Recently I watched Jacques Tati's movie which is called “Playtime”. The director ridicules the ideal life in contemporary city where people don’t need curtains even on the first floor.
He showed how the perfectionism in all industries interferes with people's daily lives. For example, there was a moment, when the man might have fallen because the floor was highly polished. Or lost janitor in airport, who tried to find litter, but he cannot.
Also, there are many clearly organized parking places during the whole adventure of the main character. And we can see the example of perfectionism in furniture, which after modifications return its shape back. People find their old friends in a crowd by surprise and lose each other as quickly as they met them. After watching I started to think about everyone’s idealization of their personality and life in reality. Many people try to introduce themselves to other in the best way. Sometime they lie or beautify their tastes or interests. That’s why, finding of important and real environment seems too complicated for them. Besides, It’s too energy-consuming when you think about the ”right life”.
As for me, the most essential in this movie is the whole, personal town near the Paris, which was built by Tati. It describes extremely strong author’s inspiration and motivation. Also, it gave to Director the film with the minimum of verbal component for sharing his ideas with audience.
From the first five minutes of film, you can mention the huge amount of metal, glass and steel, clean rooms and corridors, streets without rubbish and almost identical people in grey or black coats. In addition, author doesn’t show differences between people with the help of clothes, but he uses evanescent phrases. Scene in the airport let us notice how does perspective can intensify and change the narration. It allocates role of secondary characters.
The colour palette in this film is interesting director’s decision. The general colour is grey, but Jacques added accent objects or characters. He used only calm shades. Even beige became bright in grey mass. Moreover, there are ways to designate some people by dressing them up in expensive clothes.
In my opinion, there are fore most important Tati’s tools of reflection his deep thoughts, extraordinary imagination and attentive worldview. There are forms, shapes, colours and the last, but not the least are sounds and reflections.
He uses forms with the right angles, because it is symbol of orderliness, accuracy and intelligence. We can see it in the way of skyscrapers location. They are all have one geometrical shape and go in perspective back-to-back.
It should be noted, that he changes shapes of different objects for giving them other function. For example, the glass pieces from broken restaurant door is using like an ice; after ruining that door, a man do a pantomime with the door handle, he imagines that he opens the real door.
Obviously, reflection is really attractive way of communication with viewers for Tati. He resorts to this method several times during the movie. Even Mr. Hulot, Tati's alter ego, when he runs between the exhibition corners and searches a director of some company, he starts to confuse because the reflection hinder to understand where is reality.
At last, the main feature of Tati’s style is sounds. The brightest scene when the main character and a man waiting the director, they sit on the armchairs and “talking” with the sounds of chairs. Or people’s sighs when they reflect in the mirror which in turn is washed by man.
To sum it up, Tati created a film where everyone can notice funny moments and rethink principals of life. Hulot is not the ideal person with the traits of clumsy man, who create a chaos between perfect people. However, he is the happies person because he can feel real emotions without pretence.
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