An interesting premise for a movie: Woody Allen, as portrayed by Owen Wilson, is a screenwriter in Paris to get married and hopefully find some inspiration for his first novel. He goes out drunk one night to sit on some steps in Paris. A car picks him up and all of a sudden Woody finds himself in 1920's Paris with the likes of Picasso, Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein. He falls in love with a mistress of Picasso's in the 1920's, leading to conflict with his soon-to-be wife in 2010. He learns some valuable lessons about the past and gets some help with his novel and decides to stay in the present, albeit a bit differently than he started.
Woody Allen won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for this movie, and I can see the reason why. He name drops some of my personal favorite writers all over the place without coming across as pretentious. Owen ("Gus" - how's that for meta?) meets them pretty randomly at Gertrude Stein's apartment, as I'm sure was the custom around that point. All kinds of future famous artists met there. When I went to Paris recently, my friend and I went on a half-assed Hemingway walk around town. We went to Gertrude Stein's apartment and all it is now is just a regular-looking apartment building with a small plaque confirming that yes, this is the building where it went down. The door, in contrast to Gertrude's, is barred with steel and there's a camera above the door. Somehow, though, Allen put down on film (actually, on digital memory, a first for Allen) exactly what I was imagining, standing on that street that Hemingway and everyone else must have walked down. All the moods they must have been in on that street, ready to walk in, excited about their new art... I understand Allen's impulse here.
The movie begins with a series of establishing shots detailing some of the less famous parts of Paris. When we went, we stayed a kilometer or two down the street from Moulin Rouge, featured prominently in this montage, as well as about a ten minute walk from Sacre Couer, also pictured (it's the white domed building that looks like it's up on a hill - because it is. A very steep one). I liked this because this was the Paris that you see when you go there. The monuments aren't hard to get to, but I more remember the less famous things that Allen includes: the flashing lights on the Eiffel Tower, the view down the road from the Arc de Triomphe, people sitting outside cafes smoking and sipping coffee. That's where the real feel of Paris comes from, yes, the famous things, but the moments in between more so. Allen captures it wonderfully.
Another thing he does well are the little moments between strangers that can change the course of your life. I love those little parts of life, when you strike up a random conversation with some person over some small mutual bond and then you remember that from then on. There's a scene where Owen talks to a tour guide he'd met once before just to get her opinion on his problem, and she tells him something that directs where the movie heads next. The tour guide is only in two scenes, yet that's enough to establish the relationship and earn a small bond of trust between the two. The scenes are totally necessary, just like those little scenes in life are.
A shout-out to Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein and Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway. Both brilliant performances.
Score: 5/5
Quotes:
"We all fear death and question our place in the universe. The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existance. You have a clear and lively voice, don't be such a defeatist." Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) to Gus (Owen Wilson)
"If you stay here (the past), this becomes your present, then pretty soon you'll start imagining another time was really your "golden" time. That's what the present is, it's a little unsatisfying because life's a little unsatisfying... If I ever wanna write something worthwhile, I have to get rid of all my illusions and that I'd be happier in the past is probably one of them." Gus (Owen Wilson) to Adriana (Marion Cotillard)
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