This movie is about fake nostalgia and the golden age fallacy—the mistaken belief that a past era was superior. Since it has been quite a while since I last watched this movie, let me recollect my memory. It might not be super accurate in describing the main story. Owen Wilson, a screenwriter, visits Paris with his fiancée, Rachel McAdams. In the movie, her character is a bit shallow and materialistic for him, not exactly matching Owen Wilson’s snobish tastes. Feeling disillusioned with his current situation, Wilson takes a night walk in Paris and ends up time-traveling to the 1920s, his so-called ‘golden age’. There he mingles with legendary figures like the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway (he’s depicted as very charismatic in the movie), Dali, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and others. He also meets Marion Cotillard and falls for her.
Fake nostalgia—a fantasy about an unexperienced past—is actually pretty common. For me, it’s the 1980s in Britain. Who can resist British men in makeup in the ’80s? I watch old episodes of Top of the Pops, imagining how glamorous and dazzling that era must have been, along with synthesizers. Of course, it’s absurd to think the era when Boy George had to claim he liked women while in makeup was wonderful. When we indulge in fake nostalgia, we only fantasize about the most brilliant and beautiful fragments of an era, often overlooking or being ignorant of it as a whole. Every era has its dark sides, which we wouldn’t overlook or ignore if we belonged to that era, and this fake nostalgia varies among people because it is each individual’s mirage. In the movie, Marion Cotillard’s character’s golden age is the Belle Époque, and she leaves Wilson for that time. Wilson’s character eventually realizes his romanticized view of the 1920s is far from absolute.
This movie isn’t exactly my favorite Woody Allen movie. (I prefer the one before and the one after far more.) Nevertheless, the movie captures beautiful Paris in the rain, at night, or even in filth, with its magical romantic charm, like a Van Gogh painting. Additionally, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, and Léa Seydoux are all lovely to look at. Owen Wilson is okay, too.
Tangent:
It is not hard to notice that the 1920s Paris is Woody Allen’s golden age. I found this aspect a bit unrealistic. Given the film is set in 2011, Owen Wilson’s character, in his mid-30s, would more realistically have nostalgia for the 1950s or 1960s at most. Normal people’s fake nostalgia usually targets the recent past, not such a distant era. The fake nostalgia of someone Wilson’s age should be for films like Woody Allen’s “Take the Money and Run” or playwrights like Tennessee Williams rather than Hemingway. Though Al Hirschfeld and Gershwin’s New York may be more beautiful, people don’t fantasize in order of beauty.