Playtime [Play Time] (1967)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://1001afilmodyssey.blogspot.co.uk)

Style of comedy that, like Police Squad and the comedies of Robert Altman, requires effort from the audience that is repaid in spades. There are no characters as such here and no-one is favored over any other. The gentle satire here is focused on society as a whole - not on individuals. With recognizable characters, the systemic and intuitional nature of the humor would have been made thoroughly redundant. There is no plot as such - a collection of connected episodes exploring the themes of excessive contemporary bureaucracy, package holidays and the depersonalizing affects of modern life in general.

Technically, this movie looks more expensive than it really is and is all the better for it. An odd fact that given that the film, like that produced by that other comic genius Charles Chaplin - Modern Times - and René CLAIR’s À Nous la Liberté, this critiques the soullessness of modern, Western life and living.

Probably the director Jacques TATI’s greatest work and, even more probably, a masterpiece.

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Perhaps too subtle and too clever comic masterpiece that can never be fully appreciated at a single sitting.

Skating on the thin ice of modern western life, Monsieur Hulot – as you’d expect – manages to find all the cracks. Not a soulless universe but a man made hell of concrete, steel and glass where physical appearance is more important than substance; passive conformity more than genuine self expression. The elegant sterility of these surroundings is contrasted with the occasional flourishes of colour and humanity – especially of the old as compared to the young. An odd mixture of wistfulness and melancholy.

A brilliant exposition of the anti human design aspects of the western built environment and its consequences for our sanity that amuses in almost subliminal ways that will stay with you long after you see it.

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Subtle and clever comedy; requiring multiple viewings for a full appreciation. What you miss within the camera frame, filled with ongoing activity, could make this boring as director Jacques TATI plays with the language and grammar of film – the real playtime here. So pay attention to this democratic farce without film stars that uses aural close-ups instead of visual ones!

Skating on the thin ice of modern Western life, Monsieur Hulot manages to find the cracks. He articulates the common feeling that Western culture has created for itself an alienated and alienating built environment, within which we are trapped by our own cleverness. Not a soulless universe, exactly, but a man made hell of concrete, steel and glass where appearance is more important than substance; passive conformity more valued than genuine self expression. The minimalist and elegant sterility of the surroundings contrasts with flourishes of color and humanity amid the overall gray color scheme – a color film for a black and white world!

Here, unnecessary inventions jostle with each other for our attention: Battery operated brooms, silent doors and spectacles that you do not have to remove to apply makeup! Western cities are shown as identical in a travel agency; rendering the tourism shown here pointless. In a formalist, material culture, what we see is more important than anything else; effectively abolishing privacy because one cannot impress others on ones own; hence the transparent living rooms of the homes in Tativille.

A penetrating exposition of anti human architecture and its consequences for our sanity that amuses in almost subliminal ways that will stay with you long after seeing it. The most brilliant comedy of modern times since Chaplin’s Modern Times with difficult to use labor saving devices; citizens into nothing more than consumers; thoughts divorced from emotions; theory from practice. All the minor pains of modern, technology driven life that can so easily add up to one big pain. Given that everything here is for show, it is hardly surprising that the whole lot climactically disintegrates as the human element supposedly fails the designers’ dreams of a planned society into which people must fit rather than the other way around.

Jacques TATI and Barbara DENNEK give the film its human warmth and values – the general lack of which Hulot hotly criticizes. As with all clever people, one wonders where he gets his ideas from (hyperesthesia, perhaps?), but you are thankful for them.

Copyright © 2013 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.