delightful

John, I do not think you are entirely wrong on your point about Allen's references in Midnight in Paris. They are easy. Perhaps this is a place where I part from Jeffery and Jason and agree more with you. This is not a "thinking" movie - at least not like Meek's Cutoff. In this sort of comparison, Allen loses. If you recall, I called Midnight "delightful." I'd enjoy it late-night when I want something charming to watch. While it helps to have some background knowledge and similar interests as Allen (luckily I do and enjoyed the idea of going back to the time when all those creative people were living in Paris, though I might have wanted to wait another 10 or so years and hit the Paris of Henry Miller et al.), it is not required to enjoy the movie. Maybe a person who doesn't get some of these references won't enjoy it as "fully" as others, who knows?  I like that it works on those two different levels. Yes, it leads the audience in a certain direction. But a lot of movies to that. Hell, all lot of great stories rely on common characterizations and tropes. 

The positive that we see in Gil is that he is "us." We have all been in situation or a period in our life where we wished things were different. From the beginning Gil is the underdog, the romantic, the guy fighting the loss of passion in life (of course, how would we see him if the film began at his home in Malibu where he makes a lot of money writing film scripts?). I have no problem with Allen setting him up like this. I have watched plenty of movies where I knew what I was supposed to think from the very beginning. Sometimes I like them, sometimes I don't. In this case, I did. 

I think Jason's point about the moral truth of the film, viz "enjoy the present because the past had problems too," is just, in a way, a happy accident for Allen. It's a pretty reductive theme to base a film upon and though there is truth to it, Allen is probably more interested in what he does in other parts of the film. That said, I don't need my art to contain moral truths (I'm going to avoid the conversation about the difference between moral and ordinary truth for now). Sometimes I like a story because it's just a good story. 

The spoken word artist Rives talked about this briefly during a performance a few years ago by telling a story. Go to this page, scroll to the very bottom and watch the video. The part I am talking about begins around the 14:20 mark. 

I'm home reading and listening to music all evening. I'll try to respond to posts as quickly as I can for the rest of the day.