French auteur Jacques Tati made four films featuring his affably chaotic character, Monsieur Hulot, of which the second and third films are generally regarded as the best. The Boy and I had seen Mon Oncle a few weeks ago and enjoyed it greatly, and so rather enthusiastically caught this 10AM showing of Playtime, the most ambitious film in the series.

Mon Oncle (1956) is a fun satirical look at “modern” life, which despite being made in 1956 has remarkable relevance to today. It’s a charming, wistful love song to the old Paris which, at the time, was being bulldozed to make way for “modern” Paris. I tell people to think of the opening of Up: Not the sadness of it, but the montage quality.

Playtime is not as focused or funny, but what it lacks in humor, it makes up for in scope and aesthetics. In a series of vignettes, we see Monsieur Hulot (who is not in this film as much, as the aging Jacques Tati felt less comfortable playing) trying to meet someone in an office. The office is a series of cubicles that resemble mazes, and the large panes of clear glass make it seem like you’re very close to someone who is still unreachable. Doors, elevators and, of course, modern machinery all serve as foils to this seemingly simple task.

Meanwhile, a busload of American tourists have arrived at the incredibly bland Orly airport, and after fighting their way around a perpetually clogged roundabout, find their way to an exhibition of “the Modern”.

The Eiffel Tower, Sacré-Cœur Basilica and the Arc de Triomphe are seen—but only in the reflected glass of the modern buildings.

One gag is in a tourist agency where posters exhort the viewer to see foreign countries like Spain, Brazil and so on. But all of the classic imagery associated with the locations is obscured by a giant, modern hotel filling most of the poster and identical between every location.

That felt extremely relevant.

Ultimately, it isn’t as gag-oriented and it’s far harder to know where you’re supposed to be looking than previous films. Tati (who plays Hulot as well as directing and writing) felt that close-ups were crude. And anyway, the set is the star of the movie, really.

There is an all-night dance party at a fancy but dysfunctional restaruant that is falling down around everyone’s ears. And Hulot becomes fond of a beautiful American tourist (who can play the piano at a critical juncture) named Barbara. If you look at the charming Barbara’s IMDB credits, you’ll find that she (like many other players in the film) has precisely one credit.

Tati liked to use amateurs.

The Boy and I really enjoyed it, but I personally realized I would have to adjust my expectations. I realized as the movie played out that the comedy was intrinsic, without the steady big laughs of the previous film. The aesthetic was the point, which is kind of ironic because—for all its satirizing of modernity—there’s a look here that favorably recalls Hopper’s Nighthawks.

The apartment living rooms that have giant windows facing the street provide a great set up for gags as the occupants of one apartment look like they’re reacting to things going on in the other. But the whole scene is very cool, and a great many of the negative overtones we might associate with this style of architecture are overwhelmed by the gentility and manners of the French people. (No, really!)

Originally shot in 70mm, Tati refused to provide 35mm prints, limiting his box office prospect (which were already hurt by the relative absence of M. Hulot). To say nothing of its original runtime of two hours and thirty-five minutes. Many cuts were made and Tati shuffled things around trying to find just the right mix. Our version clocked in at two hours and five minutes.

Of all his films, Tati said this one was truly his. He did what he wanted, with his terms, without being pressured by studios.

I don’t have to tell you, probably, that this flopped.

Also, knowing he could never get an airport or city block to let him take over for the weeks needed to shoot this, he built his own. “Tativille” was an ambitious project that Tati meant to be used over and over again. Alas, it was “razed to the ground” when this movie flopped and bankrupted him.

While I was a little disappointed when I realized how different this movie would be, I could easily go see it again now. There is a lot to get here, and I missed out on a lot.

I was talking to a friend (who’s been on a David Lean kick) about this movie, and she sighed and said “I hate…today.”

This isn’t so much a reflection on the quality of Gore Verbinski’s latest joint Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die so much as its character, and more the character of our times. She had watched Brief Encounter, which is intensely human, personal and moral, and it’s a big, jarring jump to a black comedy about the death of humanity, school shootings, and the rise of “fake reality”.

I like Verbinski. Early in his career, it seemed to me that he made a lot out of some thin material: Mousehunt is basically a cartoon about two guys versus a mouse, and is far more entertaining than it should be; The Ring I liked better than the Japanese original; and of course Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl—based on the smash hit amusement park ride?—was a remarkable achievement blending old Hollywood swashbuckler tropes with CGI technology.

It’s probably his best film and very possibly his ruination, as the first two sequels dominated his output in the ’00s with predictably deteriorating returns artistically (if not financially). He had a hit with his quirky CGI Rango—which grossed a little bit less than his flop, The Lone Ranger, showing how weird the movie biz can be sometimes.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die looks to be a flop, too, looking like it may not break $5M in its opening weekend.

As I sat there enjoying this film, I also couldn’t believe that it had gotten made, as it’s a dark comedy—extremely dark—and has not-at-all subtle message the world would prefer to ignore: Devices and social media are robbing us of our humanity. We are being manipulated by various forces into this, and we are also culpable in our own ultimate destruction.

It’s a fun movie.

It’s also, I hesitate to say, a thought-provoking one, and on a lot of levels.

Let’s talk about the fun, first. I’m not going to reveal much about the plot because the first two-thirds of the film is tight, and the way the script by Matthew Robinson (The Invention Of Lying, Bird Box) turns various elements from gag/commentary into genuine plot points is very enjoyable. The characters’ backstory is told in flashbacks, and the first one seems so over-the-top and so social-commentary, until you get to the second flashback, which really gives grounding to the first one.

I don’t know, guys, it’s like someone actually cared about the writing instead of just “Well, it looks cool.” (It does look cool, though.)

The movie opens with Sam Rockwell materializing at Norms , a Los Angeles institution, terrorizing the patrons by looking and sounding like a maniac. He’s from the future and trying to gather a team to—well, not stop the AI being created a mile or so away by a 9-year-old boy, but to deliver safety protocols invented by top scientists in the future.

The opening shot is reminiscent of Strangers on a Train, which I mention because I just saw that picture again last month. We start with a long tracking shot done entirely at waist level, and zoom through the diner in such a way as to see all the dishes being served—and that everyone is on their phone. (I went to an In ‘n’ Out last week, and was somewhat startled to see twenty people in about four parties all staring at their phones. In fairness, half of these were guys at the end of their lunch break waiting for someone to come back from the bathroom, but it was still startling.)

Anyway, Sam Rockwell goosesteps over the tables, smashing everyone’s food and phones, delivering the insane exposition which sets up a two-plus hour chase (with expository flashbacks) as Rockwell (whose character has no name) describes the various ways in which culture goes to hell, ever so gradually over the decades until things just fall apart.

A lot of uncomfortable truths here, but that’s relatively mild.

His team includes of a couple of teachers with romantic issues (Zazie Beets, Joker and Michael Pena, End Of Watch), a possibly crazy mom (Juno Temple, Killer Joe), a legally-distinct-non-Disney party princess (Haley Lu Richardson) with a death wish, as well as a woman who just wanted pie and a man who goes along but isn’t convinced by Rockwell’s story.

Oh, I just realized, this has two of my favorite tropes: taking place all in one night and taking place in a limited area of Los Angeles (see Miracle Mile, which this movie reminds me of greatly, down to starting in an iconic Los Angeles coffee shop).

Anyway, the team has many adventures, and we see Rockwell’s character’s backstory, which shows us a grim future where the world is a wasteland because everyone’s much much “happier” in a virtual reality than the real world.

This is the through-theme, the punchline and the big idea, and it’s pitched directly: I will create a perfect world for humanity, says AI, which is much better than the so-called real one, with all its suffering and loss.

Well, look, Hollywood’s pretty much all-in on this rather Satanic notion so, yeah, I’m surprised the movie got made at all. And the general public is just champing at the bit to live in a virtual cage, so, no, I’m not surprised it’s a flop. It’s also not particularly politically correct. The two main female leads are basket cases. The story brutally mocks school shootings and the monetization of grief.

Rockwell runs around muttering, “Mindfuck. It’s all mindfucks.”

And…yeah. At one point early on I saw “The Cake Is A Lie” scrawled on the wall. This is a line from the video game “Portal”. There’s also an (out of focus) poster of “Portal” on a kid’s bedroom wall.

Unfortunately, I don’t know “Portal” much, but the Boy explained to me a little bit about the plot of “Portal” and “Portal 2” and…look, I’ve already forgotten how they relate, if at all, to the movie.

I wrote a story in the ’80s which was sort of like The Matrix, except not cool, and the main premise was not that humanity had been enslaved by robots, but that humanity had opted for virtual reality to the point that real reality was entirely maintained by (perfectly well-mannered and solicitous) robots. I thought about it a lot watching this and thinking, “Yes, this does seems to be the more likely path than robot overlords.” (I have not completely ruled out robot overlords, however.)

I only bring this up because, in the end, it was not clear to either of us what was real and what was not. There are a number of clues dropped in a number of places suggesting a number of things. The fact that this was a well-made film made these issues interesting to discuss (and the Boy and I did, extensively) rather than annoying. It’s a movie you can go see and debate endlessly.

The music by Geoff Zanelli is on point. During a very Carpenter-esque sequence in a school, I wondered for a moment if they’d brought John Carpenter in to score it. The cinematography by James Whitaker similarly pleased me with the attention to detail and use of actual interesting camerawork instead of just relying on bombast and camera-clichés. People cared, and it shows all the way through.

I said to the Boy, “Hey, a Hollywood movie we liked. Probably the first since Mission Impossible 8.” He responded with, “Hollywood made this?”

So that’s where we are. And while we enjoyed it and enjoyed discussing it afterwards, I can still relate to the whole concept of “I hate…today.”

 

David Lean directed Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Dr. Zhivago (1965) back-to-back, garnering 19 Oscars out of 34 nominations in those years. (By the current IMDB top 250, only the first two even appear on the list, with Dr. Zhivago apparently not reaching the heights of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy—all of which are on the list). These are widely considered three of his top five films. Top four, even.

And then there’s this little gem, Brief Encounter, sitting like Coppola’s The Conversation between masterpieces, easy to overlook when regarding the epics he is known for, and arguably his best film. (I’d be more likely to argue that for The Conversation than this film, granted.)

Clocking in at 86 minutes, it could also be Baby’s First Lean flick, assuming Baby is comfortable with conversations about adultery.

Expanded from a Noel Coward play (by Noel Coward, who gets top billing), this is the story of Laura (Celia Johnson, The Holly and the Ivy, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) and Alec (Trevor Howard, The Third Man, Mutiny on the Bounty—memo to self, I should do a back-to-back review of the 1935 and 1962 “Mutiny”s) who have a chance encounter in a train station in England toward the end of the war. Laura gets a bit of grit in her eye and Alec, a doctor, removes it. No big deal. Perfectly proper, eh, what?

Turns out that the two both spend Thursdays alone in Milford: Her, shopping. Him, doing rounds at a hospital.

They run into each other again, therefore. And this time Alec wants to have lunch next time they’re together.

We all know where this is going, of course. Even they do, as it becomes harder and harder to deny.

The movie is narrated by Laura, who is explaining it to her husband in her head, because he’s the only one who would understand. Of course, she would never tell  him. She begins the narration after the opening scene, which is the end of the movie (narratively). In the next 80 minutes, as we see what leads up to this opening scene, we get this sense of epic-ness as seen in Lean’s much longer films. We’re not the same at the beginning of the movie as at the end. We’ve been through a lot. And this scene, viewed a second time, in full context, feels completely different and much, much darker.

The acting is tremendous, of course. Coward was at the height of his powers, just coming off his smash-hit (banned by the BBC) “Don’t Let’s Be Beastly To The Germans“. His touch here is perfect. His treatment of Alec and Celia is sympathetic without pandering.

While there is tremendous photography going on (by Bob Krasker, who won an Oscar for The Third Man), it’s conventional, almost staid, until the climactic moment when he starts going Dutch, as it were. It’s just one unforgettable shot that supports the entire film and clues the audience to what’s going on, and it’s very Lean-ian in that it maximizes the cinematic quality of what’s going on. It’s not something that could be done in writing or in a play—it requires a moving picture camera to do it at all, and it requires a fine understanding of the medium to do it well.

The editing is tight, as mentioned, by frequent Lean collaborator Jack Harris (The Ladykillers, Billy Budd).

But what we take from this film—the thing we often lament is missing from modern movies—is its humanity. Because everyone is terribly human. Yes, we focus on Laura and Alec, but Myrtle runs the refreshment concession where they first chance to meet, and she’s got a thing going with Fred, who’s sort of train bobby (I’m Californian, I don’t know trains), and this has a surprising amount of depth and sensitivity for what might be mere “comic relief” in other films. And then there’s the busybody, the suspicious friends…the movie lives, in other words. It breathes and feels alive, which makes our characters all the more sympathetic.

I don’t want to hold this up as being representative of all dramas of the era—and certainly, it’s not “Kill Bill” (which appears on the top 250 twice, for both the first movie, and the whole edit)—but it seems like our best work today isn’t even the same species.

Trivia: The scene Alec’s buddy, who innocently lends him the apartment for his potential tryst with Laura, became the inspiration for Billy Wilder’s The Apartment. Classic Wilder inspiration: “What about that guy?” I remember a Widler interview on “60 Minutes” where they asked him what movie he hadn’t made that he wanted to, and it was a Crusades story, where all the men in the village had run off to fight for the Holy Land, but before they left, they put all their women in chastity belts. Charlton Heston would play the town locksmith.