Roman Dispatch Vol. 4: A Review of the 2011 Film "Midnight In Paris."
I know it’s a tough sell to convince you to take life advice from Woody Allen, but… well… just bear with me here. For those who have seen the film, you can skip my poor synopsis. For those who haven’t, and don’t care about some spoilers, here we go. About 4/5ths through the film, protagonist Gil Pender has come to realise his dream life is just as miserable as his reality. Gil lives in LA with his materialistic and cheating fiancee Inez, working as a screenwriter making soulless Hollywood garbage. While on vacation in Paris with Inez and his in-laws, he discovers a portal to his favorite time and place in history, 1920s Paris. There, he meets the love of his life and chums it up with his favorite authors, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. But upon making the decision to stay full time, he discovers his dream girl is just as problematic as his current one, and just like he was, everyone in what he discovered the artists living in history’s greatest time and place as just as discontent and longing as he was. Upon this realisation, Gil literally comes back to reality, with a few tweaks. He decides he’s going to move to Paris full time and pursue his dream for good, and leave his completely incompatible fiancee. In the final scene, Gil goes for one last midnight walk, this time remaining in the present. He eventually runs into Gabrielle, a Parisian shopkeeper he’d become aquatinted with on his trip. He tells Gabrielle (played by Lea Seydoux) that he’s decided to stay in Paris, and asks her to join him on his walk. As it turns out, she loves midnight walks in the city just as much.
I can’t help to have a conflicted relationship with the moral of the story. Gil eventually learns that his desire to live in a distant age and a distant reality where everything is a dream is one that is universal. That indeed, the reality you exist within is good enough. With Gil’s fantasies out of reach, he still has the foresight to let go of what was holding him back and carve out the right path for himself. On the other hand, Gil is the spirit animal for all those teenagers who listen to The Smiths and say “I was born in the wrong generation,” but instead Gil is a grown adult. Also, Gil’s “lesson learned” involves him simply moving to Paris on a whim, and once he decides to do so, who just happens to walk past? A single and ready to mingle Léa Seydoux. How convenient. Gil’s humbling reality check sounds pretty nice. At the end of the day, perhaps its best just to see the film as a nice little piece of escapist art. Speaking of escapism…
I find a lot of parallels between Gil and myself. I certainly have an idealistic streak in me. I have dreamed of a being true and genuine storyteller. I often dream and try to manifest a future where I’m free of all that is tedious, fake, and in-genuine. Rome is to me as Paris is to Gil. I first went in 2019 and when I left, I promised myself it would be a city I would call home. My semester abroad five years ago was kind of like my portal moment. That Norwegian Air flight I took might of well had been the old car that takes Gil to the Paris of the 1920s. I got set up in a spacious apartment in the best part of the city, I was in a program with a hundred other kids just like me were heading out to lands unknown by themselves, eager to meet new people for a few months and travel the continent. These new short term friends that I met in Italy, were cool, unique, adventurous, completely different and better than my boring friends from home. We took “classes” for four days a week and travelled during our three day weekends. Everything was new, everything was different, and everything was better. So of course I was determined to make this dream my reality. In late 2023, I had a long list of complaints with my life. The neighbourhood I lived in wasn’t historic enough. The people I lived around weren’t cool enough, the women don’t speak Italian. My local Dunkin’ didn’t serve up a passable Cappuccino/Cornetto al banco. There was no trattoria that served up a good all’amatriciana. The nauseating repetitive D-FENCE! Chants at NBA games felt soulless compared to the explosion of color, chants, and flag waving of Italian Serie A matches. The neighborhoods weren’t as walkable. The public transport wasn’t that great. There weren’t enough Fiats on the road for my liking. There weren’t any RyanAir flights at the local airport. I couldn’t hop in the car and go to any of my favorite wineries. I had no access to my favorite European clothing brands. It all had to change. If I was going to achieve happiness it had to change. So, I saved up some money and booked yet another one way ticket to Rome.
Upon landing in the Eternal City, my European experience started to differ from Gil’s. I couldn’t just move to Rome. I’m not a successful screenwriter, which would have likely made it easier. My situation demanded that I get a work visa, which upon talking to a few prospective employers, I learned would be next to impossible. Regardless, I searched and searched for a solution, until I ran out of time, options, and money. Just like Gil, however, once I crossed the border into my ideal world, I came to the realisation that it was no utopia. I enjoyed my long walks, my morning cappuccino/cornetto, my trips to the Stadio Olimpico to cheer on Lazio. My nights out with my Roman friends. Despite all of that, something was missing. It was as if I replaced my old problems with a set of new ones. If I did find a way to move, the bureaucracy would make my life a nightmare. The pay wouldn’t nearly be as good, in fact many young and educated and English speaking Italians see it fit to leave the country to find economic prosperity. Crossing cultural boundaries would make me a permanent outsider. Going out and making new friends would be even harder than it would be in America. I didn’t exactly feel happier when in Rome. In fact, all three of my stints in Italy have expertly blended life changing journeys of discovery with intense bouts of anxiety and instability. Just like Gil, I am here to tell you that dropping everything and moving to your dream world does not magically improve your life. In fact, I’ve found that my most successful and happiest points of my life have come directly after moving home from abroad. When Gil crossed the portal into his dream world and when I booked a one way flight to Rome, I think we both were looking for a solution to our problems, and we both encountered the same issue. The problems weren’t with our surroundings, the problems were with ourselves.
I think that there is this really damaging perception that we need to do everything we want to do with our lives all at once. And we need to do it when we are young. I partially blame social media for this, but also I think it could just be in our human nature to maximalize this little spark of consciousness we have on this earth. While its fun to live a dream life, I don’t believe what exists outside of us will bring us fulfilment until we’re happy with what’s going on inside. I can galavant around Europe and make people jealous online. It seems great, but I would posit the following. If you feel like you need to uproot and move to a fantasy world to find a sense of fulfilment, then you will never be happy, even if you change everything about what you see out of your eyes, you’re still taking the burdens you keep inside of you. They can attack you wherever you live, however much money you make, however many instagram followers you have. As unfortunate as it sounds, those instagram memes that say “you’re not depressed, you just don’t live in Italy” aren’t true.
I’m lucky to have some friends who live in Rome. It made my most recent trip to Rome so much better than it could have been. For easter, I went to the seaside town of San Felice Circeo with my friend Livia, and her childhood friends. Throughout my two months in Italy I got to spend enough time with them to learn that they’re a great bunch. After easter Monday, I was tired and beaten down from two months of travel, soul searching, and hyper focusing on my own problems. Although I didn’t think I had found what I was looking for on this trip, I soon came to realise that was not the case. Livia, myself, and her friends crammed into a Fiat five deep for the quick drive back to Rome. On the way there, they played some songs they grew up with together, some recognisable to me, some foreign. Throughout the trip they all sang along together on the busy road leading to Rome. It hit me about halfway up that this was the most fun I’d had on my entire trip. If there’s one piece of advice I have is, it’s this. Living “the dream” is cool, but absolutely nothing can come close to spending time with friends and family. I’d love to live my dream in Rome one day, but for now, I have childhood friends at home I can sing in the car with.