Midnight In Paris(2011)

A free-wheeling drive into the magical ecstasy of Paris..

Gil with his fiancee Inez, on a day-time shopping in Paris

A successful Hollywood screenwriter, Gil (Owen Wilson) tries to bone a serious novel as he visits Paris with his uptight fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) on a tag-along business trip of her parents. Gil, a restricted writer and an escapist art lover, consumes the streets of Paris at midnight, and finds the greatest escapade his dreams could offer. His romantic notions of Paris in the 1920’s in rains are not shared by Inez.While travelling with her folks, Inez is all around a pretentious British professor (Michael Sheen), which presents Gil the opportunity to wander around his dream city.

Seated on the steps of an unfamiliar street one night, losing his way to hotel, Gil is being invited by a host of celebrities of the 20’s. He is surreally transported to the era where he’d always dreamt to have born in. Gil is enthralled by a lovely woman named Adriana (Marion Cottilard), who’s a fulcrum seductive object in many of the star artists of the 20’s. Gil’s strolls at midnight could take him closer to the heart of the city, but farther away from the woman he’s about to be married.

Gil strolling the streets of Paris alongside Adriana.

Woody Allen etches out a troupe of literary characters from Ernest Hemmingway, Pablo Picasso to madcap couple of Fitzgerald’s, and all other Giants of the 1920’s,and adjoins their enduring era of creating art with Gil, who simmers it in his wide-eyed and drawly manner.Gil finds a source of inspiration, when he befriends Ernest Hemmingway in that riotously funny bar-room scene.He introduces Gil to Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates),who is an arbiter to the many works of artists at the time.Owen Wilson couldn't be a better conduit for Allen’s romantic excursion. Midnight in Paris is a sparkling travelogue, where wish-fulfillment is charming in its brief and sketchy episodes of literary celebrities.The film avoids the transitional elements or digital enhancements of time-travelling, thereby eliminating any sci-fi gimmicks of obscure explanations.Woody Allen just brushes past all instruments of time-travel, and glides across the parable structure of this absorbing venture.The passages in this movie are as relishing and elating as one could possibly imagine.The film is graceful in its pace, gloriously lit, and glancingly funny. It is a loving embrace of Paris’s magical aura of attracting dreamers and thinkers from world around.

Like many of Woody Allen’s films, Midnight in Paris ends with a moral, depreciating kick. Here, across this tale, Allen states that "Everyone wishes to ponder on the idea of living in a different era, including people of that era." The material utilizes the best out of this ensemble cast, and serves magical renditions for the crew to sketch on their skills.One couldn’t stop imagine how merry and happening the making must be.

4/5