Playtime

This is not a movie, it's art captured in film!

Sometimes it's hard to watch and understand films from another time, but Playtime is a completely different concept and worth watching, but if you're expecting the standard "good story" style of 99% films today, you won't find it here, and should probably refrain.

It's a film to be watched many times, like a painting hanging on the wall. Every time you watch it, a different detail will come up, a different story will appear, and every scene is just there to tell you things. It's up to each one to interpret them and they can be as boring, interesting, funny or sad as you want.

It's also a nice movie to watch with other people: each one will laugh and react at different things. It's funny to interact and try to "recreate" the entire action.

Finally, I agree with people saying that it should be watched on a big screen with high quality. There's so much detail in the shots that you will miss a lot if you don't have the right setup. I would say FullHD is the minimum acceptable, along with a big screen.

This is the first Tati film I've seen, but I've heard quite a lot about him. I saw the 70mm reprint with high expectations and was not disappointed.

This is a movie that leads the viewer where it feels like going. It has it's own rhythm and path. Just as circumstance beyond Mr. Hulot's control takes him wherever he may go, the camera seems to follow the same kind of path. The viewer doesn't know where it's going, and the viewer doesn't know where exactly it wants to go. The great thing about this movie is that it doesn't follow Mr. Hulot exclusively. The camera behaves the same way without needing to follow Mr. Hulot. He moves where he goes, the tour group moves where they go, and the camera moves where it may go. The world around them and the viewer dicates it in the most unconscious kind of way.

The first part of the movie is a satire on the inhuman world we've built around us. Mr. Hulot tries to navigate it, but the world won't sit still. Everything moves around without him and he can't find anything. Just like he is moved around, so is the object of his desire, whatever it may be at the moment. But Mr. Hulot doesn't mind, he goes along with it and enjoys it all the way, just like the viewer.

In another Tati movie, Mr. Hulot's Vacation, there is a scene where he's resting on a beach, and his drink floats away with a wave and floats back just as he reaches for it. That's how this movie is. Everything might not exactly go as people hope or plan, but it goes it's own way. Not everything goes as planned, but Mr. Hulot accepts it and so does the viewer. Rather than fight the world around him and force it to do what it wants, he takes joy in looking around and enjoying the ride, and what makes the movie so great is that so does the viewer. You might not know where things are going, but they do what they will and you enjoy watching things unfold.

Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati) curiously wanders around a high-tech Paris, paralleling a trip with a group of American tourists. Meanwhile, a nightclub/restaurant prepares its opening night, but it is still under construction.

"Playtime" is notable for its enormous set, which Tati had built specially for the film, as well as Tati's trademark use of subtle, yet complex visual comedy supported by creative sound effects; dialogue is frequently reduced to the level of background noise.

The office set anticipated the dominance of office cubicle arrangements by some twenty years. The set was redressed for the trade exhibition sequence. Tati wanted the film to be in color but look like it was filmed in black and white. He succeeded.

This is a great film. With or without the plot, with or without the comedy, it is great on the architecture alone. Few films really capture "architecture" in them, with only one other coming to mind: "Metropolis". That is how rare this film is, being the first of its kind in forty years.

I comment 2 years after seeing "Playtime" at the Art Institute of Chicago, an event in which the film was presented in its original 70mm format for the first time since its debut. Over the years it had been cropped and recropped for standard prints and video leaving little of the original magic, which is the sheer SCOPE of this visual marvel.

Absolutely amazing sells "Play" short. The picture was so clear and the sequences so thrilling that I dare say this is Tati's Masterpiece. Apparently, he created an entire 1/5th scale city outside Paris and shot over the course of three years to get this honey in the can, and man-o-man, does it show.

This is the kind of film that reminds a viewer just how standardized modern cinematic narrative has become. Tati exists in an alternate plane of recorded consciousness; I walked out of "Play" as if hallucinating, having fully entered his perspective and adopted his suggestions as my own.

This is a film in balance with the nature of cinema itself; if Frank Lloyd Wright was a director, Tati would be his disciple: Tati's cinematic interpretations are in natural proportion to the distinctive elements of film. Visual dominance, sound hyperbarically in support of the image rhythm, help me I'm hallucinating again-thanks Jaques...

Don't miss this one, but don't see it in any other format than a special 70mm screening. Somebody put a screening together!!!

You need to understand one thing. Playtime isn't a movie. It is a painting. A moving painting. Therefore you should see it as such and not as a movie.

Some people say it's not funny despite being classified as a comedy. And they would be correct if it was a movie. It's not. But among comedy paintings it might be the funniest one.

I wasn't amused during watching it. And you most likely won't be as well. Because paintings aren't amusing/funny/entertaining. Paintings serve a different purpose. Art serves a different purpose.

So if your favourite movie is from Marvel or any other mainstream studio, stay away from Playtime. It isn't for you. You won't enjoy it.

If you enjoy art museums give it a shot. You might like it.