After seeing Woody Allen’s latest movie, I think the guy should be canonized. I know that might be tough for a Jew, but Woody deserves it.
Sure, he’s made better movies, probably funnier or deeper ones. But the film is such a delight that one can only marvel how this man can crank out approximately a film a year well into his sixth decade of film-making and still maintain this level of quality.
The plot is both deceptively simple and intellectually rich: a frustrated screenwriter (Owen Wilson) must travel back in time to Paris of the 1920s in order to appreciate what he might have in present day. Sort of a Lost Generation version of Groundhog Day (which I believe was also a masterpiece of philosophical comedy), the cast of characters is virtually a Who’s Who of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, including Gertrude Stein, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and of course Papa himself.
Hemingway’s scenes allow Woody to really flex his comedic chops, but he doesn’t turn the famed author into a joke or a cliché, rather he treats him with fond respect while still making us laugh. And Corey Stoll plays the role brilliantly, perfectly capturing the writer’s combination of outsized machismo, post-war ennui and literary ambition.
Owen Wilson is cast in the ubiquitous Woody Allen role, and at first glance this might seem an odd choice. But Wilson nails it, his peculiar Texas-by-way-of-California angst a perfect stand in for Woody’s New York neurotic. Who knew? It’s as if Wilson has been waiting for this role his entire career (not to denigrate his other solid work), and when he falls hard for the lovely Adriana (Marion Cotillard), we are rooting for their love to succeed despite knowing it is doomed (for temporal reasons). It will be hard for Woody Allen to cast another actor as his cinematic doppelganger in the future (I pray he steers clear of re-casting Kenneth Branagh, a miscue if ever there was).
Above all, the film is a massive love letter to Paris, as if that enchanting city needs one. Nevertheless, I think the Paris Tourist Bureau owes Woody at least a week in a deluxe suite at the Crillon, meals and wine included. What Allen used to do for New York City, he does for the City of Lights in spades. All I can say is, for me, he’s preaching to the converted. But it’s a sermon I’m happy to hear, and see.
One has to stretch to find any quibbles. Rachel McAdams is perhaps a bit misused as Inez, the unsupportive fiancée of Wilson’s Gil. And the real First Lady of France, Carla Bruni, is more than a touch wooden as a museum guide, but the frisson it creates to see her in this role makes it worthwhile. (She must have relished acting in a Woody Allen picture, since he is venerated in France as a truly great cinematic artist.)
If the message of Groundhog Day was to approach every day with a positive attitude and an open heart, then the message of Midnight in Paris is: live life in the moment and don’t pine for an earlier, more authentic time. For all those Woody Allen fans who wish he’d return to his earlier form, whether that was represented by Annie Hall or Crimes and Misdemeanors or The Purple Rose of Cairo, I say: get over it and just enjoy the movie he’s making now. And while we’re at it, let’s get in touch with the Vatican. It’s time to anoint him as Saint Woody.