Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris, 2011
Directed by Woody Allen
Potential Nominations Include: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay

Synopsis: Engaged couple, Gil and Inez have come to Paris with Inez's parents as tag-alongs on her parent's business trip. Gil instantly falls in love with the city, ready to give up his life as Hollywood screenwriter, his life in California to live in Paris and finish his novel he's been labouring over. Inez feels differently, and see's it as a tourist trip, and more looks forward to going out dancing with her friends, than taking in the city like Gil. But after midnight, Gil experiences something very strange on the streets or Paris. Suddenly it's Paris 1920, he gets invited into an old car, taken about the city and meets people like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso. But while he seems to be discovering himself, and where his heart truly lies, he's also discovering where his heart doesn't lie.

Ironically, this is probably the last potential Best Picture nominee I'll need to see, but it was the first one released, making it's debut in theatres in June. I've heard so many good things about it since then, it having been nominated for all 4 Guild Awards (SAG, PGA, DGA, WGA), making it a lock for a Best Picture nomination. Also, it's Woody Allen, who is extremely well known and loved. So, naturally, I've been waiting a while to see this film.

Knowing the concept I was wondering how it would pan out without seeming cheesy, or simple, or just plain generic. But it was done very well, and I could see the moral of it The idea of nostalgia is brought up very early on and we can see where this film is headed. Gil is determined 1920's is the Golden Age, between the writing and the art, and the music.

Overall, I didn't find the movie ah-mazing, but I did enjoy it. It was nice to see Owen Wilson in a different type of role, and seeing that he actually does have some talent, hidden behind those awful movies he usually does was nice. He was well-acted, funny, and just so human. He was star-struck, but at the same time retrospective as well as introspective. While it wasn't an Oscar winning performance, or even worth a nomination, I enjoyed him as Gil. We saw Marion Cottilard as Adriana, the alluring French woman that has captured the hearts of Picasso, a variety of famous painters, and, finally, Gil. Marion was completely alluring, yet seemingly innocent, and played her part well. Everyone in the cast did a great job, and it was a hefty cast indeed including Rachel McAdams as Inez, Tom Hiddleston as Fitzgerald, Kathy Bates are Gertrude Stein, Michael Sheen as Paul, the intelligent man that Inez adores. The casting was great, and made it star-studded, but not overly so, though well-done.

Owen really carried the film on his shoulders. We really understood Gil, where he was coming from, and his aggrevation at Paul being a know it all, Inez shushing him and adoring Paul, and just trying to finish his novel, looking for better life than his shallow one in California. The story was just told in a way that we so believed. We were able to put off our sense of disbelief and just accept everything, and we couldn't understand why Inez didn't see it, or why she didn't understand. Gil was a very likable character, and was told so honestly.

Additionally, the shots of Paris really were beautiful. I felt like I saw so much of the city, though I've never been to it. We understood Gil's love for the city, and we see what he sees, the beauty in everything. Also, the costumes were great, and were just so 1920's (obviously), but they were just so well done. The hair, the dresses, the suits, everything just looked so great, but in a subtle way. We could see it was still the same Paris that Gil and Inez are in, but it's also the one Hemingway and Fitzgerald lived in. The same, yet subtly different. The screenplay was also well-written. As I mentioned, Gil is such a believable character, but yet so are so many of the others, including Inez, and Hemingway, and Adriana. It had touches or humor, but it was also touching, and intelligent.

Overall, again, I thought it was a good movie. It was a nice, humorous story about a couple who are clearly not right for each other, and the idea of never being satisfied with where and who we are. Had people not known the references in the film it wouldn't be appreciated, and I only picked up on about 75%, enough to appreciate, but also just a little too much I didn't know that I felt slightly left out. I liked it, I'd watch it again, and I'd recommend it, but it's not my top film of the year. Didn't hate it, didn't die over it. It was a nice film, with a nice story.

7/10

470. Midnight in Paris

470. (20 Nov) Midnight in Paris (2011, Woody Allen) 54



There's clumsiness in both the film's key plot device and the way famous individuals who populated 1920's Paris are introduced. Though warmth and charm carry a handful of scenes, it's burdened by inobservant observances like no time period recognizing its own significance. Owen Wilson's character wants to take his chances with an entrancing young woman in the past rather than his clearly dreadful fiancee in the present; that sort of deck-stacking prevents the film from feeling romantic or insightful. There are also some smug moments like Wilson pitching a scenario to Luis Buñuel.

Black Sheep interviews Shawn Ku

BEAUTIFUL STILL

An interview with Shawn Ku

I remember thinking that I had already seen BEAUTIFUL BOY before I actually saw it. Not to say I had seen the film itself already but that I had come across a number of variations on the plot prior. Michael Sheen and Maria Bello play parents who lose a child and we watch them grieve and grow apart. Only BEAUTIFUL BOY is not that movie. Sheen and Bello do lose a child and they do grieve for him but before their only boy kills himself, he shoots and kills several other of his classmates at college. This movie, I most certainly had not seen before.

First time feature filmmaker, Shawn Ku, knows that BEAUTIFUL BOY is not an easy sell. “We set out to write a movie that touched people,” Ku tells me when we speak over the phone the week before the film’s platform release. “I guess that was a hope – that we could touch people in some way that might actually change them.” The film picked up the International Critics Prize at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival so clearly it has an impact on those who see it.

One of the reasons BEAUTIFUL BOY stands out is because of Ku’s delicate yet direct screenplay, which he co-wrote with Michael Armbruster. Ku avoids many of the trappings one would expect to find in this story. Naturally, when Sheen and Bello, who play Kate and Bill, hear of what their son, Sammy (Kyle Gallner) has done, they wonder if they are to blame. These are smart characters though; they know it isn’t as simple as that. Naturally, they have to resolve the idea of their son as the monster the media makes him out to be, and who he partly is considering what he did, with the little boy they knew and loved. Ku allows this tense journey to be had personally and painfully on screen without resorting to cheap manipulation and laying blame on one or the other.

“When we set out to write this, we acknowledged really early on that often times there is no real explanation,” Ku explains, in a tone that is both soft and humble. “Sometimes I think it is even beyond verbalization why these things happen.” Ku’s point here is key to the film as much of the communication coming from Sheen and Bello is internal. The issues they are wrestling with are so consuming that they just stumble through their days as if nothing makes any sense any more. Ku’s execution of this point is quite deliberate. “We wanted very consciously to paint these parents as regular people, doing the best they can,” he says. “Their kid did this thing. Did they contribute to it? Maybe. But is it their fault? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

As subtle as Ku’s direction is, it would be nothing without Sheen and Bello in the lead roles. The couple’s relationship was not on the most solid of ground before their illusions were shattered and so finding peace in each other is not always an option. The two actors shift back and forth between operating as individuals and as a unit almost imperceptibly. Ku, who held separate rehearsal time with each to help foster these feelings of separation, knows how fortunate he was to have found these two particular talents. “Luckily, they are both very deep, very thoughtful people who understand all the nuances and dynamics of relationships.”

Bill and Kate’s relationship being central, the delicate balance described above was crucial. Ku elaborates, “Why does it happen just at the time you’re reaching out to someone to connect, that person is pulling away? And just when they turn around to reach for you, you’re turning away. Why are we never synchronized in relationships?”

As hard as it is to follow these parents through their grieving process, Ku hopes the dark subject matter doesn’t keep audiences away from BEAUTIFUL BOY, even those who go to the movies just to escape. “When people tell me that after seeing the movie they went home and hugged their spouse or their kid, I feel like that is a great accomplishment, that its moved them in some way.” Ku concludes, “That is our goal, so if that’s entertainment, I hope so.”

That it is; it is just entertainment of a different kind.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

Written and Directed by Woody Allen

Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard and Michael Sheen

Inez: The studios adore you; you’re in demand. Do you really want to give it all up just to struggle?

Every time I review a Woody Allen movie, it seems I address the same issues time and time again. This is likely because Allen always chooses to tackle the same themes – class, art and commerce, American values, inferiority and infidelity, to name but a few. Often times, he falls flat, which is entirely reasonable when one takes into account that he makes a movie every year, but once in a while, his recurring neurosis come together so perfectly, they reveal his true genius. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, Allen’s 41^st feature film, embodies this culmination brilliantly and is perhaps his most enchanting film in years. It is unmistakably “Woody Allen” but for some cinephiles out there, that is cause for celebration and not reason to run away.

Allen opens MIDNIGHT IN PARIS the way he always does, with plain white titles on a black background and a plucky jazz track playing. Suddenly, he interrupts himself and goes into a montage of Paris postcard shots, spanning a day that sees all the sights, a heavy rain fall and the kind of charm that only an evening in Paris can provide. It isn’t that the montage itself isn’t also quintessentially Allen-esque that is striking; it is the interruption that announces that Allen is alert and making choices instead of just letting everything play out naturally. It also allows the viewer, or any remotely sentimental one anyway, to get fully sucked into the clichéd idea of Paris as the most romantic city in the world. The images themselves are stunning yet subtle, thanks to cinematographer, Darius Khondji (who has worked with Allen once before on ANYTHING ELSE, but we probably shouldn’t talk about that), allowing Paris to be its grand self and showing us very clearly how much Allen is in love with the city.

Owen Wilson is Gil, the Allen figurehead in this story (and a very suitable one at that). He is a successful Hollywood screenwriter who considers all his success to be built on the production of meaningless material. He and his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams, who does materialistic and shallow all too well) find themselves in Paris on her parents’ dime, just as he has decided to try his hand at writing a novel in hopes of achieving a more respectable level of artistry. Their priorities are clearly at odds; she prefers to go out and party while he prefers to soak in the city’s elegance. More importantly, she is of the moment and he cannot help but long for a simpler time, when life was rich and not empty like the constantly moving present. Then one night, Gil gets exactly what he has been longing for. He is mysteriously whisked away to the Paris of yesteryear when the clock strikes midnight. Here he meets artists he has always admired and finds romance he has only dreamed of. If only he wasn’t from another era.

It may sound a little “je ne sais quoi” but MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is truly a magical experience and meant to be absurdist and surreal. The cast is delightful, from Marion Cotillard as Gil’s other world love interest to Michael Sheen as the pedantic windbag archetype Allen loves to mock so much. Paris, past and present, also presents Allen with an opportunity to showcase exquisite production designs and lovely costume pieces. The literary references may go above some heads but aside from that, it is practically impossible not to get caught up in the glamour of it all. Despite all of this allure though, what most distinguishes this work from so much of Allen’s previous work, is Allen’s shift towards resolution. Infamous for being trapped by the past, Allen now moves towards letting go of his illusions of the past, allowing for a catharsis that his films rarely ever achieve.

Midnight in Paris trailer drops

Or as non-dorks call it, another Woody Allen film.  But this Woody Allen film is the one slated to open Cannes in a few month's time.  Sure, the last few Allen projects have been bumpier than not, what with Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona being the standouts amongst some of his career-worst efforts like Whatever Works and You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger.  But here's a toast to not judging a book by its cover and hoping that Allen has found his groove in Paris that he seemingly lost in London last summer.  Anyone else excited for Michael Sheen in a full-on beard?  Prime Minister say what?

This film's BEAUTIFUL poster after the cut ...