Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen, Woody Allen, Woody Allen, what to make of Woody Allen. Generally, I like Woody Allen. At their best, his films are exceptionally well written, thoughtful, thought-provoking, funny, touching, and above all else, interesting. That said, at their worst Allen's films are overly preachy, redundant, lecturing, and above all else, boring. Still, for the most part I like Allen's exploratory nature. One given in most of his films is that he will pose a central question and then spend the movie exploring answers to the question. Again, when he's at his best, the exploration is seamlessly integrated into the storyline... when he falters a bit, the movie comes off as a lecture, "Woody Allen's Guide to Life and All its Mysteries"... now appearing in your philosophy 101 curriculum. I think, more often than not Allen's films have proven to be more of the former characteristic. Lately though, Allen has had a few missteps such as Melinda and Melinda where the whole movie was overly lecture-y. Even the very enjoyable Whatever Works didn't try too terribly hard to hide the fact that this was a movie produced solely so Woody could indoctrinate audiences with his views on life and love. That said, other recent..ish entries including Hollywood Ending, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and especially 2006's taut thriller, Match Point ranged from very good to exceptional. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wasn't sure which Woody would make an appearance on the silver screen this time... but you obviously hope for the seamless inquiry approach... especially, for me this time, because the subject matter he turned his lens on- the effect of/need for/purpose of nostalgia- is something I find particularly interesting. (If I were going to snag a PhD, I would really like to study popular culture and one of the aspects of popular culture that I most wanted to explore was the effect of nostalgia on popular culture and vice versa).
But anyway... how did the Wood-man do this time? Welllllll.... welcome to Woody's Thoughts on Nostalgia, Allen's latest offering in his philosophy 101 series. There was a BUNDLE of lecturing going on- mostly through Allen's essentially Allen character (formerly always played by Woody himself) played with heaps of nervous but genuine excitement by Owen Wilson. That said, the movie definitely had its moments (anything featuring the electric Marion Cotillard). But in the end, the film comes off as a tired lecturers last stand of a lecture. It's not so much that he's just going through the motions, but despite the best efforts of his cast and the brilliant shooting of the gorgeous Parisian setting, the movie carries a "last legs" sort of feel throughout. If the feel of the movie means anything, Woody just didn't seem to be excited about this particular exploration. Maybe it's because it would stand to reason that this was a very personal subject for him and he came to some unsettling conclusions (I don't know... one of the main criticisms of some of Allen's latest stuff is that it comes off more as an homage to his earlier stuff... and that he's overly focused on trying to reclaim that spark from his earlier masterpiece years- think Hannah and Her Sisters [my personal Allen favorite] or Annie Hall among others- rather than to try and branch out to something new...and.. I dunno...flashier... is all this apparent focus on his best work the trappings of nostalgia? Is that why this particular subject fascinated Allen enough to make this flick? Hard to say...but it is possible). Whatever the reason, Allen's movie comes off as tired...and a tad preachy or lecture-y. (Maybe it's tired because the Wood-man is tired... this is, after all, his 42nd directorial effort since 1966... including one movie- or more- a year since 1982). In the end, Allen borrows the Paul Haggis Sledge Hammer of Subtlety to get his ultimate point across... and while subtlety may not have been a particular strong point- after all, he used to cast himself and now casts his doppelgangers expressly to explore and ultimately make his point in the movie- this effort is more blatant than usual. It's a good point, though, his ultimate conclusions on nostalgia... just not earth-shattering or clever in many ways (though he illustrates it in an amusing and clever way).
Beyond these central issues, there are some other difficulties with the film...mostly in how some characters were written. Rachel McAdams stars (and does a damn fine job) as Owen Wilson's Gil's fiancee, Ines, who has come with Gil and her parents to visit Paris as part of her father's business trip. I think Ines is supposed to represent a solid ideal of modern/detached (and shrill) culture. Ines is constantly harping on Gil about his silly ideas about the past (Gil is a screen writer who is trying to write a novel the revolves around the subject of nostalgia... he also sorely wishes he could have lived in Paris during the 1920s...a time and place he views as the apex of artistic creation) and how cheap he is. Which is all well and good to provide a contrast to pie-in-the-sky Gil... the problem is that these two are supposed to be engaged... and you never get a feeling for why these two care for each other... if they ever did actually care for each other. They just are so obviously wrong for each other. So when Gil travels back to 1920s Paris (as he does each night at midnight after accidentally discovering how to do so during a drunken walk one night) and meets the girl of his dreams (played by the aforementioned and radiant Marion Cotillard) there's really no drama about the situation...other than that Gil isn't of her time... if he's actually really visiting her time at all and not hallucinating... all that kind of takes the fun and slight danger out of the encounters. The spark is still there, but it doesn't quite burn as bright as it would if Gil faced a real dilemma.
Beyond that, there are the artistic luminaries that Gil meets on his nightly visits to 1920's Paris. Folks like Hemingway, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and so on and so forth. For the most part, Allen writes these characters to be utter caricatures of their real selves. Sometimes, this tactic results in some of the more entertaining aspects of the movie such as the one- MANLY MAN- note persona of Hemingway (a spot on Corey Stoll) or the utter bizarreness of Salvador Dali (a delightful Adrien Brody). In other cases, the caricatures seem self-serving and fall flat...such as Kathy Bate's Gertrude Stein and Marcial Di Fonzo Bo's Pablo Picasso. Actually, even though they are entertaining at times, the one-dimensional characters- especially Hemingway- did eventually start to wear on me. Some depth would have been nice... that or smaller doses. I suppose these were self-serving to the movie by design...after all, they were probably manifestations of Gil's imaging of what these folks would be like... or were they? Allen never fully explains. Either way, the parade of name dropping and the lack of depth these names displayed eventually became tedious for me... despite their finer moments.
By the end, the tiredness, predictability, and preaching of the movie started to wear on me and I left hoping that Woody would hopefully find that familiar Good Woody spark by his next effort. And that's really what the movie was missing. The Woody spark. Sure some of the old and comforting Allen stand-bys were present here: the nervous fella (as Ned Flanders called him when discussing the latest Woodsy Allen movie on the Simpsons some years ago), the absolutely no-frills approach to film making, the simple opening and ending credits, the jazzy score, the beautiful filming, and the... how should I put it... intellectually-heavy-but-somehow-entertaining dialog... but the spark? The excitement? Somehow, it was missing. Which is a bit frustrating...but then again... there's always next year. We'll just have to wait to see if he finds that essential Woody spark again.
Grade: B-
No comments:
Post a Comment