Midnight in Paris

Fourteenth Friday after Pentecost

Last night Marianne and I saw the movie Midnight in Paris. Here in short is what interested me in the plot. A thirty something American male Hollywood screenwriter named Gil goes to Paris, where he wants to write a serious novel. He adores Paris. He has a historically nostalgic longing for Paris in the 1920's, which he sees as the greatest place and time to have ever been alive. 

One night he's lost in Paris. At midnight a classic 1920's chauffeured car picks him up. The passengers are in a champagne induced jolly mood. They take him to a party. All the guests are wearing clothes typical of the '20's. He is introduced to a man named Scott, who introduces his wife Zelda. He says, "Wow, your names are the same as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Scott says, "We are Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald." Gil is a bit confused but notes that the pianist is playing Cole Porter songs. Gil loves Cole Porter. After another slightly confused conversation with Scott, Gil realizes that the pianist is Cole Porter. Then Scott and Zelda take Gil to a bar where he meets Ernest Hemingway. Zelda, who doesn't like Hemingway, leaves. Scott and Ernest take Gil back to where they had picked him up and drop him off. He's back in 2010 Paris. 

Gil goes to the same place the next several nights, is picked up by the same car, but with different people in it, people such as T.S. Eliot, Henri Matisse, Salvidor Dali. He meets Hemingway again, who takes him to the apartment of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. There he meets Pablo Picasso and a young woman, I think her name is Adrianna, who models for Picasso. Gil and Adrienna are attracted to each other. Gertrude Stein reads Gil's novel and likes it. Hemingway likes it too. Over the next few days Gil meets people like Edgar Degas, Man Ray, Toulouse-Latrec, Paul Gaugin, and numerous other greats in art, literature, and music who were in Paris in the 1920's. Though not in the movie, George Gershwin was in Paris at that time. From there he wrote those symphonic jazz classics, An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue.

Let me stop the narrative here. I am like Gil. I adore Paris. Since my first time there in 1968, I have made six trips to Paris. By far the best was the last one in 2017. Marianne and I spent two weeks on a houseboat, anchored on the Right Bank of the Seine with our son John, daughter-in-law Jessica, and grandchildren Madeline and Jack. Our location was just off the Place de la Concorde, which is the exact center of Paris. From the deck of our houseboat we had beautiful views of the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, the Orsay Museum, the Louvre. If we walked up river a hundred yards (perhaps I should say "meters"). we had a view of Notre Dame. We celebrated Marianne's significantly-numbered birthday at a wonderful restaurant on the terrace of the Grand Palais.

Like Gil, I idealize Paris in the '20's. It was one of those exceedingly rare times in history, I can think of only two others, when a huge collection of geniuses all lived in one place at the same time. The other two were Athens in the 5th century BC and Florence at the height of the Renaissance (turn of the 16th century). Blessedly, Marianne and I have gotten to spend several weeks in each of those cities.

Back to the movie. Gil and Adrienna fall in love. Adrienna dreams not of living in Paris in her own time, but in the 1890's, La Belle Epoche. They go to a party. All are dressed in 1890's Paris fashion. They meet Renoir and Proust. They have indeed time traveled to Paris in the 1890's. Adrianna is in the time and place where she has always wanted to be. Gil is not. Renoir and Proust talk about how the greatest time and place to have lived was Florence in the Renaissance. Then Gil realizes that we always look back nostalgically to a better time and place, a Golden Age. We need to have our minds in the time and place where we actually are.

2020 is not a Golden Age for anybody, nor will it be remembered that way. Not as bad by far as the Black Plague of 1347-1348, but certainly bad enough. I, like Gil, am a nostalgic person. I pray for us to have a future time we will be able to look back on as a Golden Age--and considering my health and age, it had better be soon.

The turn of the common era was a Golden Age. Augustus was the Roman Emperor. The time was called the Pax Augustana, the Peace of Augustus. Jesus walked on the verdant shores of the Galilee. He saw the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. It was a glorious time. Yet he and his followers looked back to the time of Solomon as the Golden Age. Like Gil came to realize, Jesus always realized that we live in our time. We need to see our time's own beauty. "Consider the lilies of the field," he said, "they neither toil nor spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these."

Faithfully,

Christian