Play Time (1967) +

A visually stunning comic opus. Jacques Tati constructs a visual landscape -- a high modern urban maze in which his character Monsieur Hulot gets variously lost. At the same time, Tati stages the parallel story of a warm American tourist who seems as at ease within this urbanized modernity as Hulot seems flummoxed. The film is meditative in tone, even as it executes some of the most intricate and subtle comic set pieces ever stage in cinema. The palette is all steel grey, with slight variations toward the green, blue and gold, so that the occasional splash of color (the blue of the elusive businessman's blazer, the american tourists's hats, the blue of a workman's uniform) becomes almost radiant. The fabricated landscape is loaded with giant sheets of glass -- doors, walls, windows -- which simultaneously force a curious lack of privacy even as they install a new kind of estrangement. The opening sequences in the modern office building and department store are enthralling but it's not until the extended sequence in the new restaurant that the film really becomes satisfying. There's a concentrated chaos in the restaurant, which permits a kind of gratification as we follow the vast array of running gags through the skein of confusion and chaos. I've never seen a film like Tatis's Play Time. It's poignant. It's literate. It's a visual feast. It's a tough go. Yet, for the most part, it's gratifying. I think what becomes most impressive about the film, at this historical moment, is that its an utter fabrication. Most of these sets -- interior and exterior -- were built on a soundstage, to Tati's precise specification. So, as such, none of them are "real" yet neither are they CGI. There's an old school artistry to the physical comedy, I guess, when we acknowledge that this is a built environment constructed solely for the purpose of making this elaborate series of refined visual jokes. As such, I guess, I'm fundamentally impressed by this as a triumph high-modern (and also post-modern) bit of physical comedy, of prop comedy, and of comedic commentary on contemporary society. I don't have much original insight on the film really. Most of my thoughts run the conventional routes -- this bit worked better for me than that; I'd love to see it in its intended 70mm; talk about redefining what masterpiece means -- but I am really glad to have seen the film, and I suspect the bits will haunt me for some time. (And I can't believe Professor Weinstein didn't show this in City and the Arts; must not have been available or something.) But an amazing piece of cinema, the kind that broadens your vision of what cinema is capable of, even/especially without the ornamental geegaws provided by cgi (though his use of 70mm does anchor this in the history of "new" cinematic technology in important ways). Anyway. Wow.