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Journalism of Courage
What are we to make of these nostalgia-sodden Academy Awards?
The Oscar nominations this year have been a magnificent jumble of other times and other wonders of looking back with wistfulness,amusement,or something more complex of making way for the old.
Nostos means to return home,algia is longing and nostalgia is a pseudo-Greek word coined by a Swiss doctor,who considered it a curable disease that afflicted soldiers a hypochondria of the heart. By the end of the 20th century,with its violent dislocations and changes,nostalgia was pretty much a permanent condition of the soul. Midnight in Paris was the most direct,simple address to that condition about a young Hollywood hack writing a book about a nostalgia shop owner,who just wants to live in Paris of the 1920s,where Cole Porter partied with the Fitzgeralds,where Hemingway was a friendly blusterer,where Dali and Bunuel argued. These characters themselves long for the belle époque,which in turn,has romantic ideas about the Renaissance. Its a sweet comedy about the inauthenticity of such Golden Age thinking,seeking a past that existed only in narrative,and yet,an ode to the helpless way we return to these fantasies.
