With Playtime
– the 3rd in his 4-film series, following Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday and Mon Oncle, and preceding Trafic –
the mercurial French maverick Jacques Tati created his grandest masterpiece while
also jeopardizing his filmmaking career in the process. In this dazzling and
insanely uncompromising existential and cinematic, Tati concocted a trenchant,
darkly funny and subtly lamenting satire on the absurdist extent of the irrepressible
invasion of technology, urbanization and modernity into our lives. The resulting
work, achieved through elaborately conceived and exorbitantly expensive sets known
as ‘Tativille’ (which caused severe budget overruns and production delays), painted
a dystopian picture of a near-future Paris. The ravishingly photographed film –
shot in muted color palettes and making exquisite use of reflections and visual
deceptions – begins with an extraordinary low-key section with Tati’s indelible
and bemused protagonist, Hulot, trapped in a maze-like, hyper-modernist all-glass
office space trying, in futility, to get in touch with the man (Georges
Montant) he’s come to meet. However that, and a couple of subsequent idiosyncratic
sections apart – wandering across a bizarre Trade Exhibition, and getting
invited into a ludicrously impersonal studio apartment of an old friend – Hulot
became almost a side-character in the fabulous restaurant sequence that comprised
nearly the entire second half. An upscale restaurant, which isn’t really ready
for its opening night, formed the melting pot for all the key characters
introduced in prior sequences – including a wide-eyed tourist (Barbara Dennek) who
wants to capture the real joys of Paris and who Hulot develops a soft spot for –
as it spectacularly falls apart, albeit oblivious to the gregarious and
intoxicated patrons swirling in mad anarchy, and provided for an array of
hilarious and ingenious gags.
p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of the film can be found here.
Director: Jacques Tati
Genre: Comedy/Satire/Avant-Garde Film
Language: French
Country: France
The French visual stylist, satirist and comic
genius Jacques Tati’s memorable film persona Monsieur Hulot – a gentle, eccentric,
gauche, flummoxed, bumbling, perpetually distracted and anachronistic man with
an overcoat, pipe, bent posture and distinctive walk – made his first
appearance in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday,
though its seeds were already there in Jour de Fête. However, it was in Mon Oncle that Tati’s
signature satirizing of an increasingly modernized and impersonal urban milieu,
and associated existential incongruities, reached its most fabulous expression –
in terms of hilarious and undeniably ingenuous gags and set-pieces, as well as
sharp jabs at our getting irrevocably trapped by fancy gadgets, automations, connected
homes and in turn not just being stripped of the little pleasures, but also,
ironically, losing one’s freedom too. Hulot is the titular uncle of Gérard (Alain
Bécourt), a mischievous kid, who lives with his parents – the father (Jean-Pierre
Zola) is a senior executive at a huge firm manufacturing plastic pipes, while
the mother (Adrienne Servantie) is obsessed with their “smart home” – in Villa
Arpel, a hyper-modern, outrageously pretentious and surreal-looking rectangular
concrete-and-glass edifice. The Arpels and their idiosyncratic neighbours’ outlandish
lives formed droll contradictions to the crumbling, absurd-looking house where
Hulot resides and the adjoining chaotic, messy and overcrowded neighbourhood peopled
with quirky, carefree folks – a street sweeper who does everything but that, an
obese grocer whose decrepit car if over-filled with old instruments, street
brawls being settled over drinks in the local tavern, kids having fun by
distracting passers-by, etc. The neurotic irreverence of Hulot, who shares a
heartwarming relation with Gérard, starts putting into disarray the Arpels’ absurdly
meticulous existence, which formed a key tenet of this farcical, colourful and whimsical
gem.
p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.
Director: Jacques Tati
Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Slapstick
Language: French
Country: France
Alfonso Cuarón, who’s made films on diverse
genres – saucy sex comedies (Y Tu Mama Tambien), grim sci-fi dramas (Children
of Men), extravagant space thrillers (Gravity),
etc., had followed similar paths as his famous compadres Del Toro and Iñárritu,
who’d started fabulously in Mexico before being lured by Hollywood. Hence it
was quite delightful to see him go back to his point of origin – as a filmmaker
and as a person – in the ravishingly beautiful and deeply personal
semi-autobiographical film Roma. Shot
with exquisite finesse in visually spellbinding monochrome, the Golden
Lion-winning movie takes us back to the filmmaker’s memories of growing up in
the Colonia Roma neighbourhood in Mexico City during the politically turbulent early-1970s,
and paints a heartwarming love-letter to the housemaid who took care of him and
his siblings during their childhood. The film’s central protagonist is Cleo (Yalitza
Aparicio), a soft-spoken and gentle-natured maid, who, apart from her domestic
responsibilities, also takes care of the 4 boisterous kids of Sofia (Marina de
Tavira), who’s on severe psychological stress on account of her crumbling
marriage. Cleo’s mundane existence, however, faces a jolt when she becomes
pregnant, but her fiancé doesn’t just run out on her, he might even be training
as a member of Los Halcones (The Falcons), a notorious paramilitary group
tasked with the job of repressing protests and demonstrations. The bloody
Corpus Christi massacre – a dark episode in the country’s recent past which occurred
during the Mexican Dirty War – breathtakingly captured in perhaps the movie’s
most memorable set-piece – provided a terrific counterpoint to the storyline’s muted
domesticity. Spectacular long-takes through gently roving cameras, lack of non-diagetic
sounds and naturalistic acting added undeniable technical virtuosity to this
observant, meditative, quietly affecting and atypical Cuarón gem.
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Genre: Semi-Autobiographical Drama/Family Drama
Language: Spanish
Country: Mexico
Fresh off the smashing success of La Dolce Vita, Fellini hit a massive crisis
in the form of “director’s block” – a thing which he captured brilliantly in
the arresting opening (dream) sequence itself of 8 ½, where the
protagonist, Guido (Marcello Mastroianni), is seen stuck in a car amidst a
crazy traffic jam. Fellini took an overtly autobiographical route for this
magnificent venture and possibly his greatest work, and created a grand, deliriously
messy, absurdist, self-referential, modernist and maddening extravaganza which
seamlessly transitioned from the real to the surreal and back, and one of the
most fascinating films on filmmaking itself. Titled so as he’d made 6 feature
films, co-directed a film and made an episode each in 2 anthology films (the
last 3 accounting for half each) – thus making this the his 8 ½-th work, it has
a renowned filmmaker who is beset with his inability to put his next film into
motion. While the bored Guida is stationed at a luxurious hotel in a spa-town,
and is surrounded by a madcap ensemble of oddball characters – his increasingly
frustrated producer, a hilariously biting critic spewing bile on his half-baked
script, a flabbergasted cast awaiting details of their roles, a fawning crowd
of admirers and journalists, his vivacious mistress, his estranged wife (Anouk
Aimée) and an enigmatic woman (Claudio Cardinale) – one also gets intriguing
peeks into his repressed memories, dreams and desires dealing with his Catholic
past, tryst with sexuality, fetishistic desires and encompassing fears.
Accompanied by Nina Rota’s captivating score, fabulous B/W photography, and a
host of dizzying set-pieces and sequences, Fellini filled this blazing
tour-de-force with grotesque imagery, carnivalesque spectacles, self-effacing
humour, and an intensely personal evocation of an artist racked with guilt, doubts
and ennui.
p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of the film can be found here.
Director: Federico Fellini
Genre: Psychological Drama/Social Satire/Showbiz Comedy/Avant-Garde
Language: Italian
Country: Italy
Road movies, partly motivated by US’ sprawling
highway network and neon-lit motels, and partly by the possibilities of
existential meditations, formed the most definitive aspect of Wenders’
filmography. The Wrong Move was the
middle chapter in his famed ‘Road Movie
Trilogy’ – it was preceded by the fascinating Alice in the Cities and was followed by the powerful Kings of the Road. This made-for-TV film
was also the most curious, overly philosophical and experimental of the lot (also
the only one filmed in colour), even if it never reached the breathtaking
beauty of the two that this was sandwiched by, thus making it the least watched
of the trio. Wilhelm (Rüdiger Vogler), the depressive, uncommunicative and
directionless protagonist suffering from a deep sense of existential and
identity crisis, wants to be a writer, but hasn’t managed to translate his
thoughts into something tangible. Realizing that he’s become akin to a frog in
a well, he decides to plunge into a randomly chosen trip across West Germany in
search of meaning and truth. He’s joined in his wanderings by an equally weird
and drifting group of fellow travelers – Therese (Hanna Schygulla), an alluring
but deeply lonely movie actress, Laertes (Hans-Christian Blech), an ageing
hippie-like street musician, Mignon (Nastassja Kinski), a young and mute juggler
of ambiguous sexuality, and Landau (Peter Kean), a sensitive poet of rather
limited talents. The bleak tone, rambling narrative and deliberately disjointed
interactions between the oddball characters, along with the underlying thematic
strand of regrets, ennui, confusion and aimlessness, made this a dense,
aesthetically challenging and confounding watch – striking and off-kilter in
some parts while dry and self-conscious in others.
Director: Wim Wenders
Genre: Drama/Existential Drama/Road Movie
Language: German
Country: Germany
