Review of PlayTime by Misshapen_Steed

Always hilarious, but overwhelming in its visual imagination and sonic polyphony. I found much of PlayTime to be quite sad, a vision (or rather, a reflection) of a sterile world where everyone dresses exactly the same and culture has been obscured by an imposition of nondescript, useless garbage.

I found the apartment sequence to be deeply moving - a quiet nocturnal image of people partitioned into identical units, mirrors of each other, all watching the same TV program at the same time - an unaware communion, one that could be shared but isn't. And I like my privacy, so yeah I wouldn't want to watch my nightly program in the same room as everyone else who's watching it, that sounds completely fucking miserable, but these aren't private spaces at all. The apartments' huge windows (TV screens in their own right - a clever piece of self-reflexivity) let us see all - the occupants are only allowed the privilege of aural privacy (a beautiful and much needed reprieve from the chaotic audio of pretty much every other segment of the film), something we don't have today.

The way the apartment residents seem to be watching each other, but have actually no clue who/what is behind their shared walls, I find profoundly sad. One of my favorite images in the whole film is framed in such a way that it appears that the images on the TV screen in one apartment are actually being rear projected by a film projector in the nextdoor apartment - both a gesture towards the film's interest in modernity and modern technology and a brilliant visualization of an inability to translate/communicate/connect.

Thankfully, PlayTime does not have a completely bleak view of living in a modern age. As a supposedly high-end dining establishment, which is actually cheaply constructed and moronically designed - a place that prioritizes appearance and affectation over functionality and substance (the appearance of having a door is as good, or perhaps the same, as actually having a door) - completely falls apart on its opening night, people still somehow find a way to enjoy themselves.

And for all of PlayTime's anesthetizing and alienating steely aesthetics, Tati gives so much life to the film through its many, many characters. Strong personalities pierce through the monotone mundanity of the shitty inhuman office buildings. Even in the aforementioned apartment scene, where everyone is separately doing the same thing in the same separate spaces, everyone is having a unique experience. They each have their own lives.

We have not been stamped out just yet. Or at least, we hadn't been in 1967 Paris. I fear things have only gotten so much worse with the internet. It's important to have hope though, the human spirit can endure a lot.