‘PlayTime’ {1967}

Jacques Tati’s ‘PlayTime’ {1967} is deprived of a plot. It does not have a story or a hero and the dialogues are hardly audible. Instead it has a series of incidents. It has no central character. Hundreds of people seem to be moving around as if aimlessly.

Mr. Hulot represented by Tati himself seems to have been implanted in the city by accident.

The events take place over a 24-hour period, a single day and evening, followed by a brief period the next morning.

The viewer doesn’t seem to be watching a film but observing several characters throughout the movie. Humanity meanders around bewildered but seemed to have hopes to see another day through a spotlessly clean futuristic city.

Tati envisaged a most imaginative and insane idea: to build a city of his own design, in which he could shoot freely and have absolute control.

So Tati built a colossal set outside Paris. It had an airline terminal, city streets and footpaths, high rise buildings, offices, lampposts and a traffic circle. 

The buildings were made of glass and steel. There are endless corridors, elevators, cubicles and modern gadgets.  

 

Perhaps it inspired Spielberg to build an enormous set of an airline terminal in Tom Hank’s ‘The Terminal’.

 

Tati shot exclusively in long shots without closeups. The viewer is unable to focus on one part of the picture. The background and the foreground are full of various actions and activities. The viewer notices one action but invariable miss several others in a single shot.

Hulot becomes part of the scenery; he disappears for long patches of screen time, seemingly lost in the bustle of the modernized world. But then, this seems to be the purpose for the picture. 

The audience observes a world full of absurdity and meaninglessness in what we have built and keep building up.

With his long stemmed pipe, raincoat and hat, his socks in full view and his pants often too short, the Character Hulot moves about somewhat lost around the city, perplexed and baffled by the  urbanization and modern gadgetry. Jacques Tati’s Hulot as a character can be compared with Charles Chaplin’s Little Tramp.

 

PlayTime looks a lot like Charles Chaplin’s Modern Times (1938). Chaplin poked fun at conveyor belts, the concocted ridiculous feeding machines and the spread of industries and corporate, degrading, demeaning, humiliating, disgracing and alienating human beings. On the other hand, Tati’s PlayTime surveys architecture, transportation, and modern social behavior from a distance, giving the audience a feeling how modernisation and conveniences are futile.

During that time Playtime became the most expensive movie in the history of French Cinema.

There is a need to see the film several times to understand and appreciate the actions.