Are illusions a negative or positive aspect within one’s life? Set in 2010, the film begins with Gil and his fiancee Inez vacationing within the city of Paris as Gil struggles to finish his first novel. As Gil is walking back to his hotel after dinner one night, he finds himself lost in the streets of Paris. Eventually, as the clocks hit midnight, an antique car pulls up that takes Gil to a bar, where he realizes he has been transported to the 1920s. Gil continues to go to the 1920s each night, where within his illusions he meets many influential writers, musicians, and entertainers that provide him inspiration and wisdom to improve his novel and rethink his life choices. In the film ‘Midnight in Paris’, Woody Allen intends for us to learn that the clash between illusion and reality creates a conflict that gives an individual the opportunity to redefine their reality.
When an individual is given the choice between illusion and reality, it forces them to reflect on one’s life in order to find meaning. Gil has the illusion that his relationship with his fiancee is going well, in reality, Inez has had an affair with Paul and does not truly love Gil. It isn’t until he is faced with true love in his illusion, where he meets and falls in love with Adriana. His relationship causes him to realize what he has been missing in his reality, and in response he breaks off the engagement and decides to move to Paris in order to live in the moment. At the end of the film, he comes in contact with Gabrielle and walks her home, leading the viewer to imagine that he has found true love in his reality. Gil has the illusion that there is a set golden period in time, his illusions take him to his golden period of the 1920s, where he later plans to stay after falling in love with Adriana, thus conflicting his reality in the 21st century. He has no problem with leaving his reality in order to live in an illusion where he is happy until near the end of the movie, where Gil and Adriana end up in Adriana’s golden age of the La Belle Epoch, where she meets Toulouse-Lautrec and decides to stay. He is astonished by the ability for anyone who lives in Paris during the 1920s to long for something else, this is where he comes to the realization that individuals fantasize and feed into illusions, because as he puts it, “The present is always going to seem unsatisfying, because life itself is unsatisfying”, and it is easier to imagine what life could be rather than what it is. In response to this Gil makes the hard decision to face his reality and make the most out of it, because that is all that is real, in doing so seems to have a pair of fresh eyes, walking in the city during the night and taking in all that is his reality. In the end, Gil responds to his conflict between illusion and reality by confronting his reality with his new gained view learned from his illusions in order to better his reality.
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Through personal experience, I have found that individuals develop illusions in order to deal with harsh realities. I believe illusions are good motivators as reality can often be dull and depressing and if all you see is the reality of things you sooner or later lose motivation. I feel as though when I was a kid, along with many others, I had the illusion that everything happened for a reason and that there was karma, while in reality bad things happen to good people all the time and that reality is a series of random events and unpredictable outcomes. One can choose to fall victim to their illusions by blaming misfortunes on the universe or by confronting their reality. After being diagnosed with cancer, I found myself losing common illusions and with it, I saw myself become somewhat of a realist. With this lack of illusions, I began to see reality as rather black and white, and with this came a struggle to find the joy in things. Due to my experiences, I believe balancing the conflict between illusion and reality is essential to living a happy and fulfilling life.
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