Midnight in Paris & A Few Thoughts on Oscar Noms

Midnight in Paris --87/100--

While watching Woody Allen’s films usually gives me at least a little pleasure, in recent years his annual submissions have, with a couple of notable exceptions, been mostly lackluster. In 2011 he’s finally made slogging through the struggles well worth it, turning out his most magical and memorable piece in ages.

Midnight in Paris plays out like Field of Dreams for the erudite crowd, placing struggling writer Gil - a wide-eyed Owen Wilson - smack dab in the City of Lights with his fiancé Inez (Rachel McAdams). Allen once again employs a dab of fantastic whimsy that charmed audiences in Play it Again, Sam and especially The Purple Rose of Cairo, and through a mystical twist Gil ends up partying his Parisian nights away with a who’s who of 1920’s cultural icons. It starts with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Cole Porter and quickly snowballs from there; half the fun of the film is guessing what legend is waiting around the next corner and how he or she will be portrayed. Some of the names dropped by Allen may send some scrambling to wikipedia for the reference, but that’s not uncommon for any of his films. There are some great turns by some familiar faces, just keep your eyes peeled.

As in many of his films, Allen gives the surroundings an important role; in fact Paris is the most important character in the film, as it certainly has a life of its own and a million stories to tell. Evocative of his famous montage “Rhapsody in Blue” montage in Manhattan, and in what felt like a bit of homage to cityscapes of early cinema (notably Berlin, Symphony of a Big City), the volley of luscious street scenes that opens Midnight in Paris even has its own miniature story arc as the day progresses from a bright beautiful morning into rainy afternoon, through a calming dusk and then exploding into a lustrous evening. The entire film exudes the richness of the city’s offerings and serves as the type of carefully composed travelogue that makes one mentally plot out a dream vacation - or, in my case, consider a new career as a location scout.

Nostalgia has been a big theme at the cinema this year, as evidenced by some of the fellow Oscar nominees for Best Picture. While the current economic recession might play a role in that, I think it probably has more to do with these filmmakers finding ways to comment and come to terms with the digital era and a constant stream of technological advancement producing a contemporary film audience that mostly buys spectacle over substance. But while The Artist and Hugo recall a simpler time when the language of the art form was literally still being developed, Midnight in Paris balances that romanticism with a more levelheaded view, rejecting the idea that there was ever a single “Golden Age” of especial ingenuity in favor of a more universal celebration of all forms of human expression, past and present.

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Oscar noms were announced yesterday, and I’ve already seen 7 of the 9 Best Picture nominees, so I already have a pretty good grasp on my feelings toward this particular set of films.

A couple of random initial thoughts simply on the nominations themselves:

-- I was kinda thinking they might throw a Best Pic bone to the Harry Potter finale as a nod to the high level of quality for the entire series. Not that I was expecting a Return of the King sweep by any means, but found it especially odd since they only decided to nominate 9 after upping the ante to 10 last year.

-- Based on reviews and other nominations I suspect there are about 5 or 6 others that could have filled that 10th spot. Of the stuff I’ve seen so far, I might have rooted for a dark horse like Warrior, but if it were my choice I would have picked Beginners. I liked it better than The Descendants, personally. Reviews for both forthcoming.

-- Not a real standout crowd in the Best Animated Film category, with none of them pulling a Best Pic nominee. Won’t be as easy to call as last year when Up was the obvious animated fave.

-- The Original Song category is down to only two nominees. Yikes. I can think of about 15 reasons they should probably just ditch this category altogether, but the memory of “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” winning gold makes me hope it comes back strong next year.

Still have a bunch of other stuff to catch and I’ll really get down to business over the next few weeks. Won’t/can’t say much more right now as I’m headed out the door to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Quick Hits

The Tree of Life (2011) --95/100--

Terrence Malick has always been a very iconoclastic director, never more so than with his latest, the gorgeous Tree of Life, perhaps my favorite film of the year. It’s a challenging film to watch, there is no real “story,” mostly a patchwork of small vignettes of a middle-class family in Texas in the 1950s, a few flashes forward in time, and at one point we leave the family altogether to witness an astonishing 20-minute 2001-esque “history of the universe.” The cinematography is unparalleled, and if allowed to become completely immersed in the tide of sounds and images it is a breathtaking experience. It is the first “big” film in a while to qualify as a true, by god cinematic Work of Art. (There. I think I managed to use just about every superlative I know.)

Hugo (2011) --90/100--

One of the best examples I’ve seen where 3D has been use to enhance the storytelling experience rather than just add an element of spectacle. With Hugo, Marty Scorsese concocts one of the greatest love letters to moving pictures since Cinema Paradiso. Despite some pacing problems and what I thought were rather stiff performances by the lead child actors, it tugged just the right strings in my cinephilic little heart. A no-brainer Best Picture Oscar nominee.

The Help (2011) --77/100--

Emma Stone caps off a pretty solid little year, firmly establishing herself as quirky darling with the ability to play with a little more dramatic heft, though The Help has enough sassy/catty comedy to level out the weighty moments and deliver a balanced, expressive film. It’s a little straightforward in that, for a film about black/white experience, only the secondary characters exhibit any real complex shades of gray. Kudos to Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, and Sissy Spacek, but mostly to Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer for providing the real heart of the piece.

The Artist (2011) --89/100--

I finally made some time to see The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius’s wonderful homage to silent era cinema. Hazanavicius had some recent success with a goofy reboot of the 1960s James Bond-knockoff OSS 117 trilogy, also starring Jean Dujardin, and his attention to immersive detail serves him well once again in a slightly more serious vein. I say “slightly” because, although the film is sickly sweet with sentimentality, it is overflowing with cheeky jabs at the conventions of a bygone era.

By turning an eye on Hollywood’s switch from silent to talking pictures, The Artist finds good company with true classics, such as Singin’ in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard, and it has a contemporary brother in Martin Scorsese’s charming Hugo. This film’s trick is that it unfolds just as a 1920s silent film would, using intertitles to convey any important (or just funny) bits of dialogue, accompanied by a lilting, ever-present score. I’ll drop a tiny spoiler that there are a couple of moments that the film breaks from its silence, and this toying with the formula works to a jolting effect. There were a few gasps in the audience at one point, and I wondered how it might have been back in 1927 when the crowd heard Al Jolson speak from the screen for the first time.

Following the developing relationship and diverging career paths of silent has-been George Valentin (Dujardin) and rising ingenue Peppy Miller (Bérénice Belo) creates a smooth parallel arc to match the historical era. This was a time of great flux, where the dichotomy between the haves and have-nots - the quaintly outdated and the shiny newfangled - was never more evident.

The Artist loses some steam toward the middle as it moves toward the sappy finale, and I will dock a few points for its predicability, but in terms of artistic beauty, with its stunning black and white cinematography and deft utilization of music and mise-en-scene, it is a home run.

Right now The Artist is playing on a very limited number of screens in Michigan (I heard 2, to be exact). If/when it picks up its deserving Best Picture Oscar nomination it should catch a wider release, and if given the opportunity I hope people will take a chance to see it. It will definitely be worth your time, even if just for the scene-stealing Jack Russell terriers.

(One small bit of disappointment: it seems much less clever to rename myself Peppy Miller than it did two days ago, although I am considering the addition of a beauty mark or a pencil-thin mustache.)

2012-1-7 jmm #4