Thoughts on Midnight in Paris

First of all, let me say how much I loved this movie. My sisters and I thought it was so fun, and there was depth to it too.

I have only seen two Woody Allen films. The other, Scoop, had a lot of good lines and interesting twists and good performances, but it felt disjointed. Maybe it was an editing problem, or maybe the clever lines didn’t fit together naturally enough. Midnight in Paris just flowed perfectly.

Being enamored of the movie, and pondering various points that it raised, I went to the IMDB message boards to see what people were saying. Of course there were people groaning about the exclusions and the caricatures and all of the quibbles that you would expect. What really surprised me, though, were the questions about whether the portal would be closed now that he has met that other girl, and if maybe she was from the future and used the portal to find him.

Well, assuming the girl in the nostalgia shop was also a time traveler seems like overreaching based on not very many clues, but it also seemed so completely beside the point.

Yes, it is nice that he has romantic possibilities, but I am not at all convinced that Gabrielle is going to be Gil’s soul mate. I suppose arguments for it are that she likes nostalgia, and walking in the rain, and that he is talking to her at the stroke of midnight at the end, which has been when magical things have happened. Going one step further, she is much younger than Gil (the actress was born in 1985, compared to Owen Wilson’s 1968), which may make her a reasonable Woody Allen dream woman.

However, I did not take it as that. Gil had a much stronger connection to Adriana, but she let him go because she was going to keep chasing the past and Gil decided to embrace his present. He could date Gabrielle, or the museum guide, or find someone completely new, but the important part is that he is now going to follow his desires and dreams rather than living in fear. That’s really important for a neurotic guy who started having panic attacks after he got engaged. Anything that happens afterward is going to feel better, because he has taken ownership of his life.

This may be a good argument that Gabrielle was not a time traveler, but it also leads to a good question about Adriana, as to whether it was reasonable of her to decide to stay in La Belle Epoque. Arguing against it, Gil told her that it would be kind of disappointing too, and maybe that’s just life, and he might have a point. However, she wasn’t just staying there to watch the can-can and stargaze. She was going to make costumes, which had been her original life plan, before she started getting romantically involved with modern artists.

With her, it’s more of a moot point. We can’t choose to go back to our favorite historical area and set up shop there. Still, there are things we can learn from it. Adriana was surrounded by great creative minds, but she longed for a different time, and when she got there, they longed for something else too. Part of that is that we don’t know how things are going to turn out while we are in the middle of them.

There’s a scene between Gil and Hemingway that hints at it. Hemingway asks if Gil liked his novel, and Gil’s like, I love all of your writing, because he is looking back over time and seeing this great body of work. However, for Hemingway, he has written one novel. He probably has plans to write more, he could totally have great ambitions, but he doesn’t know what place he is going to hold in literature. None of them do.

For a lot of them, not only is the outcome uncertain, but the process probably has some growing pains. These are artists who are changing their scenes, and they receive criticism and opposition as well as praise. Plus, artists aren’t always the most stable people, which leads to its own issues. Yes, there are a lot of ways in which life can end up disappointing.

But for all the things that we can’t control, it just emphasizes the importance of making good choices where we can. We can choose a life that is more satisfying, and that will almost certainly mean not making decisions based primarily on fear, and that we do honor our creativity.

I love that film.