Trafic (1971) - Directed by Jacques Tati

Jacques Tati made only 6 feature films in his brilliant career, but his cinema is magical, idiosyncratic, and highly inventive. His late career film Trafic, actually his final film released to theaters, is a great capstone and fitting end to a string of films that are incomparable. Tati starred as M. Hulot, a pipe-smoking, umbrella-toting, awkward looking fellow, who seldom looked comfortable with the world, nor the world comfortable with him. He always wore a too-big raincoat that looked balloonish around him, while wearing pants a few sizes too short. M. Hulot's Holiday (1953) concerned the title character's attempts at relaxation at a seaside hotel in Brittany, France. Mon Oncle (1958) saw M. Hulot's attempt to comprehend the latest in technology at a relative's household. Play Time (1967), Tati's most ambitious film, allowed us to watch M. Hulot become literally swallowed by a modern city of steel and glass. In Trafic, M. Hulot is a car designer attempting to get his latest design, a camping car, with his team in tote to the international auto expo in Amsterdam.

Tati's comedy is one of endless sight gags and brilliant timing. There is very little dialogue in the film and that which occurs is mostly side conversation to the action. I found this film to be somewhat more hilarious at times than all his other previous films, if maybe a bit less ambitious. Nonetheless, three brilliant sequences lead to big laughs. M. Hulot attempts to get a large van's tire changed next to the highway, all the while being buzzed in the rump by passing cars. Another inventive scene is where M. Hulot introduces all of his car's gadgets and gizmos at the police station. Perhaps the funniest scene in the film is of a car crash where all the injured parties come stepping out of their cars with aches and pains in different spots, creating a choreography of neck rubbing, back rubbing, and elbow twitching. Watching this scene in particular makes me think of dance choreography for some reason. In fact, one could argue that Tati invented a cinema choreography all his own. No other filmmaker ever worked with the sort of mise-en-scene and comedy that Tati did. Not even Chaplin or Keaton attempted to throw this much into a frame.

Nothing that occurs in Tati's films feels like real life. There is always the sentiment that what we are seeing is exaggerated, like a cartoon played out in live-action. But, he seemed obsessed with making us take stock of what we do in our daily lives and finding the humor contained there. Tati lampooned our social oddities, absurdities, and obsessions. We are always striving for bigger, better, faster and more. Tati seems to always be asking us whether this progress is the best way, whether we truly are improving ourselves, or are we just making things more complicated? Tati was able to take a step back and make us laugh at our ambition and our daily lives through the lens of his camera. Interestingly, at the end of the film, M. Hulot is fired from his job as car designer. It's a dose of bad news at the end of an upbeat film. Tati never made another film featuring M. Hulot, and perhaps he was giving a notice that he would never appear as him again. In fact he never made another feature film, only directing the Swedish TV film, Parade (1974). In my opinion, Trafic is underrated in Tati's cannon and is a perfect send-off for M. Hulot.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) - Directed by Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson's films seem to always balance a fine line between comedy and tragedy. Sometimes they spill over to one side or the other, but they usually remain well balanced. This one is about Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) who in his later years is trying to woo his wife (Anjelica Huston) back and reunite his pathetic kids (Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller) back into the fold.

I think the first half of the film plays more comedy. It's a very particular kind of comedy though. Anderson's actors are always trained at the Bill-Murray-Deadpan-Dry school of acting. Nearly every ounce of emotion is drained from the actor's faces and they deliver every line in a monotone, dry voice. This stone-faced acting can be referenced back to the "The Great Stone Face", Buster Keaton. He acted in his silent films with the driest, most stone-faced expression. Watch a film like The General and tell me there isn't a line drawn to Bill Murray and the others in this film.

What sets up the comedy is a mise-en-scene that is very manicured and perfected by Anderson. Everything about the sets, from the decor, the outfits, the hairstyles seems to add up to a greater purpose. Anderson sets up every shot in this symetrical fashion where he uses the entire frame to present us a picture, complete and an entity unto itself. Often he places several people across the frame in a row, or a single person in the middle of a wideshot. I think this creates an artificial appearance, a doll-house world in a way. So much care is placed to everything in every shot that we can't help but sense the artificiality of the world in which these characters live. It's this doll-house quality that sets up the comedy. But, it's an introverted comedy, not extroverted. Extroverted is The Marx Brothers, Dumb and Dumber. This is something else. Anderson's films remind me of the great Jacques Tati, whose "silent" comedies in the 50's and 60's are remarkable. I say silent in the fact that although sound is employed in the film, it's not dialogue that provides the comedy. It's the mise-en-scene and the actions and coincidences occurring in the scenes that are funny in a very amusing, whimsical way. I remember watching Tati's Play Time at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago several years ago in 70MM. I was awestruck at the massive use of widescreen to fill the frame with the set. Every inch of the frame was used to set-up the comedy and the effect of the whimsy. Tati was clearly a perfectionist in the way he created his artificial world. Anderson is similar in this way and took this "doll-house" approach to the extreme in his next film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Anderson had a large set created of a side-cutout boat where the viewer can see all the rooms in the boat and everyone moving about. I think The Royal Tenenbaums is not quite to this extreme, but it's the way these characters move about within this world that creates both the comedy and the tragedy.

This is also a very self-aware and self-referential film, reminding me of the cinema of the French New Wave, particularly Jean-Luc Godard in films like Breathless, Band of Outsiders, and Masculin, Feminin and also Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating. These are films filled with in-jokes, cinema references, hipster moments of cool, and a pervading sense of self-awareness. That was what the The French New Wave was out to do. Break down the barriers of cinema and create movies for people who knew movies. They wanted to do things their own way and not follow the formulas. Anderson clearly enjoys making movies for people who like movies and doing it his way.



Some other motifs I noticed? One is the contant use of pink and red. It reflects the heart of the film and the emotions of the characters as they wade through the family garbage. At one point, one character actually bleeds his love for another. Everyone is pining for another and several hearts are either broken or will be broken throughout the film. Also there is the theme of the "place of respite". Characters retreat to closets, bathrooms, and even tents in order gain some peaceful moments away from the chaotic family dynamic. During the second half of the film, the tragedy comes more to the forefront and there's a pervading sense of melancholy. It's not like it turns on a dime, but the film does switch over midway through and changes tone.

I really love Wes Anderson's movies. I don't think any actor/actress will ever win an award in any of his films, but it's his sense of direction that I love to submit to. There's a sense that he has complete control of what his film is doing and where it's going.