I just watched Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle, which was great. Tati is a very refined and humanistic director. He pays very close attention to the details and inner workings of everyday events only to reveal the complexity and multiple perspectives that something as simple as walking down a street can have. It helps that we are often thrown into situations and places we are not used to, but some people are born fumblers.
One such fumbler is Tati's creation, Mr. Hulot, whom he plays. Hulot is a warm, gentle spirit that is always unknowingly causing harmless mischief around himself just by being so clueless. He is an old fashioned gentleman, someone who is more perplexed than excited at our increasingly mechanized world.
The first Hulot film I saw, M. Hulot's Holiday, didn't have much to do with the technology aspect. It was just Hulot dilly-dallying through his vacation. I then jumped headlong into Play Time (pictured), which is clearly his masterpiece, and one of my favorites.
But before his opus that would eventually bankrupt him and essentially ruin his career, came Mon Oncle. This analyzes Hulot's sister and her stuffy husband and their confined son. They aren't bad people, they are just superficial and sterile. They exist to show off their fancy fountains and high tech kitchens. Hulot clearly does not fit in, but he connects with their boy, who is more for enjoying life than tiptoeing around it.
Play Time takes these ideas of technology as hindrance instead of convenience and lack of connection due to rampant consumerism and multiplies it ten fold, and to much funnier results. I can see most people just chuckling at Play Time, but I laughed out loud. And quite often. It was shot using a super wide frame, and every inch of it is packed full of sight gags and insanely layered nuances of subtle intertwining observations. Character development and common story arcs are thrown out for more intricate studies of human behavior amidst endless pane glass windows and slickly polished floors.
Hulot and an American tourist emerge as the two main characters, but really the main characters are all of the identical landscapes. The people just so happen to be there, too. The way it was shot, with no close ups, or anything even approaching one, is at first very cold and bizarre looking, but you slowly realize that Tati is simply letting you in on the joke. It is only once you get in too close that you can't see the cosmic proportions that mild events influence.
So these two people don't end up having an affair. They just have a connection. They share a nice night out. Hulot buys the woman a gift, and she gets back on her tour bus. There are no grand statements being made, actually there are, but that's just it, the grand statements are the small encounters and moments of connection.
Play Time is a truly optimistic film because it portrays the common decency and goodness of the everyday person even when pitted against all of the dehumanizing horrors of the modern world. Those horrors aren't so horrific when a good hearted person encounters them.
M. Hulot's Holiday 2.5/5, Mon Oncle 3/5, Play Time 5/5
