Midnight in a Parallel Universe
I don’t see
many movies these days, either out at the theater or at home. One of the
saddest things about being a responsible adult is the lack of recreational
time, and( I guess it’s obvious) I tend to spend what little I get reading. I
did go through an art cinema stage when I was first in college, and there were
still lots of funky, relatively cheap movie houses in town. One program I
especially remember was a Woody Allen triple bill of Annie Hall, Interiors, and
Love and Death. Now that was six
hours plus well-spent, and it cemented my love for Allen’s type of humor and
his filmmaking abilities. That was back in the 80’s, and, due to the
above-mentioned responsibility problem, I have to admit I can’t even name any
of his more recent pictures. I guess both he and I have changed, because I really
didn’t like Midnight in Paris. I
know. I am probably one of the few people (to my dismay, my in-laws are in that
number) that can make such an outlandish statement. I mean, look at the awards!
My husband says that, as usual, I took it way too seriously, expecting a
literary treatise instead of a romantic comedy. Even just listening to him
describing the parts he especially liked made me appreciate it more than I did
at the theater.
Maybe it has something to do with the
fact that it is difficult for me to imagine those authors—Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, and especially Gertrude Stein—as characters in anyone else’s story
other than their own. I, too had my time, brief but glorious, of wandering
around Paris in a literary daydream, trying to catch a glimpse of those lives,
which I felt I knew intimately from all of those literary biographies I’d been
devouring since about age thirteen. And yet, except at Shakspeare and Co., I never
got any closer than I had by reading their books.
So, throughout the movie, I had the
sense that my heroes were being used. Also, I have never been completely comfortable
with the concept of time travel. It is often used as a literary device, a good
shortcut when an author wants to ensure that a character has information that
they couldn’t possibly get in the normal unfolding of uninterrupted time. My
favorite (not from the written page) is from the original Star Trek series. Captain
Kirk falls in love in the past and saves the object of his famously fickle
affection from a seemingly untimely death which changes the present so much
that his entire ship disappears. Cute, but my problem, even as a kid, allowed
the special privilege of staying up late with Dad to watch TV, was they why
didn’t he disappear, too? I didn’t understand contingency then, but even at that
early age, the whole plot line seemed a little too convenient. It felt like
cheating.
Maybe this
is my problem with the film Midnight in Paris.
The Paris of the 1920’s is so perfect, so visually real and enticing that the
conflict, the decision that the characters must make to stay in their own time
seems false. What incentive does the protagonist have for deciding to live his
present-day life? His fiancée is a bitch, his in-laws are just waiting for him
to fuck up so that they can say I told you so. He doesn’t even seem to notice the
woman he meets looking at old Cole Porter records. Whereas in the past the he
is lucky enough to escape to for a few nights, he hangs out with gorgeous,
available women who think he’s cute, and no lesser giants than Hemingway and
Fitzgerald tell him he’s a great writer. In what universe doesn’t he just stay
there forever? I would.
