Paris, je t’aime
Source: Google Images
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a different time? A different place? To live amongst your literary heroes, taking their advice, being a part of their history? To dine and dance with iconic artists, musicians, and historical giants? At one point or another, we all have. We all have dreamed of being a part of something we’ve only ever read or heard about; experiencing, first hand, a time not our own. Midnight In Paris is a film that answers these eternal questions, in a way that is strangely believable. It does not romanticize, but beautifies a time – a place – our hero longs to be a part of. It doesn’t present an idealized solution, but offers the audience a direct truth; something they can take with them and utilize in their own reality.
What I love about this film, is that it expresses a desire we all have. It let’s us live vicariously through another, without tragedy or glorified finales, but with a sense of realism. The distinct boundary between fantasy and reality is blurred, which is something we haven’t quite seen before. We can identify with the main character instantly.
Midnight In Paris takes that idea of ultimate escape and twists it into something new. Can you live in the past or will the real world catch up to you?
Written and directed by Woody Allen, this 2011 film introduces us to our principal character, Gil (Owen Wilson), an unfulfilled script writer who just wants to write that one great novel. I know how you feel, buddy. He feels a connection to the City of Light, wishing he could spend his days sitting in the Parisian sunshine, writing, walking the boulevards in the rain. His fiance, Inez (Rachel McAdams) . . . Well, let’s just say she doesn’t feel the same. Gil is high-spirited, but has the notion that he doesn’t belong – wanting to be part of a different era; the Golden Age: Paris, 1920′s.
