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Jun. 1st, 2011 01:28 pm
Midnight in Paris
When Woody Allen was young and hungry, he wrote brilliantly funny short stories and stand-up routines. Like this one:
Hemingway had just written his first novel, and Gertrude Stein and I read it, and we said it was a good novel, but not a great one, and that it needed some work, but it could be a fine book. And we laughed over it. Hemingway punched me in the mouth. . . . Francis Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald came home from their wild New Year’s Eve party. It was April. Scott had just written Great Expectations, and Gertrude Stein and I read it, and we said it was a good book, but there was no need to have written it, because Charles Dickens had already written it. We laughed over it, and Hemingway punched me in the mouth.
Then he became an innovative filmmaker, with brilliantly shot films, inventive plots and unforgettable dialog.
Little by little, the Master grew old, rich and toothless. And like any toothless old man, he is a bit sentimental and a little tottering. However, being rich and powerful, and a legend in his own time, he is mostly spared all criticism, and critics continue fawning over his films while studios continue to finance them. Being rich also explains the constant real-estate porn in ALL of his recent movies, and the care-free fantasy world that his very-upper-middle class characters inhabit.
Midnight in Paris is yet another fairy tale, complete with to-die-for interiors, unbelievably sumptuous details, nostalgic money-shots of Paris (and any shot of the Eiffel tower aglow will always be the money-shot) and a coterie of famous stars, including a cameo appearance by no other than the First Lady of France, Carla Bruni. Owen Wilson, who plays the lead, is basically doing a passable imitation of Woody Allen, complete with hand gesticulations and adjusting of the (imaginary) glasses. All of the other characters in "real" world are annoyingly reduced to almost cardboard caricatures. All of the characters in the "fantasy" segments, the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and even Picasso are so nice. So nice that it is almost sickening.
The one and only exception is a brilliant Adrien Brody playing Salvador Dali; there was the moment where he could almost punch that annoying Owen Wilson-impersonating -Woody- Allen character in the mouth, but - alas!- he, too, turned out to be nice.
I have been a Woody Allen fan for many decades, and am sad to pronounce that his Midnight in Paris is really the Twilight of the Gods.
Hemingway had just written his first novel, and Gertrude Stein and I read it, and we said it was a good novel, but not a great one, and that it needed some work, but it could be a fine book. And we laughed over it. Hemingway punched me in the mouth. . . . Francis Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald came home from their wild New Year’s Eve party. It was April. Scott had just written Great Expectations, and Gertrude Stein and I read it, and we said it was a good book, but there was no need to have written it, because Charles Dickens had already written it. We laughed over it, and Hemingway punched me in the mouth.
Then he became an innovative filmmaker, with brilliantly shot films, inventive plots and unforgettable dialog.
Little by little, the Master grew old, rich and toothless. And like any toothless old man, he is a bit sentimental and a little tottering. However, being rich and powerful, and a legend in his own time, he is mostly spared all criticism, and critics continue fawning over his films while studios continue to finance them. Being rich also explains the constant real-estate porn in ALL of his recent movies, and the care-free fantasy world that his very-upper-middle class characters inhabit.
Midnight in Paris is yet another fairy tale, complete with to-die-for interiors, unbelievably sumptuous details, nostalgic money-shots of Paris (and any shot of the Eiffel tower aglow will always be the money-shot) and a coterie of famous stars, including a cameo appearance by no other than the First Lady of France, Carla Bruni. Owen Wilson, who plays the lead, is basically doing a passable imitation of Woody Allen, complete with hand gesticulations and adjusting of the (imaginary) glasses. All of the other characters in "real" world are annoyingly reduced to almost cardboard caricatures. All of the characters in the "fantasy" segments, the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and even Picasso are so nice. So nice that it is almost sickening.
The one and only exception is a brilliant Adrien Brody playing Salvador Dali; there was the moment where he could almost punch that annoying Owen Wilson-impersonating -Woody- Allen character in the mouth, but - alas!- he, too, turned out to be nice.
I have been a Woody Allen fan for many decades, and am sad to pronounce that his Midnight in Paris is really the Twilight of the Gods.
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