Play Time

Monday, June 9, 2008

It had been 5 days since I had watched a klassik, I'll admit it. That was a lack of kommitment on my part, and I apologize. Next week, I'm on vacation, and I plan making up for lost time. And I think I deserve some credit (kredit?) for Play Time.

This is the kind of movie I admired a lot more than I enjoyed. I have never seen another movie like it in my life. It is entirely its own beast, and you always have to respect that. This is clearly the work of a very talented filmmaker. It's hard to describe, but everything is filmed in wide or medium shots, in some strange parody of an urban environment, with all sorts of intricately staged action going on. There is not really a main character, or character development, or any dialogue of substance. Lots happens, but there is no clear plot. The "cast" is massive, but almost everyone seems like an extra. Significant action is just as likely to take place in the background as it is in the foreground, and there's so much going on that it's not always clear where you should be looking. It's almost like its Where's Waldo: The Movie or something; you have to study every shot closely to see everything going on. My words aren't doing it justice.

I think it's a comedy. Maybe. Certainly much of it is very clever, and some parts are funny. More often, though, you just marvel at its uniqueness, its strangeness, its vision. Not a lot of laughing. It's brilliant, I think, but not always exactly entertaining. I can't put my finger on it. It's like an aburdist, slapstick silent comedy where instead of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, an entire city is the main character. Not just the inhabitants, but the physical structures themselves. Like it's from God's eye view or something.

Well, I'm glad I saw it, and it's worth seeing again some day, but it's hard to say how much I liked it. Some of it is very funny. Some of it felt tedious and started to drag. Pretty much all of it is exceedingly clever, maybe brilliant, but my appreciation of it was more intellectual than emotional. It's like the dialogue in a Shakespeare comedy, it's well constructed and very clever, but doesn't actually make me laugh.