MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

Midnight in Paris   Rated PG-13

Directed by Woody Allen.  Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams

Photo © Sony Pictures Classics
Movie Review by Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

Gil Pender (Wilson) is a successful Hollywood screenwriter who wants to leave the lucrative movie business and write an important novel.  His latest project is about a guy who owns a nostalgia shop and who finds himself wishing to live in the past.  Gil and his fiancée Inez (McAdams) are vacationing in Paris, where they meet up with Inez’ parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy) for some awkward and uncomfortable conversations about politics.  They also meet some friends, including Paul (Michael Sheen), a pompous know-it-all.  It’s all too much for Gil. When he has an opportunity to go out for a walk in the Parisian streets while the others go dancing, he takes it.
While out walking, the chimes ring out the midnight hours and an antique roadster pulls up alongside of him. A happy couple invites him to a party.  As they converse, they tell Gil that they are Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill).  Slowly Gil realizes that he is back in time, in the Paris of the 1920s, and that he is about to meet many of the famous writers and artists who inspired him.

Whether this is actually time travel or a fantasy of Gil’s imagination is part of the fun.  Writer-director Woody Allen presents these celebrities as such broad caricatures, it hardly matters.  (Some viewers in our audience were saying out loud to one another “Isn’t that Salvador Dali (Adrian Brody)?”) You had to look fast to catch Alice B. Toklas (Thérèse Bourou-Rubinsztein) and only film buffs would notice filmmaker Luis Buñuel (Adrien de Van).  Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), however, comes on larger than life and is always ready for a fight!

Gil is captivated by the scene, and his upcoming nuptials pale in comparison.  Much to his delight, he is able to repeat the magic the following evening.  Sooner or later, he is going to have to come to terms with the Paris of his imagination and the relative ordinariness of his career path.
Midnight in Paris is as light as a soufflé and very funny, but it is haunting as well.  The film is honest about the human longing for an idealized past, but also celebrates how our lives (and indeed Paris itself) are informed by the legacy of the artists and writers who have gone before.

I know many Christians who would love to go back in time to walk with Jesus, but very few who are excited about the persecutions that the disciples faced.  As a believer, my life is not only inspired and informed by scripture and earlier writers (including John Wesley), but by parents, grandparents, and all the saints of the church who celebrated their faith in memorable ways. 

This is a special film and I recommend it highly.

Pitchfork/Halo Ratings:

Four halos: A sweet and haunting comedy about romanticizing the past in order to cope with the reality of life.

One pitchfork: Some mild double entendres, reminding us that Woody Allen is writing this stuff; conversations about infidelity.

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