Jacques Tati/Play Time

Star Trek Next Gen shrink.

I think. I'm strictly TOS myself.

I could easily be projecting other comics' famed private misanthropy onto Tati. For the record I have no idea about his actual self or life. But his innocence, as Hulot, seems less somehow less innocent than Chaplin's as The Tramp. It's more polemical. It'd innocence as intransigence against an ultra-sexualised society that shows every sign of worsening etc. I get the impression that he really passionately hates the sort of people who are the boy's parents in Mon Oncle, and hates the society that produced them, and feels they are so ridiculous as to be beyond hope.

Re: the Illusionist eek it's too bad to hear that you can see "why it was never made".. Still hoping for good things. But you know that Tati was completely bankrupted by Playtime. That may have played a bigger part. He hadn't been blessed with generous investors in many years.

Oh I definitely see that, I don't disagree. I was actually kind of drunk when I posted that @_@.

Re: the Illusionist eek it's too bad to hear that you can see "why it was never made".. Still hoping for good things.

Oh yeah it's great, maybe not as great as Belleville Rendezvous but still pretty amazing. It just wouldn't have been a commercial success if Tati had made it is what I meant, it's too bitter and downbeat.

Liked The Illusionist (Christmas in US limited release). As you can see 'Tatischeff' has the look, though only a few incidences of Hulotesque slapstick:

http://www.sonyclassics.com/images/stills-fullsize/theillusionist-8.jpg

just NY/LA to start.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/theillusionist/

Looks nice!

The 'lighting' of the scenes throughout is amazing.

Interesting coincidence re: this bump. Just was reading about how they'll be playing a 70mm print of this soon, and realized that this was that Jacques Tati movie I'd heard about and wanted to see but didn't remember the name of. Tickets will probably be expensive so it's probably not going to happen, but I'll be sure to take out the DVD at least.

really, it's SO much more impressive in a theatre

I should have mentioned by "this" I meant Playtime. Nevertheless, tickets to it are much less expensive than I thought. It's also playing from Dec. 23rd on, which is good because as a non-Christian Christmas is one of the great default movie-going days of the year anyways. And yeah, 70mm print, sweet.

critical roundup for The Illusionist (2nd half of the page):

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/2684

rly want to see that

Fortuitous thread bump! Just saw Playtime for the first time (70mm print) just some hours ago. It was, good, I suppose.

a 70mm print is also running at reopening of NYC's Amer Mus of the Moving Image (in Astoria) next month.

trying to find London info about this :(

iMdB says it opened in the UK in August. (see Matt #2 above)

They're showing it here Feb. 4. I can't wait!

why Rosenbaum can't write about The Illusionist:

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=24181

good lord I can't make it through that entire letter the grandson sent to ebert complaining about everything.

thing runs like 40 pages. "i have grievances and i wish to tell you about them in the form of this book which has so far failed to find a publisher." and i'm sorry, but ffs, this shit happened nearly 70 years ago. it's possible that the wound still stings, but grandson's obsession w/ this ancient wrong done to his mother, while understandable, doesn't interest me all that much.

exactly, no one needs to care outside of the family.

so no other Americans have seen this?

we keep putting it off. prolly this weekend...

i find it strange how uncurious/dismissive you guys are about the backstory linked above. maybe you just love this boring pretentious director too much to interface with his monstrous nature

good point u dick

Please, is name-calling necessary :'(

artist ppl like is kind of an asshole, film at 11

So nobody finds it interesting at all? I'm not saying he needs to be raked over the coals, just that it's an interesting story. I don't think anyone on here would claim that the details of Roman Polanski's life aren't worth knowing because, hey, artists are assholes - y'know?

Hey, it's Tati's birthday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_92Cm8gl7Ls&feature=share

With his films, I pretty much watch the backgrounds the whole time.

http://patrixurban.tumblr.com/post/27772525541/iznogoodgood-jacques-tati-marlon-brando-on

both doormen (the one with the buzzers and the one with the detached handle) kill me

the one with the buzzers = one of my favorite moments in the movies, ever.

funny thing is i was expecting a chekhov-style gun-firing what with the amount of time they lingered on the buzzers. but no - only once!

This was such an ordeal for me. Glad I saw it in a theatre--it would have taken me a week to get through it at home.

I would happily watch this film over and over for a week, oh for the spare time to accomplish this project

I know people love it--not trying to provoke anyone. I just didn't get it; didn't laugh once. I was prepared for what I knew would be a droll/whimsical tone, but even on that level, I didn't find it remotely funny. (I thought of a scene in The Graduate at one point, which was also '67: the part where Hoffman's left holding the door for half the wedding party. To me, that's much funnier than anything here.) And the Hulot character annoyed me intensely. I wasn't sure...of anything--who he was, why he was there, why he never talked (until all of a sudden, for no reason that I could tell, he did). I don't mean to be cruel, but I find Hoffman in Rain Man funnier. I got the doing-battle-with-modernity theme, and I guess that's kind of interesting, and I liked some of the cinematography, and found the main woman very attractive. But I won't be working backwards to the earlier films.

clears the decks for paul ryan interviews

(I thought of a scene in The Graduate at one point, which was also '67: the part where Hoffman's left holding the door for half the wedding party. To me, that's much funnier than anything here.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKY0FsUEMyw

If I like something, or don't like something, I try to explain why in a fairly straightforward manner. If either of you guys would care to do the same, like other people do upthread, that'd be great. Otherwise, I don't know how to respond.

I guess, as with Keaton, Tati is more about astonishment than laughter to me.

yeah, your post makes it sound like you came into it looking for "laffs"; recipe for disappointment imo

would kill to see this in the cinema :(

same! every few months i google it to see if theres a screening coming up, never any luck

to be fair there IS something strange and imo verging on creepy about hulot; he is someone who has wilfully stunted himself, refused to enter the world of adulthood (yet smokes a pipe!); he seems to want to inhabit the sort of character built by chaplin but doesn't have the weightlessness of chaplin, or the grace, which reinforces the overt message of a man out of sync with the world with another message: that he is even out of sync with himself, of the inevitability of adulthood.

clemenza i think often we like or don't like things based on their entry vectors into an existing grid of expectations. this movie in particular has been lionized to such an extent that i don't blame you at all for having a bit of an arms-folded, "ok, impress me" POV when you sat down to watch it. though i think few films can stand up to this sort of expectation, this one does particularly poorly by most metrics. it drags in the middle and at the end. for a "funny" movie it has precious few belly laughs. it is so completely its own animal. for me, one of the things i value about it is that it requires me to do work that ends up being pleasurable - work to clear my own preconceptions of what sorts of things movies should do, work to notice background details, work to pay attention to the soundtrack; but all this work may be dipped into and out of, a bit like a baseball game where you can just let your mind drift for awhile, taking in ancillary sights and sounds and only snapping focus onto the main action when the crowd yells.

If I like something, or don't like something, I try to explain why in a fairly straightforward manner.

Basic.

it's not the expectation of funniness that's the problem w/r/t tati and particularly this film. whether i sat down expecting to be impressed or expecting to laugh i'd just wind up, as i always do with him, as a tight little ball of anxiety expanding to pure hatred until the point where i just have to switch it off because it's no good for me. i wouldn't expect it to be funny but it's so completely the opposite of funny to me. if this is proof that it's working then fine but i'll keep it as far away from me as i can.

I also had a poor experience of Tati's supposed masterpiece.

I went to see Playtime after a long absence from my local multiplex, a six-screener. I was disconcerted, upon arrival, to find that the place had been subdivided even further. From the escalator I could see individual viewing cabins, open-topped, stretching to the horizon, all painted the same shade of grey. Each one was occupied by a single viewer watching a single film via a head-mounted audio-visual apparatus.

Wandering around the premises with my umbrella in hand and my hat and coat still on, I was able to observe a peculiar charade taking place. No sooner was a viewer led to a vacant cubicle by a grey-suited hostess (more like an air hostess than a cinema usherette) and fitted with a helmet than a second occupant was surreptitiously ushered in, a typist or junior clerk who sat at a desk beside the oblivious viewer, making telephone calls or typing. It would seem that the cinema business, in itself, was considered by the new Anglo-American management an insufficient source of revenue.

I was soon apprehended by one of the hostesses, who asked me what film I was here to see, then led me to my own cubicle, which was number 12,346. The air-conditioning in this unit was overwhelmingly loud, making the hostess' instructions to me completely inaudible. She had to demonstrate the use of seat-belt, tray table and visor in a kind of dumb-show, by the end of which I had changed my mind about the whole thing. I escaped while her head was buried in the helmet, pausing only to indicate the cubicle to the typist waiting outside.

I now became lost in the featureless warren of grey corridors, punctuated only by sleek security cameras which craned to follow my movements. Since the floor was slippery as ice, these became increasingly erratic, and I found myself slithering around, completely out of control. Yet no matter where I slithered, the security cameras craned their necks to watch, like a flock of storks choreographed by Busby Berkeley.

It was suddenly very silent in the multiplex, and I became conscious -- slumped on the ground -- of three sounds: the ticking of my watch, the beating of my heart, and the sound of the ripping skin of the banana I had produced from my inside pocket and now began to eat. These sounds were so loud that several booth doors opened and angry customers gesticulated at me, waving me away. I waved back in greeting, only to find strong metallic hands gripping my wrists.

A couple of apelike robots escorted me to the emergency fire exit and threw me out onto the helipad (so shiny I could see the Eiffel Tower reflected in it), where a jazz band was playing furiously, welcoming a VIP just then touching down in a helicopter.

"I came here to see some Jacques Tati," I mimed to the tuba player, who was playing a deafening series of farting noises, "but this place isn't what it used to be".

"But have you seen Playtime?" the brass-player mimed back over the din of the arriving helicopter. "It's a brilliant deconstruction of 20th century Taylorist rationality, juxtaposing the modernity of Max Weber's worst nightmares with 70mm vaudeville routines. Great sound design, too!"

The helicopter door opened and Charles de Gaulle himself popped his head out. "Once upon a time there was an old country, wrapped up in habit and caution," he mimed over the din. "We have to transform our old France into a new country and marry her to these times. Are you coming with me?"

I shook my head. "No, Monsieur le President," I mimed. "I'm going..." And I looked around and saw, amongst the cubic office blocks, a windmill. "I'm going to that windmill. That's my France!"

"That's the Moulin Rouge," smiled de Gaulle. "That's where I'm going too. Hop in!"

A+

Tracer Hand: appreciate that you took the time to explain why you love this.

As I say, I had a pretty good idea of what the film's tone would be; I really didn't go into it expecting to laugh out loud (which I don't do all that often at films anyway). The humour in Bill Forsyth's Comfort and Joy operates in the same general sphere, and that I love. I'm not always laughing, but I smile from start to finish--in astonishment, if you will, at how perfect it is. The expectations were there a bit, and that is a problem, but really only as a result of its high finish in the recent S&S poll--I'd been skipping Tati films for 30 years, based upon, as I said in another thread, the sense that he wasn't for me. So unlike other films, I hadn't been waiting forever to see it; more like piqued interest for about two months.

There were 10,000 little bits of business in this. I wasn't astonished, just worn out. I don't know if that requires much analysis beyond the most basic truism of all: humour is a very subjective thing.

well again, i'd say as "humour" it will fail you, there's a huge sadness to it as well. a sadness that verges on condescending at times.

grampsy!! that is tremendous!!!!!

are you Boris Vian????