's happiness at the end is not in question

No, I think I've shown how the Seydoux character is a symbolic representation of the idealized past, who happens to exist in the present of the film, because Wilson's decision wouldn't carry any dramatic weight if it existed purely in a dream world that he would inevitably wake up from. The film does not reject nostalgia at all, it just finds a way to present it as a viable path for Wilson's character to take in waking life.

Hateful? Wilson and the majority of the historical figures are painted in a positive light throughout and the film is a romantic comedy with a happy ending

Wilson is an Allen surrogate (a figure that Dark Stranger and Blue Jasmine do not have). Of course he gets off light. And of course the historical figures are shown as lovely people; first of all, the film's whole argument is in favor of the past over the present, and second, they're stylized and idealized fantasies in Wilson's head, not even intended as historically accurate depictions of real life individuals. The happy ending is happy because the Allen figure gets what he wants. Do any of the other real world, non Allen-surrogate characters get happy endings, in this or any other recent Allen film?

Obviously, Midnight in Paris, a light comedy, isn't going to be as overbearing with its misanthropy as Allen's dramas or black comedies. That doesn't mean its not a key part of the film's ideology. A surface lightness only indicates the genre, not anything about the film or Allen's worldview. I don't know how to respond to your accusation of pruning, except to say that I'm not, as I'm talking about everything from the film's larger symbolic and organizational structures to smaller character and staging details and questions of style.

[domino harvey]

So because some characters are portrayed positively and some are portrayed negatively, the entire film is hateful? Your assertion rules almost all narrative fiction hateful, as there will always be PROTAGONISTS and ANTAGONISTS, and since Woody Allen has made some narrative fiction, I guess that proves your point! "Obviously." "Of course."

[FerdinandGriffon]

Do you or do you not agree that the film has an allegorical structure, and that the characters have more substance as allegorical figures than as psychological constructs or examples of real people? In any film where the characters are either as unremittingly awful, or as perfectly charming and lovely, as they are in Allen's recent films, they are going to lose some psychological depth in favor of symbolic significance, but in a film with a binary dream/reality structure working to resolve a single main dilemma, the transformation is complete.

[knives]

What does that have to do with misanthropy? As Dom has already said the film specifically rejects the past and nostalgia of it for a knowledge that the present and future has the potential to be just as great as we view the past as being. In very simple terms Allen is saying all eras can be viewed as great so I really don't get what you're trying to say.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Let me clarify somewhat: I would not say that Midnight in Paris is especially hateful or misanthropic. I can see how it is possible to consider it loving and affectionate, even if that love and affection is directed exclusively towards either dead people, people who act like Woody Allen, or beautiful young girls.

I would say that Midnight is Paris is absolutely consistent with the worldview expressed in a larger cycle of Allen films, and that that worldview is defined by petty, hateful misanthropy towards everyone outside of the three categories I mentioned before. Midnight has a larger proportion of characters inside of those categories, and so its misanthropy is pushed to the background. As a result, I enjoyed Midnight much more than any other recent Allen, while at the same time feeling that it did little to counter any of the fundamental misgivings I have about his work.

[FerdinandGriffon]

What does that have to do with misanthropy? As Dom has already said the film specifically rejects the past and nostalgia of it for a knowledge that the present and future has the potential to be just as great as we view the past as being. In very simple terms Allen is saying all eras can be viewed as great so I really don't get what you're trying to say.

How is this the case? Can you tell me why you read the ending the way you do? Because this reading is directly contrary to all of the evidence I've given, without substantiating the claim with anything new.

[domino harvey]

In the present day there's a cute girl who shares your interests. How awful!

[FerdinandGriffon]

Do you or do you not agree that the film has an allegorical structure, and that the characters have more substance as allegorical figures than as psychological constructs or examples of real people?

[knives]

What does that have to do with misanthropy? As Dom has already said the film specifically rejects the past and nostalgia of it for a knowledge that the present and future has the potential to be just as great as we view the past as being. In very simple terms Allen is saying all eras can be viewed as great so I really don't get what you're trying to say.

How is this the case? Can you tell me why you read the ending the way you do? Because this reading is directly contrary to all of the evidence I've given, without substantiating the claim with anything new.

That whole final speech Wilson gives at the end of the film when he is in Cotillard's fantasy past. If anything I was just giving a poor summary of it.

[mfunk9786]

Antibiotics!

[FerdinandGriffon]

That whole final speech Wilson gives at the end of the film when he is in Cotillard's fantasy past. If anything I was just giving a poor summary of it

Yeah, but then he gets in argument with his fiancee about his imaginary friends and decides to stay in Paris and do the imitation-Hemingway thing (like hundreds of other past-besotted American writers). Cheat as she may be, she points out that its all crazy talk, and Wilson has no suitable response to this. He doesn't need one, as a scene later he's happened to run into his dream girl who also lives in the past (les puces is almost a town in and of itself, but one constructed entirely out of bric-a-brac from the last century) and they're walking off into the idealized city together.

He may say one thing but he does another. Living in Paris as an expatriate writer obsessed with Hemingway is only "realistic" in comparison with choosing to actually lose your mind and live out your days in a loony bin. By all other standards, including that of the larger symbolic structure of the story, Wilson's character is living in the past.

Allen's argument isn't that it's actually possible to time travel, or even that past time periods were actually better than this one, but that nostalgia may be necessary to survive in an otherwise insufferable present.