Playtime

Jacques Tati - 1967
Tati uses Often high, very deep compostitions. There are no lines in these Fordian spaces (though Ford is low- and Tati can also be)meeting in distance. The camera moves from from one precise postion to another with often little tracks, very precise, moves in. Each carefully chosen positions allows the visual ephemera to appear, allows Tati's cinema.
Again, Tati is full of set-ups. We also have more than ever returning jokes, my favourite centering around the overseasoned Turbot. These don't have to conclude. One constantly goes 'ah, yes', as one recalls the strand.
Tati's fram employs multiple points of action. Each one is complex, in so far as people living lives, talking to each other, small gestures, small niceties, a world and in short, a life, to see. Yet at the same time the difficulty in fully training the eyes on any one of these points does not necessarilly mean one misses much; this is because the points are not 'actions', just people living, talking, usually presumably banalities (which are the most fasinating, and worthy of study, for the student of life). Each piece deserves study as a point of morality; each deserves to be concentrated on closely. This is what doesn't happen fully, yet to an extent. For this reason I wouldn't call Tati a humanist (not a criticism); he rather wants to create a milleu full of humans, wants to understand group behaviour before individual (that is the way his study goes).
And what an environment is Tati's city, light blue, grey colours, buildings so similar, the classic landmarks only reflections on those endless glass doors and tea towels. The compelling, yet montomous colour palette often uses darker colours, or rather shaed of navy, near its front. And one more thing about this world; you can
see the cardboard cut outs in the background!
This kind of conformity of dress, colour and behaviour is most interesting when we see it mirrored even in Hulot; as well as businessmen there are also multiple Tati's. There is no way to escape the group, the figure of Hulot himself can't be read fully as a romantic outsider.
So many wonderful sequences; T.V. watching, and of course that restaurant scene; really remarkable.