I saw Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” last night. Overall, I’d rate it as a nice movie; not Allen’s best but a long, long way from his worst; worth seeing, but it’s not a tragedy if you wait and watch it on T.V.; a clever concept, but not something that will change the way movies are made forever.
I actually liked the film poster better than the actual film
It was my wife’s treat. She’d seen it before and thought I’d like it, because she said the Owen Wilson character reminded her a bit of me – a struggling, wannabe writer, more of a romantic than a realist – in that, she has a point.
It was a special price, only 60 kč, which is about 3 dollars. That always makes me happy.
Ran into an old friend in the men’s room before the show. That made it a great night out.
About cinema, though- many people have predicted that video rental, and then computer downloads, would spell the end of cinemas. So far, that has not panned out and I’m not really sure why. At full price, plus popcorn, it is an outrageously expensive night out and, probably 50% of the time, the film is crap. It’s sort of like paying to see a sporting event, and then your team loses. Money down the drain.
But, as I believe I have pointed out here before, seeing the film in a cinema has one big advantage over seeing a film at home. In the cinema, when the lights go down and the film comes on, everybody shuts the fuck up and you get to watch the film. That doesn’t usually happen at home. At least not in my home.
Anyway, as to the film itself. It’s a nice concept, that he goes back in time to Paris in the 20s, the era he has romanticized. But the caricatures of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, et alii were caricatures – no new insights were offered. It was entertaining, in parts, but not enlightening.
The big drawback, though, was that there were no major characters I liked. After a few minutes, I leaned over and whispered to Helena that I hated his fiancee and her whole family.
About halfway through the film, I realized that I didn’t particularly like the main character either. The novel he was writing sounded like a shallow piece of crap, when he met Hemingway he was like a schoolgirl meeting Justin Bieber, and I couldn’t understand how such a lame character should be the love interest for 3 gorgeous women (although, as I said, his 21st century fiancee was totally obnoxious.)
Just one more thing – the romantic night views of Paris sure look a lot like Prague. Standing on a bridge over the Seine and seeing the lights of the city at night is real similar to standing on Charles Bridge at night, looking over the Vltava, and seeing the lights of the Castle and other monumental buildings. Their cobblestoned streets look a lot like our cobblestoned streets. And rain is rain.
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Kathy Bates speaking in French and in Spanish was a cool touch, though.
Kathy Bates as G. Stein was brilliant casting. I’ve seen only bits of Woody’s last dozen (possibly more) movies. Saw this at my wife’s recommendation as well (she watched it on a flight we took to California, I watched it on the way back). What struck me most is how little Allen cares about developing female characters. We were *supposed* to hate the fiancee’s family, but He used to have the skill of making his audience feel a complex of emotions for his characters. This one was all about the gimmick, cool though it was.
I was more intrigued by the message than the characters. I felt that the writer Woody Allen was trying to imagine himself writing in Montmartre with the other expat writers–and what that would be like. I found it amusing that the main character was a bit of a hack novelist writing about a nostalgia shop–who was a nostalgia nut himself who finds himself thrown into a time warp on a backstreet of Montmartre with expat writers and artists of the 20s. Of course he falls for a woman who is also a nostalgia nut–for La Belle Epoque, which was decades before HER time. I guess this is the Allenesque way of saying ‘love what you have, where you have it.’ Oh yeah, and visit Montmartre for a few days and walk the streets at night. It added to my viewing experience of this film. Keep up the good words, chief…
-Melvis
BTW: have you noticed that in many of the Woody Allen films where Allen doesn’t appear in the film, the main character acts a bit like Allen? Wilson did it a bit in this film, but Scarlett Johansson seems to be his kid sister in ‘Scoop.’ Remember when we were watching that Woody Allen film in KK’s attic flat? The Woodsman said ‘Swimming is not a sport. It’s simply something that I do so I shouldn’t drown.’ Another favorite quote by Woody: ‘I’m not trying to achieve immortality through my films. I’m trying to achieve it by NOT DYING.’
Good point – the bit were he was lying in bed repeating his name to convince himself he wasn’t crazy was very much Woody Allen.