Midnight in Paris is a film written and directed by Woody Allen and Our Town is a play written by Thornton Wilder. The film tells the story of a screenwriter named Gil who visits Paris with his wife and while roaming the streets at midnight is transported back to his “golden age” of the 1930s. Wilder’s play, on the other hand, tells the story of a small New Hampshire town, Grover’s Corners, focusing on the lives of the Webbs and Gibbses families, specifically George Gibb and Emily Webb. While there are strong differences in the experiences of the characters, the lesson learned in Midnight in Paris and Our Town is very similar. Both Midnight in Paris and Our Town utilize time and space to teach the characters the lesson. In Midnight in Paris, …show more content…
In Midnight in Paris, Gil and Adriana travel even further back to the 1890s, which Adrianna considers to be the “golden age” of Paris. Here, she is offered a job designing ballet costumes and suggests that her and Gil that they stay. It is at this moment that Gil has an epiphany. He learns that people yearning for their “golden age” has been a common thing throughout time. Even though the 1920s may seem perfect to Gil, he realizes no time period is perfect and that everyone has struggles they have to face, such as Zelda Fitzgerald's attempted suicide. He realizes that despite the sentimentality of living in one’s “golden age”, he is better off remaining in the present, learning to accept and appreciate all it has to offer. A similar lesson is taught to Emily when she returns to her twelfth birthday. When she goes back, she is presented the day exactly how she remembers it. She sees her parents and realizes they were once young. Emily also how rushed everybody’s lives were. She tries to get her mother to stop so that she can appreciate how happy everyone was, but is unable to. Seeing how rushed life was excruciates Emily and she returns to the cemetery. Similarly to Gil, this teaches Emily that people should appreciate every moment of their present