Play Time (1967)

dir. Jacques Tati
writ. Jacques Tati, Jacques Lagrange, additional dialogue by Art Buchwald
feat. Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek

Play Time is a daunting film to approach in writing, a creation too beautiful and sublime to reduce to leaden little words. For good reason and to wonderful effect, the film has no important dialogue. Words are used as filler, to serve a purpose but never for their individual meaning. Tati understands as well as any director the art of showing, not telling, in film and does so masterfully.

Monsieur Hulot leads us through a modern world of gleaming metal and glass, where innovative technology races ahead of the people intended to manipulate it. People who don't adapt to the changing system, find themselves disconnected, even lost, though not without beautiful distractions and the promise of convenience.

Hulot is flummoxed by this world, ever curious but never quite fitting in, constantly stumbling and unable to make his business appointment, though not for lack of effort. Yet he muddles through, finding his way and even managing to reconnect with the man he intended to meet, though more casually, on the street in the evening as the man walks his dog. This nod toward an easygoing, perhaps old-fashioned way of things reappears later in the restaurant. As the newly opened hot spot transforms from a snooty, exclusive resort of the rich to a crumbling gin joint, it becomes warmer, looser and more human.

While one could guess at Tati's intentions, simplifying the film to a criticism of cold modern progress while warmly reminiscent of friendlier, olden ways, his touch is too delicate to assert this claim. Hulot stumbles through the world no matter the setting, and while the advancements intended to improve and expedite life may confound him, they also create new juxtapositions, beautiful and chaotic, into the human struggle. Tati observes all of it with such clarity that it will take any viewer several screenings to pick up on all of the details of his complex, uncertain world.