Trafic

(1971)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://www.movpins.com)

[Traffic]

The usual comic cleverness from Jacques TATI, this time focusing on a car-obsessed Western culture and all the male-oriented automobile gadgets that go with it. As you would expect from any movie starring Monsieur Hulot, the path taken by road traffic never runs smoothly and it is surprising no-one gets killed here given the number of written-off vehicles on display.

The basic joke is that we are more trapped in our cars than we are free to travel. More cars mean more traffic, not more freedom to travel; limiting the possibilities of cars in the way that automobile advertising never admits since such adverts only show cars on lonely roads to pretend that the traffic gridlock shown here is never an issue.

(http://www.bfi.org.uk)

The sense of a technological civilization that ordinary mortals can no longer understand because of its sheer size and complexity informs the implicit longing here for a simple life. This is the common plight of all the great visual comics, among them Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Peter Sellers & Rowan Atkinson. That this life is never achieved is part of the frustration and explains why we empathize with such characters because of that frustration.

The last but not the least of the Hulot movies from a veritable genius.

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