Thought: That One Movie That Made Me A Woody Allen Fan

asalongapt.2003
Aug 11, 2012
2 min read

Admittedly, I haven't seen a lot of Woody Allen "wordy" movies. When I was younger, I was never drawn to his kind of films. Lengthy, all-talk, anxiety-filled, snooze-fest like. But then, hitting thirties made my tolerance for the nonsensical storylines, with all the absurdities, minute. The Woody Allen type of script has become easier to follow. In this movie, Allen has created a good conflict between nostalgia and modernism. His smooth transition from one era to another at the strike of midnight in a seemingly quiet street made it acceptable. All kept under the hype, going from one era to another without the folly of time-travel science. Best thing about the film is how Allen used the collection of artists - writers, painters, designers - to discuss the main character's dilemma. All icons In his perplexed delusion, created a good canvas for his literary enlightenment. From Hemingway to Dali, Gertrude Stein, Picasso and Rodin. All remarkable people, genius and all. Here are some of Allen's genius in display: 'Out Of The Past' was the name of the store, and its products consisted of memories: what was prosaic and even vulgar to one generation had been transmuted by the mere passing of years to a status at once magical and camp. Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present... the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in - its a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present. The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence. No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure. That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me. And so, Midnight in Paris had made me a Woody Allen fan.