How I Spent My Summer Vacation: “Midnight in Paris” in Grenoble

PROLOGUE

My dad and I had just come down from the mountains the day before. Like every year since I was twelve, we had gotten in his tiny little car, drove the 6 or so hours to the Southeast of France (time I spent blissfully asleep while he was driving) and we had walked through the Alps for five days. As per usual, we talked to each other on the first day, I talked to him on the second day and we were both more or less silent from day three on. There isn’t much to say when walking through such a landscape: there is only one path, and amidst the enormous mountains the things in your everyday life quickly turn too trivial to even bring up. We got down exhausted, and (one of the guilty pleasures of mountaineering) unwashed and unshaven for five days. We hitchhiked back to the hotel, where my dad fell asleep very quickly after dinner. I sat in the living room with my book for a bit and then struck up a very fascinating conversation about life and such things with the English niece of the hotels proprietor. I seem to have a knack for turning small talk into meaningful discussions, and enjoy them very much. They’re like no-strings-attached mind-sex.

The next day, rested and considerably better smelling, we set out to visit a city for a day, another staple of our vacations. On our way to Grenoble, the nearest city that seemed interesting enough to warrant a visit, we ran into a massive traffic jam. Stopping in a little village to find a map, a coffee and a way around the traffic, we learned that the Tour de France, the curious French custom that draws people from all over the country to spectate the most unwatchable sport in history, had picked the same day to visit Grenoble as us. It only started and stopped there, however, and as we were speaking the Tour was passing by on a nearby street, as evidenced by Frenchmen in all sorts of ridiculous costumes. Standing on some stairs, we managed to see a load of cars passing by, followed by three cyclists, who in turn were followed by another string of cars. I consoled myself with the knowledge that the French probably don’t understand Dutch customs either and we got back in the car.

After a sizable – although picturesque – detour we arrived in Grenoble. We parked the car, got out, walked about 500 meters alongside an ugly street and then had to walk back because I had forgotten my camera. We went straight for the center the second time around. Grenoble is a pleasant and seemingly wealthy city, where well-groomed young people walk around and look angrily at expensive shops, as well-to-do urbanites are wont to do. My father and I browsed some CD’s, bought some books and drank some surprisingly cheap coffee at a cafe that was so hip I couldn’t figure out how to lock the door of the toilet. I feel at this point it would be interesting to tell you a little about my travel companion. The most encompassing thing you can say about my dad is probably that he is a scientist. He is very smart and knowledgeable, quite generous, broadly interested and not easily upset. He can also be a bit distant, and although he seems to be generally happy it’s hard for me to imagine him being completely swept away by something beautiful. This is perhaps the biggest difference between us.

In any case, after we had lunch we decided to go to the movies together. We had done so twice before. The first time we saw I’m Not There in Basel, which was the movie that made me decide to study film, and last year we had seen Inception in Dijon, which I named my best film of the year in 2010. So you could definitely say Woody Allen latest film had something to live up to. Although I didn’t like him very much when I started watching movies, I had been warming up more and more to Woody Allen in the previous year or so before this movie came out. Also, I had heard it was pretty good.

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There are so many things I want to say about this movie that I’ll just start with the one you should know first: Midnight in Paris might be the best film Woody Allen has ever made, and the “might” is only there because I haven’t seen all of them. It’s without a doubt the best movie I’ve seen this year, and even people who aren’t fans should absolutely check it out. In case this wasn’t clear yet: this is not another review of the movie, more a series of random notes and thoughts on the movie inter-cut with far too many screenshots since I couldn’t choose which one to cut. Oh, and as before: thar be elephantine spoilers here.

The movie starts with a montage of Paris. The sun is shining, like we know and love the city from movies like Amelie. But then it slowly starts raining until it is just pouring. The scene reminded me of Joris Ivens 1929 short film Rain (found here, for those so inclined), for two reasons. The first one is the obvious connection of that of cities in the rain, but what I also found admirable about both films is that they actually show people in those cities. Many directors have been content with showing Paris as a basically empty city, a view that every visitor can attest is about as far from the truth as you can get. What Allen gives back to Paris is the central ingredient of any city: people. Granted, the inhabitants of Allen’s Paris are on average a notch or two more attractive than one might reasonably expect, but it’s nevertheless refreshing to see a city with over two million people in it actually being populated, instead of just used as a prop.

After the opening, we are introduced to The Woody Allen Character (TWAC) du jour, played by Owen Wilson. His name is Gil, but he is 100% The Woody Allen Character. This oddly timeless persona finds himself in the titular city with his fiancé, and can’t stop talking about his new-found love for the city. I get the feeling that I like this character the most when he’s out of his element, mostly because he gets introspective when he’s at ease and that’s the way I like him least. TWAC has this wide-eyes charm when he is confronted with some shiny new toy, which in this case is an entire city.

Gil and his girl seem to like each other, although their relationship feels a little… businesslike. She is constantly reminding him to see her friends, be nicer to her dad, help her pick furniture for their new house and other Very Important Matters while Gil just wants to walk around Paris and write his book.

On one of his nightly walks through Paris, after a wine taster with a extremely annoying friend of his fiancé’s who “just happens to be” an expert on everything, Gil ends up in the 1920′s, amidst Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Cole Porter. How? I don’t know. I don’t care either. This is what “fantasy” means to me: not having to explain the magical touches in your story.

Although the scenes set in the present are as lovely as any Allen ever did, those set in the present are simply magical. I use this word very sparsely; in fact, I can’t even remember when I last used it. But here it fits. They look absolutely gorgeous, for starters, with a yellowish tint as if they were shot through a glass of brandy. The music, aptly provided by Mr. Porter, is just as charming as it’s always been. But it’s the sly references that make the movie so absolutely killer. They never feel forced, in a “Oh-look-Marty-actually-wrote-Johnny-B.-Goode-what-a-crazy-random-happenstance” sort of way. Gil in the past has about as much influence on the people he meets as any aspiring writer would have had, which is to say: none.

It’s quite amazing, by the way, how many references to a French city almost 90 years ago you’re probably going to get. I am nowhere the expert on the twenties that Allen clearly is, but only one or two jokes really went over my head, and the rest were just spot-on. Allen clearly didn’t go for the cute laughs, but instead portrayed the artists he so admired both as inspiring and as flawed as they actually must have been. Hemingway in particular is amazing, but the scene where Adrian Brody shows up as Dali made me laugh so hard it earned me some weird laughs.

The central fantasy at play in Midnight in Paris is basically that of being transported back to a moment where people were still worth romanticizing. TWAC does this, and so does the girl he ends up falling in love with in the past. I was reminded of a story Allen wrote called “The Kugelmass Episode”, in which TWAC meets a magician who can transport him into his favorite novels (don’t ask). The escape into fiction (and what is the past other than a very appealing fiction at this point) seems to be a recurring theme for Allen.

Something I found slightly ironic about this is that Allen’s career came to fruition in a time that I (and I assume many of my peers) are actually nostalgic to, the late sixties. That was my golden age, when Bob Dylan wrote his best work and people like Francis Coppola and Marty Scorcese were busily working their ways through massive piles of cocaine and scripts for what would become some of the most famous films of all time. But apparently those guys were also idolizing times long gone. Oh well. On with the present.

Epilogue

I walked out of the theater with my head in the air. I bought my dad some ice cream, and we walked through the city. In a pavilion on a square a concert was being prepared. Couples were making out in the park. A guy with big ears was smoking a cigarette. We walked underneath a gondola lift while licking our (quite delicious) cones. I waved to a little girl. She waved back at me. I looked at the river that was lying in front of us. Life, with all its little inconveniences and hang-ups, was beautiful, if only for a moment.

Max