Midnight In Paris

I viewed the film Midnight In Paris with the mindset of thinking about the things that only film can provide us.

-Films can roll through the items in a room or scene in en route to showing what the main character is looking at.  It can show all the things in the room, in this case the party goers, food and furniture.  Pictures and paintings can only cover a single scene at a single moment in time, but film can cover all that’s happening in the room, in moving time even, documenting change as it happens. 

-Film can show past events and people living and happening in front of us in the present.  This film features many characters that have been long since dead that are “existing” within the “real world” that Owen Wilson’s character lives in.  photographs and paintings can depict characters or locations that either have never existed in our world or no longer exist in our world, but film can present them in juxtaposition with characters perceived to be living in our own time, and present them as living breathing people and environments.  Which is actually pretty cool when you think about it, because you can do whatever you want then and have Abe Lincoln fight Hitler or something.