Anti-Climacus

I enjoyed Woody Allen's new movie, Midnight in Paris, as a definitively lesser work within his canon but still rather enjoyable. I have also discussed it, if briefly, with Matthew Milliner, the author of this blog post on Allen's 'architectural nostalgia' in the film. Though I would never contradict Milliner on his area of expertise, about which he knows far, far more than I do, I believe his interpretation of the film wrt architecture is off. A few points towards that end:

The feature of the buildings that Allen focuses on have one thing in common: they all exist in present-day Paris. There's no nostalgia for the buildings of the past that no longer exist: when the bar Owen Wilson's character meets Ernest Hemingway in turns out to be a laundromat, there's no great sense of loss, just the irony that it's now something else. Nor for the (club?) from the Belle Epoque. Once it's gone, it's out of memory, and not relevant to appreciating Paris for what it is, not what it was.

Within the film itself, there's a significant difference between the places the Rachel McAdams character wants to visit and the ones the Owen Wilson character seems to like. The former wants to go to art museums and famous architectural sites and generally indulge herself in perceived high culture. Owen Wilson's two biggest thrills are walking around Paris at night and the woman who has the Cole Porter(?) records at the market. Perhaps also buying a book at a stall near the Seine. If Wilson is the Woody Allen-perspective character, then one might draw the implication that the important feature of Paris is not its grand cultural accomplishments but the general sense of everyday life.

And then there's the question of 'we.' Milliner wants to draw the implication that 'we' prefer Notre Dame and Sacre-Coeur because they speak to us as human beings in a way that modernist architecture simply can't. In the first place, I'm not sure that's true: The 400 Blows begins with a long and loving shot in which the Eiffel Tower features prominently in the background, as well as lots of anonymous-seeming Paris neighborhoods. I don't see how that speaks any less to what it means to be human, and perhaps more, because these are the things that are supposed to be of interest to a child. In the second place, speaking as an N of 1, I didn't especially care for Notre Dame or Sacre-Coeur when I visited Paris (I preferred St. Denis). But I've also taken just enough art history to know that what I was seeing in all instances was not those buildings as they have existed since the beginning (except Sacre-Coeur, which is relatively new), but old buildings that have the benefit of lots of urban grime to improve their aesthetic by dulling their colors, and the French revolution and subsequent reconstruction of many French churches, Notre Dame included, which improved the overall appearance of those churches by removing what I (uncharitably, admittedly) refer to as the 'tacky crap.' (Also, NB: Allen seems to only be interested in the outside of churches) All of which seems relevant to the question of whether these buildings speak to something essential in the human condition.