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The successful Hollywood screenplay writer Gil Pender(Owen Wilson) is spending vacation in Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachael McAdams) and her parents since his future father-in-law is doing a merging business with a French company. Gil is an aspirant writer that loves Paris, and dreams on living in the city after getting married with Inez. Further, the romantic Gil believes that the golden age of Paris was in the 20's and he loves to walk on the rain through the streets of the City of Light.
When the shallow Inez meets her former boyfriend, the pseudo-intellectual Paul (Michael Sheen) with his girlfriend Carol (Nina Arianda), they spend sometime together visiting touristic places. In the night, they drink wine in a party and Paul invites the couple to go dancing with Carol and him. However, Gil prefers to return walking alone to the hotel. At midnight, an old car stops and the passengers invite him to go a party and sooner he realizes that he is back to the 20's, where he meets his favorite writers, musicians and artists and lives his dream.
"Midnight in Paris" is another little masterpiece of Woody Allen, who returns to the genre of fantasy of "The Purple Rose to Cairo" to disclose his alter-ego Gil that falls in love for Paris. The metaphoric tale uses the magic of Paris to help the writer Gil to find his connection with the unsatisfactory real world and to live the life that he really wants. He learns that what would be the golden age for him, might not be for those who live in those years since life is not perfect at all.
The film begins with a tour through the wonderful Paris, and has a marvelous cinematography unusual in Woody Allen's films. The performances are top-notch, with cameo of great actors and actresses, but I loved Owen Wilson, who is speaking in the same way Woody Allen does, Marion Cotillard and Kathy Bates.
The soundtrack with (1) Let's do it – Cole Porter; (2) Si tu vois ma mère – Sidney Bechet; (3) You do something to me – Cole Porter; (4) Ain't she sweet – Enoch Light and the Light Brigade (5) Charleston – Enoch Light and the Light Brigade; (6) La Conga Blicoti – Jospéhine Baker; (7) You've Got That Thing – Cole Porter (8) Cancan – Offenbach; and (9) Parlez moi d'Amour – Juliette Greco; is nostalgic and magnificent. There are many jokes and my favorite is Gil suggest Buñuel to think about a film with aristocrats trapped in a room without finding a way out. However, this film demands a minimum culture and sensitivity to be appreciated.
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Can anyone think of other time travel movies that, like this one, are not exploring the past in order to solve some problem but instead explore the past because it’s interesting and thrilling?
I’ve heard of La belle époque (2019), but haven’t been able to find it anywhere.
If you're speaking legally I don't think you'll find it,illegaly speaking,you can check YTS AG
Thanks
That was a cute movie, though like a lot of French films, there was a lot of little stupid things that took away from the seriousness.
If you have a VPN this can be found on the free Australian streaming service SBS on demand with ads.
Will try. Thanks!
Yeah I've watched it, but it's not "real" time travle, it's pretended, I mean, within the movie if that makes sense
I love Peggy Sue Got Married. It’s a delightful take on time travel.
The dialog also contains my favorite riff on wish-fulfillment time travel, when Peggy Sue decides to dip out of 1960 Santa Rosa: “Im going to Liverpool to discover the Beatles!”
Technically, the only reason Marty McFly ends up in 1955 is because Doc intended to go back out of nostalgia.
The 2001 masterpiece Kate & Leopold
[Somewhere in Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somewhere_in_Time_(film)) starring Christopher Reeve.
“ explore the past because it’s interesting and thrilling”
Jurassic Park?
Are we counting it as a time travel movie? It’s technically not, but I can see it getting an honorary mention.
Fuck it, have an upvote.
About time(2013),I'll write a review on it soon,my favorite movie of all time,it doesn't explore the past because it's thrilling or interesting but trust me it is different than any time travel movie you have or will ever see in your life
Different because it treats the time-traveling wizard who traps the woman he stalks in a labyrinth of manipulated choices as some sort of romantic hero, instead of as the villain protagonist he clearly is?
What would you do if you had his powers ?
I think he would use the ability to time travel and hide the various pieces of evidence from the detectives assigned to his case.
You know how at the end of The Dead Zonehe gets caught and dies ? Maybe something like that but without the getting caught and dying . Even if not that, definitely not tricking some poor stranger into giving me their life.
Did you watch a completely different movie? He doesn't stalk her or manipulate her at all. They meet and clearly have a lot of potential but then his selfless decision to support a friend means he has to find a new way to meet her. He uses information he learned from their previous conversation to meet her again and they essentially carry on where they left off
I feel like Forrest Gump is the closest thing I can think of, although it's not time travel.
Back To The Future doesn't start with the problem, it just becomes one.
You know, Forrest Gump provided for boomers a trip down memory lane of the time they’d actually lived through. Gil Pender in “Midnight in Paris” takes a trip down memory lane of the time he WISHES he’d lived through. It’s not a bad comparison in this sense.
This is my favorite movie of all time and I actually just watched it again today!
I think Wilson serves as the best stand-in for Allen in any movie to date, and the stellar cast in every role really elevates things. Stoll as Hemingway and Brody as Dali steal the show, but Bates as Gertrude Stein might be my favorite performance of the movie.
The way this movie manages to capture Paris sticks with me, and a whole 1/4 of the movie is just gushing about how amazing the city is- a notion I wholeheartedly agree with. I fell in love with Paris from this movie and then was fortunate enough to again when I visited.
The overall message of the movie especially resonates with me as someone who identifies pretty strongly with Gil, and I have been guilty of the same sort of “golden age thinking” that he is diagnosed with(by the amazingly smug Michael Sheen!). Seeing it dealt with like this helps me personally too.
There are a couple scenes or quotes that feel shoehorned in, there’s a couple eye-roll worthy moments, and McAdams doesn’t feel fully fleshed out however the pure magic of the movie surrounding these flaws makes me forget about them and happily be along for the ride every time!
This has not been recognized enough, imo.
I do enjoy this movie for many of the reasons you mention, however the one dimensional nature of McAdams’ character really bugs me and somewhat spoils it for me, I find it a bit hard to look past that.
Woody did this a few times during this era, by making spouses or significant others really one-note and boring so you could understand why the other characters were always drawn to something else. He didn't always do it with women, so I don't think it's a sexist thing. Chris Messina (Doug) in Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona was the male version of this a few years earlier.
Interestingly enough, Woody typically has had more success in varying interesting female characters, where the majority of the male ones are just….him in various forms. Outside that he has a lot of trouble writing interesting male characters
McAdams is one of my favorite actresses so I agree that it’s unfortunate that her character was underdeveloped however in the context of Gil’s POV- it makes sense to portray her as shallow, emotionally detached from what seems to be a expired romance.
I still find it a flaw in the movie but I love the movie around it enough to be able to deal with some of those flaws
She reminded me so much of a woman I dated in high school, I may have been projecting but I actually found her character and her family fully three dimensional lol
I wish Wilson and Allen would work together more while Allen is still alive. Wilson comes across as a more relatable Allen than Allen, and it brings out the best work in both of them.
I typically love Wilson, I don’t always think he brings Oscar level performances but he always delivers.
I don’t see Allen getting many if any more Hollywood movies made, I don’t feel like debating the topic really, but I do think he has been relegated to European cinema and actors, maybe with an occasional pop up from long time collaborators
Wilson is great in Loki, probably the most I’ve connected to him since Midnight in Paris. Worth checking out if you haven’t already.
And Allen is still decent funding in Europe. What do you mean relegated?????
I think Wilson is secure enough in his career that he could pop over if he really wanted to- although I understand why he might not think it worth the risk
Not sure relegated was the best term, and while I believe Wilson perhaps could pop over, I don’t think he would especially with his foot in the Marvel door/wallet.
My favourite line in the movie is when Owen Wilson is in the belle epoque and the girl is wanting him to stay there and he says ‘ yeah but these people don’t have any antibiotics’. It’s like the whole movie is about beauty and nostalgia for him and in that moment he realises there are some benefits to the modern world, just such a funny comment.
Speaking of the soundtrack, Stephane Wrembel is the guitarist who composed the theme, Bistro Fada. He used to play weekly at Barbes Brooklyn, I highly recommend checking him out if you have the time.
This film has a writer character who is so obviously a self insert for Woody Allen, who then meets all of literary heroes who tell him he’s a genius and every woman he meets falls in love with him
This is an exaggeration of what's actually in the film. While yes, they are definitely more interested in him than would maybe be realistic, the icons don't tell him he's a genius, they tell him he's decently talented with good ideas and he has potential. One woman, his fiancee, seems to only like him for his earning potential. One woman, Cotillard's character, falls in "love" but it seems to be more with the idea of him. The French bookshop owner is interested and flirts with him mainly because of his romantic ideals about Paris. The way you're portraying it is a lot less nuanced than the actual film.
I mean, it's all in Gil's head and Gil's not at all grounded in reality and pretends to know everything when he only has a surface knowledge of things. So of course they're going to tell him he's a genius, because that's what he thinks he is. And no one will tell him that in real life, so he makes up a fantasy world where his heroes will tell him.
This is exactly right, he creates this past area as an escape, everything in it is exactly as Gil would create it.
There’s a great quote from Kathy Bates character in the movie- “The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.”.
This really explains the whole thing for me, Gil’s imagination is helping him escape the life he has ‘succumb’ to
PEDANTIC
This part applies to almost every Allen film where he's not playing the protagonist. To Rome with Love even has two of them lol.
Maybe the most annoying film I’ve ever seen
I didn’t enjoy this movie because of the broad caricatures it used to represent complicated people such as Scott, Zelda, and Hemingway. I didn’t like seeing them reduced to cartoons.
On the other hand, I’ve owned and loved the soundtrack all these years.
Personally I took it to be in Gil’s head- They only existed to the extent he knew them, which was just surface level or near it. See how everyone is enjoying his company, his writing, ideas, etc. Juxtaposed with Inez and her family(and friends) who tear him down and belittle his ideas, the past piece was his own ideas and really just an escape from his own unsatisfying reality
I can see that. It makes more sense that way.
How would you have portrayed them differently?
I would have portrayed them more as they were. Their lives were documented extensively by themselves and also in biographies such as Zelda, Sometimes Madness Is Wisdom, Everybody Was So Young…so many accounts.
The real people were so much more interesting than the cartoons that ended up in Allen’s movie.
But Gil doesn't spend so much time with them to actually have a chance to see them fully for who they are. If you met Zelda and Scott Fitzgerard at a party perhaps you wouldn't notice all their complex issues. Nor is showing them for who they really were the point of the movie.
Isn't broad caricatures Allen's trademark? And I'm saying this not as an insult. I don't need a backstory of tormented geniuses if the main story is told so good and the cast is outstanding.
Indeed, a highly rewatchable movie and the most recent Allen's masterpiece.
I don't know.
I liked the movie, but I was also disappointed ultimately -- it has this delightful concept but absolutely wastes it on the modern stuff, which is just standard Woody Allen BS on a privileged guy and unlikable privileged woman who of course should not be together, "solved" by a gorgeous too-young dream-woman in the final moments.
I honestly disliked most of the "modern" stuff and adored everything in the past.
But that's just me.
Not just you. I'm a huge Woody fan and this one kind of fell flat with me. I never really understood the appeal.
This feels like an AI generated post through and through with no real insight, just some general descriptions of the plot. Kinda shame this is so upvoted in this subreddit. The film is very much whatever, "makes you think" for mainstream audience, Woody Allen is mostly unwatchable
I turned it off after like 15 minutes, thought it was a gimmick
I like midnight in Paris, I think it's real strength is in its lightness. It is at it's core just a very good romcom. Owen Wilson manages to make the woody Allen stand in far less insufferable than had Allen played the role (if we imagine the film being made 30 years prior). It does a decent job of honoring that era of expats in art and literature.
But to me it does not stand along Allen's best work, because of that lightness. There is a deeper introspective quality to Manhattan and Annie Hall and a few of his others, and a zanier comedic element to some of his earlier comedies as well, a creativity that midnight in Paris aims for but falls short of
And compared to other straight up romcoms, I don't know that it does better at the core components than, say, moonstruck or Somethings gotta give or when harry met Sally or even You've got mail. When we think of the sort of golden age of romcoms and what it produced, I think midnight in Paris falls short in terms of capturing that feeling of wanting the unlikely couple to succeed, and the chemistry between the actors that requires
I do think it's his best film of the 00s onward, but to me it isn't a masterpiece within his body of work or the canon of romcoms. A good film but hardly a must see, unless youre taking an American lit class and want a tie in movie to see
Is it time travel or is it a dream? The movie is partially ruined by the gag near the end when the random French person is teleported back to the revolutionary era. There's more intrigue to me if the audience never knows what's "real".