PLAYTIME (112)

The Film: Playtime (112)
The Director: Jacques Tati (M. Hulot's Holiday (110), Mon Oncle (111))

What It Is:  The most ambitious, in my humble opinion, of Tati's M. Hulot Criterion-represented trifecta, Playtime (112) is yet another foray in to the bumbling bachelor's interactions with an incredibly modern France.  This go around finds M. Hulot courting a young tourist amongst technology fairs, imploding restaurants and so much more.  Quite honestly brilliant.

A Lil' Bit Of History: This is only Tati's fourth film as a director (he only made five) and it took nearly three years to shoot.  The film was shot on a massive, custom built sound stage (deemed 'Tativille') on an equally massive 70mm camera.  It's release drew critical praise, but financially it struggled to make back the enormous production costs Tati had accrued.

A Lil' Bit More History: To save money on the film, as Tati had invested a substantial bit of his own cashola in to the film, many of the background sets are actually just enormous photos.

The Expectation: Brilliance, exponentially compounding brilliance.

The Experience: It's been a sort of wild week of film, what with Mon Oncle (111) sliding down the hatch last week, House this weekend, and then a madcap rendezvous with this fantastic film over the course of the last three days.  I've taken to early morning film watching, with the Criterion Conquistador snoozing besides me, and after a failed attempt to work this morning, I came back and blissfully slipped in to Tativille and all that it entailed.

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1.  Stunning

Over the course of the last month of Tati immersion, I've found myself more and more drawn to the director's ability to imbue scenes full of extras and set pieces with a sort of lonely sparseness.  Tati, in a gentle way, was at war with the idea of creeping modernity, and in each of his films, especially Mon Oncle (111) and this film, the scenes of hustle and bustle are projected as insincere, almost draining.  Yet Playtime (112), amongst it's subtle humor and sadness, is a stunning display of monochromatics.  Grey, black and white dominate most of the film, and my oh my, does Tati do a brilliant job of painting a stunning visage of a 1960s-style automated future.  The opening scene in an airport almost choked me up it was so attractive, and the film just snowballs in terms of cinematography from that point forth.  Tati's been referred to as a master of 'mise-en-scene' and Playtime (112) certainly proves that.

2.  Hulot as a character, not a lead.

Before doing any research on the film, you'll watch Playtime (112) and scratch your head, briefly, wondering where Tati's M. Hulot actually is.  The film, amazing nonetheless, is decidedly lacking M. Hulot. The trenchcoated gentlemen appearing infrequently and for only short intervals.  Though the film doesn't suffer a lick from his absence, there is reason to Tati's Hulot-less madness: he was tired of the character.  By the time Playtime (112) rolled around, Tati was more interested in lambasting the modern France he lived in than starring in the films he made.  The character of M. Hulot was so popular in France though, that he couldn't disconnect completely without losing a sizable bit of his audience.  Thus, Playtime (112) appears to be a Hulot film, but truthfully he's just another part of the crowd.  Luckily, Tati's films have always relied on a sort of communal feel, where Hulot exists as a important part, a softly lobbed pipe bomb, but never dominates the film.  His fleeting appearance in this film seem only a part of the general malaise towards city life and all its abysmal traits.

3.  Hulot's lacking pt. 2

That said, even if Tati pulled his beloved character to focus more on his true love - directing - Hulot's disappearance in the film seems to fit right at home in the Hulot-quartet (the final film being Trafic (439)).  Through each film we learn more about the character of M. Hulot (his family, his jobs, his aversion to technology) and in each film we're pulled more and more in to the modern world Tati creates.  Where M. Hulot's Holiday (110) finds M. Hulot a central character in a beach-side vacation town, Mon Oncle (111) finds him a bumbling uncle in a town slowly being consumed by rampant consumerism, and finally Playtime (112) finds him a wary visitor to a super-modern city.  And each film he's less and less involved in the actual plot, as if Hulot as a character disassociates more and more with the all-consuming advent of technology.  He's just got a pipe, an umbrella and a penchant for comical disaster, and the wild world of chugging cars and shiny glass windows isn't his place.  His bumbling lack of direction never has seemed so poignant, as the big, glowing city nearly swallows him up.

4.  Big, big, and bigger.

Tati literally built a city for this film and it's not even the biggest thing about it.  The near forty-minute Royal Garden scene is one of the largest, longest, most impressive set pieces created in the history of film.  With no Hulot in site, we the audience are invited in to the opening night festivities of entirely too-new upscale restaurant.  Everything, everything, quite quickly goes to shit, and the appearance of M. Hulot, an uproarious jazz band and a host of drunkards pushes right over the edge.  It's almost like a giant version of Where's Waldo where each time you look you find a new sight gag taking place, a new character to fixate on, a new explosion to giggle at.  It wanes and grows and swells and fluctuates in a way scenes, let alone films, just don't anymore. 

Last Words: Brilliant.  Mouth-watering.  Stunning. I can't write more about this film.  On a superficial level it's an achievement unequaled today.  Dig deeper though and this is a film rife with deep thoughts on technology, city life, the way we as a society are slowly losing ourselves to machines.  Playtime (112) is a film sixty years ahead of it's time, and anyone with a love for film needs to repeatedly lose themselves in it.

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Criterion Counsel:  Gasping at the Tati-less near future, but excited as hell for whatever might come next.

bird's eye view

A bird's eye view of M. Hulot's ultra-modern abode (think The Jetson's but, well, French) in Mon Oncle (111) done by the painter Jacques Larange, a constant and vastly important collaborator with the late, great Jacques Tati.

There's a fantastic article about the collaborative process between the two men up on David Bordwell's blog.  A perusal is highly recommended.

The Screener, pt. 1.

Public screenings are funny things.  I imagined, when I first started doing this pseudo film-reviewing gig screeners would be private affairs filled with hirsute intellectuals debating the pros and cons of late Kurosawa and the like.  I imagined angered stares when cell-phones rang, the gentle sound of pen scratching note-paper, and the scent of pensive viewing permeating the air. 

I was exceptionally wrong.  Public screenings are chaotic in nature.  Various outlets (radio stations, blogs, production companies, etc.) advertise for screeners of their films in a variety of ways: ticket giveaways, flyering, free passes to the public, etc.  There's never a mention in any of these advertising forms of the fact that theaters have limited seats and in terms of early screenings, nearly half of those limited seats are reserved for press.  Thus the mob that arrives hungry for free cinema, is always, much to their surprise only partially allowed in.  Even those "lucky" film-goers released in to the cinema, are then faced with a selection of seats abysmal to say the least.  The press section of a public screener is almost the entire middle of the theater.  A hefty chunk of the center section is plastered with obnoxious red "Reserved Section" signs, forcing the lovers of free film in to tight sections close to the screen or in the far back of the cinema. 

Almost always, every single time, there's anger about the press section.  Loaded down with popcorn and candy, the public always attempts to just circumvent the various Promotions people and plop themselves down in the prime seats ten rows back, center.  And almost always, said Promotions people appear out of nowhere to redirect them to some tiny nook.  The early moments before any of these screenings always seem anxiety-charged, with people looming on the edges waiting for the chance to drop themselves in to a seat once reserved for press, or angrily espousing their hatred of the privilege inherent in the reserved seating.  I find myself half-amused by the proceedings, hunkered down in my gated community, waiting to watch the newest blockbuster early.  At times though I'm worried, "Are these free-cinema loving fans going to take out their misguided anger on we who've been giving the opportunity to enjoy the center seats?"  All of sudden I feel upper class, I feel as if I've got something someone else isn't allowed, and quite honestly, it makes me feel a little jumpy.

My worry, in the moments before the film starts, is that the always raucous screener crowd will be unable to contain their excitement during the film and I'll have to silently curse the public throughout, distracting me from my precious movie, and there by running my experience.  Up to now (and Alex claims that this is always true) the screeners have been perfect in their audience participation.  Cellphones have been kept to a minimum, talking has been almost non-existent, and the audience has clearly enjoyed the films whooping and hollering when necessary, gasping when scared.  These screener audiences have been some of the best I've encountered.

I've got a lot to say on this newly experienced screener.  Next time I'll be talking about what I like to call "screener profiling" a curious side-topic to the screener that I find fascinating.

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Criterion Counsel: Today my friends, today I finish M. Hulot's Holiday (109).