Film Review: Playtime (1967)

Jacques Tati's masterpiece took years to film and even required the construction of massive sets the size of full-scaled buildings. Much of the set becomes the wonderful playground to Tati's version of the modern man and the backdrop to his criticism of modernist architecture and modern society itself.

From the very beginning, with the very first shot of a drab steel skyscraper and then the unfolding of a morning in the quintessential non-space - the airport, Tati presents a world of clinical precision, tidy spaces and the blind pursuit for innovation and modernization.

In the film, a man pays a business visit to one of the anonymous steel buildings. He easily gets lost in the maze of identical office cubicles, extremely clean windows and suited working men. He, with the practical sensibility and emotional accountrements, becomes the foil to the joke that is urban Paris.

In Tati's creation, daily items such as chairs become comical props for the modern man. New innovations are marvelled and sold effortlessly, regardless of their usefulness. Modern communication becomes gibberish. American tourists become the instrument for purpose-less cultural exchange. And in the madcap restaurant scene, Parisians misguided love for fun clashes dramatically with that of efficient, organized society.

Indeed, Paris in the middle of the last century was the birthplace of modernist thinking. Le Corbusier gave birth to the concrete monoliths that were euphemized and copied all around the world. Cultural landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower are sidelined by the drive towards speed, futurism and modernity. Sleek lines, reflective surfaces and machine cogs, as beautiful captured in the mise-en-scene, are heralded as icons of progress and modernization. In the last sequence, where the tour bus becomes trapped in the roundabout, human bodies are effectively plugged into the cogs of modern society.

The beauty of Tati's Playtime is the simplicity of the story and the complexity of the film text. Tati needed no dialogue to tell his story of man's succumbing to the lure of modern living. Long takes and playful framing elicits effectively the drama of a tightly choreographed urban space vis a vis the real world choreography of modern urban life. It is a film that is filled with context and symbolism. It is firmly attuned to its time and space in human history.