Midnight in Paris (2011)
The footprints left by the artists in Paris light up the city with each step illuminating the next.
“It is unbelievable! There is no city like this in the world! “
Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is a successful Hollywood writer who seemed to have it all. His career and engagement to a stylish, socialite fiancé had ensured him a life of luxury and opulence. However, as a hopeless romantic, Gil craves to be a real artist with a work of his own artistic touch. Struggling to write his first novel about an owner of a nostalgia shop, Gil was eager, almost desperate, to find someone trustworthy to critique on his work. One day at midnight on a backstreet in Paris, a 1920s Peugeot Type 176 car drew up beside the drunken Gil and whisked him away to a party where everyone was dressed in 1920s clothing dancing to Cole Porter’s music. The occasion soon revealed itself to be literal as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald shook hands with the perplexed yet astonished Gil and asked if he would like to meet Ernest in a local bar nearby.
(click to watch trailer here.)
Weaving the past and present of Paris into a passionate love letter to the city, Woody Allen’s Midnight is perhaps the most romantic confession ever written in an attempt to capture the soul of the city.
The footprints left by the artists in Paris light up the city with each step illuminating the next. Gauguin, Picasso, Dali, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald have passed, but their spirits and works are still transforming Paris, inspiring generations. It is almost as if the artists of La Belle Epoque, of the 20’s, were still engaging in stimulating and insightful conversations in midnight Paris, paving the way for ardent seekers of art, the essentials, just like Gil.
Woody Allen, successfully capturing the spirit of the thriving city, waved his magic wand and brought the greatest minds in art and literature back to life. Lighthearted and witty, Midnight is a feast with us invited to get a true glimpse of the greats’ unparalleled existence. With the essence of their distinct personalities manifested, who can help but to fall in love with this spellbound Paris?
To know more about the artists then and in the movie, read the New York Times review here.
Alas, we are all so relieved and happy to find Gil, the hopeless romantic, finds his place in the universe. In Paris, in the rain.
“You look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists……from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.”
