In high school, I was forced to read both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. While I will defend Gatsby and the brilliance of that book to my dying day, I have never been thankful to anyone for introducing me to A Farewell to Arms. Although people keep telling me that Hemingway’s shorter stuff is worth a read and that it will change my mind towards his writing style, I have decided to avoid him and his prose like the plague.
Also, I have a huge Gertrude Stein problem. Sure, I’ll admit that she was at the center of the Lost Generation’s Paris life-style and that she helped brilliant people when they weren't so brilliant, but has anyone actually sat down and read The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas? It’s more than a little pretentious and a lot more than a little boring and it left me with a totally rational dislike for Stein and her writing.
So, imagine my delight, when I quickly realized that the movie I had innocently decided to go see because it involved Michael Sheen actually had not only the awesome Fitzgerald, but also Hemingway and Gertrude as main/pivotal characters. Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s latest film (and, by the way, the first Allen film Elizabeth has seen. I know. Shocking.), see’s Gil (Owen Wilson) stumble upon Paris in the 1920s. A writer who wants to be more than a hack, Gil Penderton finds himself among some of (arguably) history’s greatest authors and painters who, as one would expect, teach him more than just how to craft a good story.
As soon as my buddy Fitzgerald (played by Loki) came on screen for the first time, I knew that the film was going to be a keeper. However, perhaps the biggest surprise of the entire movie, is that Hemingway (Corey Stoll) made me fall in love with it. Allen (who both wrote and directed the film) captures Hemingway’s prose and thoughts about love, life, war, and women perfectly. As Hemingway rambles on with long, simple sentences, Wilson’s Gil can only stare on in awe but we, as an audience, find ourselves laughing in academic geek-ery. Kathy Bates’s Stein didn’t heal me of my dislike in quite the same way, although I can at least say that I found Stein tolerable here. The famous cameos continue with glimpses of Picasso, Matisse, Degas, and Dali (played by the extraordinary Adrian Brody who almost manages to steal the show from Sheen, Wilson, and Stoll with just one short scene) .
In the end, the Midnight in Paris plays out as a love letter to the city. At times poetic and always artistic, Allen paints for us a picture of a beautiful city with a glamorous and unique past. He sucks us in and leaves us wishing that we could turn a corner and find a bar containing the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald instead of a simple laundromat. There’s nothing terribly complex here, but it does leave you feeling enveloped in a cloud of nostalgic contentment
