The
biggest criticism of Woody Allen as a director that I’m aware of is that he
makes too many crappy, lightweight films, keeps churning them out and too many
of them miss the mark or are unremarkable or instantly forgettable. Midnight In
Paris (MIP) annoyed me because once again some of the reviews were good, and
the idea is interesting (although hardly original), and the subject matter
fascinating (for me), dealing with a literary period that was fertile, in a
great city, so full of potentially captivating stories- Paris, 1920’s. I did
find myself asking, however, where the hell was James Joyce?
Woody
Allen does have something in common with his cinematic hero- Ingmar Bergman- they
are both responsible for a large number of films- very productive- but Bergman
rarely made bad films, and never it seems throwaway or slight films- if not
quite masterpiece after masterpiece, at the very least thought provoking,
intelligent, meaningful films, original and challenging and beautifully shot,
acted and scripted. MIP passes in some of these areas, but the script,
potentially interesting, is pretty awful. I also saw the new Great Gatsby
recently. Yes, MIP doesn’t sink to these depths of embarrassing rubbish, but
still, not good. I sat there and watched, and these are my general criticisms -
let’s say I’ll find 10, in chronological order:
1.
The
advertising is completely misleading- the film has nothing to do with Vincent
Van Gogh- he died 30 years before the film is set, and his starry sky is from
Arles, a long way from Paris.
2. OK,
Owen Wilson does a good job at channelling Woody Allen, all the way down to
what one assumes is his opinions, his vernacular, his intonations- but it
quickly gets tedious. I mean, we have already heard Woody Allen so many times
before- and he is always the same, the Annie Hall thing- well he’s not
literally in this thing- he is too old to play the role- so why he didn’t he
create something new for Owen Wilson. This part of the film becomes, for me,
tiring within minutes. I don’t come to hate Wilson (as Gil)- he’s partly
likeable, but he’s not fresh in any way.
3.
Then
there’s Michael Sheen playing Paul, the snobby pseudo-intellectual that Allen
has created many times before. He shows off in front of the Rodin tour guide,
and of course he’s wrong, the joke’s on him, just like the guy who gets the
director of a film all wrong in another film, whilst he’s in the film queue- is
it Stardust Memories?- and is horrified to see that the director he is
misrepresenting is introduced right before him- we’ve seen this guy, Paul,
before, and he’s tedious, and the joke’s been done, and we already know Allen
doesn’t like these types, and that he finds Gil smart and more honest, and
romantic, and preferable…
4.The
embarrassment really kicks in when Gil experiences his first fantastical
nocturnal adventure. A nightclub, Cole Porter playing, Jean Cocteau hosting,
and none other than the Fitzgerald’s present. Zelda is ok, a bit ditzy, or a
lot ditzy, like Daisy, but Fitzgerald calls Gil ‘old sport’!, and it is such a
dull and shallow portrait, and I think about what could have happened here- at
least make mention of The Beautiful and the Damned, for God’s sake.
5. Josephine
Baker- naturally- is dancing at the next bar. Then Gil is confronted by
Hemingway! And he is truly awful- ok no-one in the film is as bad as Hemingway-
‘yes it was a good book because it was an honest book, and that’s what war does
to men…’, all said with a straight face and an earnest tone, as if Allen is
being serious here, and looking at the film again I’m thinking ‘he’s having a
great joke here at everyone’s expense.’ Then there’s ‘no subject is terrible if
the story is true and the prose is clean and honest and it affirms courage’,
and blah, blah, blah. Hemingway goes on about courage ad nausea and pretty soon
I wish he wasn’t in it, and was replaced by Joyce, or even D H Lawrence who
flitted in and out of Paris around this time. Hemingway bangs his fist on the
table and accuses Gil of being not manly enough. Need I say anymore? Allen
dumps the Fitzgerald’s around this time, and goes on with Hemingway
unfortunately. Aaaahhhhh!!!
6. Some
pretty boring stuff ensues about a bourgeois mother wanting to spend a
ridiculous amount of money on a chair, and then Gil is suddenly ready for
another nocturnal sojourn into the past. His wife goes home first, angry,
because she doesn’t share the romantic imagination. Poor Gil, they aren’t
suited, she’s far too dull. Actually all of this isn’t too bad, but then we go
off to Hemingway again, in the back of a vintage car, talking about courage and
death no less and being incredibly clichéd and dull, and you just want to shoot
him and the person who created him, and now I’m put off forever by ‘A Moveable
Feast’, and it’s a pity because it’s probably a very good book. Thank God Gertrude
Stein comes into it, except she’s pretty hopeless (even if it is Kathy Bates)
and she is preaching to Picasso who has the Spanish black bangs over his eyes
and looks and acts completely toothless and stupid and hopeless- Picasso would
be in hysterics over seeing this if he could. Picasso’s famous portrait of
Gertrude Stein hangs on the wall behind her in case the audience doesn’t make
the connection, and poor old Alice B Toklas only gets to open the door.
7. More
silly daylight filling in, then Gil is dancing with Djuna Barnes (‘no wonder
she was leading’), and then Hemingway again- oh, no! –did you know that ‘a
woman is equal to a man in courage’??- it gets worse when Salvador Dali jumps
into the frame- second only to Hemingway in embarrassment- I keep thinking of
how good Adrian Brody was in ‘The Pianist’, and now as Dali! What a come down,
the look, the accent, everything. All this Surrealist mumbo jumbo that doesn’t
work, and that goes too, Woody Allen, for Man Ray and Bunuel who walk in as
well and are pretty mute as if even Allen isn’t too sure what to make of them-
except he knows their professions. Gil talks and Man Ray says ‘I see a
photograph!’, and Bunuel says ‘I see a film!’
8.
Enter
TS Eliot! Briefly. He is shadowy, and doesn’t say much. That’s probably a good
thing. Actually the best line from the film comes here when Gil tells him
‘where I come from we measure out our lives through coke spoons.’ Then one of
the more promising bits emerges in the film when Gil talks to Bunuel about a
scenario for a film, that Bunuel comically cannot see any possibilities for.
The script Gil describes is for Bunuel’s ‘The Exterminating Angel.’ Now that’s
not a bad idea. Maybe Allen could’ve done more with this kind of thing. Told
Dali never to play ‘Tristan and Isolde’, for example.
9. Well
the film then goes to Maxim’s, of course, and even more, of course, to the
Moulin Rouge- thank God Nicole Kidman isn’t there- and Gil’s new girlfriend
gets to experience La Belle Époques. There’s Toulouse-Lautrec sitting there- or
it actually looks to me like he’s kneeling, and no! if it isn’t Degas and
Gauguin, in all their finery. Actually, an ok point is being made here. No-one
really seems to be enjoying their era. The old painter guys want to go back to
the Renaissance, Adriana to stay in La Belle Époques, and Gil for some crazy
reason to go back to Hemingway. It’s food for thought, actually.
10. Well
when it comes down to it, there really is no number 10 after all, because after
all there’s only really 9 things I don’t like about this film. The second time
around it’s a bit more calming than I thought. I quite like the ending when Gil
and his new romantic number walk off into the Parisian rain. I’d quite like to
do that too, right now.
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