My ‘Midnight in Paris’

‘Do you picture how drop dead gorgeous this city is in the rain? Imagine this town in the ’20s. Paris in the ’20s, in the rain. The artists and writers!‘

This film delighted, fascinated and inspired me beyond belief! It seeded a hundred ideas in my head, fired my imagination and the already existing nostalgia for the times that passed away. Woody Allen is a brilliant director, my mother’s favourite, and Owen Wilson is a very natural actor with appealing face expressions, gestures and voice; is there a better combination? The very idea of the movie, coined in Allen’s head, is very alluring to me; traveling through time to the ‘golden era‘; an era one considers one would be happier living in. I can’t count the times I’ve been daydreaming about another era, another place, oh, the characters I’ve created, and the places, just to escape the reality, the sad present that always leaves you tired, gloomy, washed out and full of longings that cannot be fulfilled.

For Gil, a disillusioned Hollywood screenwriter who travels to Paris with his fiancee Inez and her posh parents, a ‘golden era’ of Paris are the 1920s. It’s a decade he dreams of; the bohemian atmosphere of Paris, strolls in the rain, warm light of street lamps, cafes, his literally idols… On the other hand, he’s living a life of bourgeois dulness, conflicted with financial success and self-fulfillment. Gil is a romantic and nostalgic soul, and the vivid Parisian night fires his wish to become a serious writer. Inez, his shallow, materialistic and posh bride-to-be, always turns eyes on his fantasies and dismisses his preference for bohemian lifestyle and pleasure over financial prosperity. She does not give him any support, she dismisses him being a serious artist in front of her pseudo-intellectual friend Paul, and in fact, I don’t see why are they even together. Gil is so idealistic, imaginative, ready to go and taste life, live for his writing and not his paycheck, whilst Inez is focused merely on their future house, expensive furniture and the biggest engagement ring.

One night while strolling in Paris at midnight, Gil sees a mysterious antique vehicle. Dazed and confused, Gil jumps in and unknowingly travels back in time. The antique vehicle and his occupants, dazed from champagne and laughter, take him to the bohemian 1920s Paris where he meets Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, Ernest Hemingway and Cole Porter. Gil is amazed by this event, but Inez naturally isn’t impressed. Gil returns again only to meet Gertrude Stein, Picasso and his charming mistress Adriana, played by the beautiful Marion Cotillard, along with Dali, Man Ray and Luis Bunuel; all the prominent figures of the era he admires. Dali is extraordinary. Upon seeing him in the movie I realised that all those painting could have been painted only by a person who behaves like that. Still, Gil finds out that he’s not the only person struck by nostalgia; Adriana says how the past has always had a great charisma for her. Both share a mutual feeling they’re born too late; count me in.

‘For me, La Belle Epoque Paris would have been perfect‘, says Adriana, ‘The whole sensibility; the street lamps, kiosks – the horse and carriages. And Maxim’s then.‘ Her ideal Paris is the ‘Moulin Rouge, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Can-Can’ Paris of the 1890s. It seems unbelievable to Gil for he adores the ’20s Paris but this leads to a greater dilemma; were all those eras really that ‘golden‘ and exciting, or, is the dissatisfaction with the present and the idealisation of the past an inevitable part of the human nature?

Upon arriving in the ‘La Belle Epoque‘ Paris, Gil and Adriana meet Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge, and Degas and Gauguin who soon join them too. Degas and Gauguin were just talking about how that generation is empty and without imagination. They believe that living in the Renaissance would have been better. Gils and Adriana’s nostalgic natures are conflicted at that moment; to Gil, the 1920s Paris; Charleston, Hemingway, Dali is amazing; he adores it, but for Adriana, it’s just her present, as dull and boring as the present is.The two split up; Gil realises that the present is dissatisfying because life is dissatisfying, and decides to live in his own time, enjoying the advances of it, such as antibiotics.

On the other hand, Adriana’s flair and idealisation of the ‘Golden age‘ of Paris is much stronger and she decides to stay in the 1890s, at the beginning of the Belle Epoque. She was happy to escape the 1920s; a decade so romanticised and idealised by Gil. I think I would act the same way Adriana did; for me, the golden age were the 1960s; London, psychedelia, vividness of life, optimism, carefree atmosphere, living for the moment, and that sweet naivety long lost in today’s cynical and opportunistic society,  integrity was valued back then. That’s the reason I named this post ‘My Midnight in Paris‘; I deeply sympathise with Gil and I respect his final decision. I often wonder whether my visions of the past are idealised as well, but you know what, I don’t care; if I give up my romantic and naive daydreams, then what is left of life?

Gil returned to the present, and, on a midnight stroll across the Seine at midnight, he meets Gabrielle, an antiques dealer he had met earlier. The two walk in the rain, she doesn’t mind getting wet, for ‘Paris is the most beautiful in the rain.‘And what isn’t?

Rain is the most poetic thing in nature; it is the sky’s song of tranquility and serenity.