May 21st, 2011
Midnight in Paris
I saw ‘Midnight in Paris’ last night.
You should too.
Spoiler Alert.
It’s ironic that I should see it last night having just written my previous post about the importance of staying fresh. The movie is not just an ode to the beauty of Paris today, but of Paris of the past. The Paris of Fitzgerald, Picasso. Hemingway and not their ghosts but actually them. It is if nothing else an extended riff on the Woodman’s old joke about Gertrude Stein punching him in the mouth , (btw Hemingway steals the show). Because it’s comedy calling it a meditation would be a stretch but it is certainly an examination of the merits of the past contrasted with the values of the present.
And I saw the film through two lenses, one – the lens of the present – the one that I had just deployed in writing about the importance about not rushing into the past and saying ‘It’s better!’ but then my own deeply personal one. For you see, I wrote a novella (since abandoned) about a man traveling back to the 20’s with his wife to hang with the Fitzgerald’s and the Murphy’s during the ‘Tender is the Night’ years on the French Riviera. And the person that wrote, the 28-year old version of me was quite romantically in love with the time, the characters, and the notion of being terribly, terribly in love and drunk and LOST. But now, the older version, well, I’m just fine with how things are and the one two punch of writing yesterday’s post and seeing the film only cements that.
But see the movie. It’s not quite the Woodman at his best but it’s pretty freakin’ great.
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