This past weekend I finally sat down to watch Midnight in Paris, the latest film by Woody Allen, and it brought up a few key social comments that I think applies to the general film blogosphere. That is a passion for the past.
Be forewarned, while I do not consider what I will reveal about the film to be a spoiler it is information that wasn’t readily available in the promotional material so if you’re a sensitive reader and have yet to see the film tread lightly.
Gil (Owen Wilson) is a writer, and an accomplished Hollywood screenwriter, that is attempting to finish his first novel. His novel is about a man who owns and runs a “nostalgia” shop. It’s about a man who prefers to live in the past, a time that he feels is more beautiful and makes a lot more sense to him, than his own present. This is how sometimes I feel it is with critics/bloggers/cinephiles around the internet.
It’s almost impossible to bring up a topic or a film without someone chiming in saying that the best of the genre came out in the 50s or that the film is just an unauthorized remake of the film from the 30s. I’m a fan of Bogart, Kurosawa, Wilder and Hithcock, but somehow I feel that it’s not as important as finding what’s relevant and important in art today.
Yes, some of my favourite filmmakers (Tarantino, Scorsese and Aronofsky) while doing original work all find ways to refer back to those films of yesteryear. I was listening to an interview with John Landis (An American Werewolf in London, The Blues Brothers & Animal House) talking about filmmaking and found something he said very interesting. He said, I paraphrase, that when he was starting to make films it was the first age of filmmakers who were basically filmmakers that made films purposely like other films. Before his age of films all the films were basically just creations of complete originality. While I won’t discuss whether or not films before Landis’ era were really unoriginal or not referential, I do find it interesting the idea of films finally talking about filmmaking and movies.
So begins the era of the movie-lovers’ movies. At the same time however, it’s the beginning of the nostalgic era. Its people continually wanting to remember their past and live in that time that they idealize a lot more than they really remember. I do enjoy being in on the gag with all the referential cinema, but it’s almost sad to see these filmmakers continuously living in the past as opposed to moving forward with new and fresh ideas.
I get the want for things to be the way they were when you were younger or things were simpler, but for every film like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World that continues to harp back to 80s gaming and pop culture there’s a plethora of Transformers out there which just can’t stop existing because in the 80s a doll manufacturer wanted to sell action figures.