Nostalgia
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Adriana:
Let's never go back to the '20s!
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Gil:
What are you talking about?
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Adriana:
We should stay here. It's the start of La Belle Époque! It's the greatest, most beautiful era Paris has ever known.
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Gil:
Yeah, but about the '20s, and the Charleston, and the Fitzgeralds, and the Hemingways? I mean, I love those guys.
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Adriana:
But it's the present. It's dull.
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Gil:
Dull? It's not my present. I'm from 2010.
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Adriana:
- What do you mean?
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Gil:
I dropped in on you the same way we're dropping in on the 1890s.
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Adriana:
- You did?
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Gil:
I was trying to escape my present the same way you're trying to escape yours, to a golden age.
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Adriana:
Surely you don't think the '20s are a golden age!
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Gil:
Well, yeah. To me they are.
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Adriana:
But I'm from the '20s, and I'm telling you the golden age is La Belle Époque.
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Gil:
And look at these guys. I mean, to them, their golden age was the Renaissance. You know, they're trade Belle Époque to be painting alongside Titian and Michelangelo. And those guys probably imagined life was a lot better when Kublai Khan was around.
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Adriana:
What are you talking about?
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Gil:
Adriana, if you stay here, and this becomes your present, then, pretty soon, you'll start imagining another time was really your, you know, was really the golden time. That's what the present is. That it's a little unsatisfying, because life's a little unsatisfying.
"I think a woman is equal to a man in courage."
— Hemingway, Midnight in Paris
Midnight in Paris
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Gil:
Were you scared?
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Hemingway:
Of what?
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Gil:
Getting killed?
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Hemingway:
You'll never write well if you're afraid of dying. Do you?
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Gil:
Yeah, I do. I'd say it's probably maybe my greatest fear, actually.
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Hemingway:
Well, that's something all men before you have done. All men will do.
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Gil:
I know. I know.
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Hemingway:
Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?
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Gil:
Actually, my fiancée is pretty sexy.
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Hemingway:
And when you make love to her, you feel true, and beautiful passion, and you, for at least that moment, lose your fear of death.
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Gil:
No. That doesn't happen.
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Hemingway:
I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, or not loving well, which is the same thing. And when the man who is brave and true looks Death squarely in the face like some rhino-hunters I know, or Belmonte, who's truly brave. It is because they love with sufficient passion, to push death out of their minds.
"No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure."
— Ernest Hemingway, Midnight in Paris
"It was a good book because it was an honest book, and that’s what war does to men. And there’s nothing fine and noble about dying in the mud unless you die gracefully. And then it’s not only noble but brave."
— Ernest Hemingway, Midnight in Paris
