Midnight In Paris, Live Dreaming

Midnight in Paris is a beautifully shot film that has captured the hearts of many viewers. Directed by the famed Woody Allen, it won the Oscar for best screenplay, and was nominated for multiple awards. Midnight in Paris is a unique opportunity to see great actors reunited.

From Tom Hiddleston to Kathy Bates and Marion Cotillard, movie lovers find many of their favorite personalities here. In addition, fans of the arts and literature can find many details about the works and lives of great representatives of culture.

Filmed in Paris, the city of lights, Midnight in Paris is visually amazing. Games of light and shadow turn a contemporary Paris into a 1920’s Paris. In addition, the film recreates many iconic places from the 1920s, where great thinkers and artists met. Undoubtedly, Midnight in Paris will make you want to pack your bags and head to France.

Gil Pender is a Hollywood writer. Although his work has allowed him to prosper financially, it is not enough for his spirit. Gil wants something more that he has not found in his current life. When he and his wife travel to Paris, Gil is eager to experience the city romantically. Walking the bridges and drinking wine under the stars, for example. However, his wife Inez has other plans.

One night, when Gil goes out for a walk in the middle of the night, Paris gives him an incredible opportunity. In some magical way, Gil is transported to Paris in the 1920s. There, Gil will meet all the great artists of the moment. He will form a friendship with Hemingway and will meet Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso.

Midnight in Paris , idealizing a dream

While in his 20s, Gil lives a dream that he never thought he could experience. He always wanted to meet those artists he had admired in person. Already long before his “time travel”, Gil had idealized the 1920s, which he had as a golden age.

Gil imagines this time as the highest moment in the arts, literature, and culture in general. In this fantastic time, Gil will meet a girl he loves: Adriana.

Gil falls in love with Adriana, and with what she represents: the cultural life of the time that he idealizes. However, Gil only realizes that he is living an illusion when he and Adriana are transported to the past.

In the same way that Gil managed to reach the 1920s, Adriana and Gil are sent to 1890. There, they meet Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gaugin and Edgar Degas. When Adriana confesses that this is her favorite time, the three painters laugh contemptuously. The three of them think that the golden age happened much earlier.

Only at this moment does Gil realize that he was living in nostalgia. He also realizes that we have all felt that in some way. And the present is confusing, and we have the impression that the past was not only better, but also simpler and happier.

Two types of nostalgia

In the film, Gil Pender seems to experience two types of nostalgia:

• The first type is historical nostalgia. Here we long for a moment of the past that has not been lived.
• The second type of nostalgia is personal nostalgia. This is linked to our own experiences and memories.

Thus, it is the first type of nostalgia that leads Gil to enjoy his trips to the Paris of the past. However, it is personal nostalgia that motivates him to return to the present.

Paul Bates says, at one point in the film, that nostalgia is nothing more than the denial of the painful present. Nostalgia is longing for a past (recent or distant), and it arises when one is dissatisfied with the present.

Nostalgia can be interpreted as a defense mechanism that allows us to deny bad experiences (at least momentarily). In truth, nostalgia is a fantasy, usually idealized. On the other hand, nostalgia can only be effectively overcome when we recognize that it has been idealized. It is necessary to begin to understand the time we long for as a time that also had bad parts. Thus, Gil was able to recognize that the 1920s also had negative moments, and that the present is not always bad.

Back to the present

Midnight in Paris doesn’t just portray nostalgia as a feeling of negative valence. Allen reveals to us that the past is nothing more than a fantasy. At the same time, it offers us in the past a small escape route.

It does not benefit us to live anchored in times that have passed. However, we can convert our lives and get closer to what fulfills us. That which was present in our fantasies.

In Gil’s case, he decides to return to the present, in addition to staying in Paris and starting his life as a novelist. Fantasies and nostalgia can help us identify those aspects with which we are dissatisfied. Only by identifying them will we be able to change our lives in the direction we really want.