Woody Allen is really the natural enemy of American middle-class literary and artistic young and middle-aged people. In his writings, the middle-class people will definitely do the following things: 1. Pretending; 2. Lying; 3. Betrayal, and always suffering from speech addiction.
His new work "Midnight in Paris" summed up his views on the literary middle class: Paul babbled on celebrities, names and nouns, showing off the knowledge of art he recited, only to expose his inner shallowness and ignorance; Nez hurried to museums, attractions, and landmarks, thinking she had experienced Paris, listening to Paul's recitation eagerly, thinking she had understood art, mocking Jill's taste, and admiring expensive furniture to prove her aesthetics. He has a parrot who is obsessed with others and doesn’t know it; Inez’s parents are even more upscale and sleazy in their hearts. The only affirmation they have of their son-in-law is that “he can make a lot of money”, when his son-in-law refuses to buy sky-high chairs. He spit out the phrase "Cheap is cheap" to show his superiority, and hired a private detective to monitor his son-in-law just because he believed that people must be stealing.
The audience has no right to despise these middle-class literary and artistic people, because every audience watching this film is actually one of them. Did you feel like you were looking in the mirror while watching a movie? All this that you follow and laugh at is actually what you follow every day.
The literary middle-class Jill yearns for the ancient times - not too ancient, only ancient until the 1920s, the era when Hemingway, Stein, Dalí, and Matisse existed - which was identified by the spokesman for literature and art Paul as "a failure to live". In the eyes of the Pauls, Gill was a complete failure. He could not tell the time, background, and significance of the famous works of art. He had no high interest in appreciating fine art. If it weren't for the fact that he could earn money, his fiancée would have abandoned him 10,000 times.
But Jill thinks that the Pauls are too fake. The reason why he nostalgic is because he hates reality. He feels that compared to the advanced Wen Qing around him, the Wen Qing at that time was purer. There was his "elsewhere", it was him dream land. The director arranged a time travel for him, he came to his dream time, saw his radiant idols, and the idol's "fruit". He was so excited that he felt that he had finally found eternity here, but the final result shattered his dream - it turned out that the idols of the golden age were also dissatisfied with reality and wished to return to a better age; it turned out that there is no pure The land, everyone's dream life is elsewhere; it turns out that there is never "elsewhere".
"Midnight in Paris" adheres to Woody Allen's usual style of too many lines and few ups and downs in the plot. Fortunately, it has a beautiful Paris scenery, which can make people watch it patiently. As usual, his satire is hidden between calmness, and it is estimated that many middle-class literary audiences who have been satirized will think this is a small and fresh film.
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