#234
Post
by Jonathan S » Fri Mar 15, 2019 10:41 am
I didn't vote at all but here's a slightly abridged version of the programme note I wrote for a theatrical screening in January 1983, shortly after Tati's death. I was already familiar with the film; indeed it was the first Tati I ever saw, as for many years it was the only one available to UK TV (ITV weekend matinees, which now seems incredible!) Like many newbie film graduates, I took a rather severe view of comedies when I wrote the following piece at the age of 21 and I hadn't seen Playtime at all. Trafic now seems to me like a footnote to that much more ambitious film.
"An idiosyncratic film by any standards, Trafic is Tati's satire on the absurdities and dangers of our dependence on the motor vehicle. It's a highly digressive work, de-emphasising narrative, farcical gags and Hulot in favour of quietly observational humour. This ranges from the documentary (candid shots of bored drivers yawning and picking their noses) to the near abstract (a montage of visual patterns formed by road lines and reflections, synchronised to jazz). The film defies categorisation: the tone of (comic) failure and ultimately desolation suggest a parody of a road movie. It's often a gentle, subtle film, yet there are intimations of real danger and violence: a cruel practical joke involving a car wheel and what appears to be a crushed small dog; a life-size plaster bust smashed to bits in a multiple collision.
Hulot's disastrous trip from Paris to the Amsterdam motor show is ironically contrasted with the successful parallel journey by American astronauts to the moon. But Tati also uses this space journey - glimpsed on TV screens at various points - to emphasise our obsession with technology. There's no place for Nature in this new technological world unless it can be artificialized, as in the stage for the camping vehicle at the motor show, composed of cardboard trees and recorded bird sounds. Technology controls our lives to the point of sterile regimentation. As the film ends, pedestrians are forced to walk in geometrical lines between rows of jammed cars. But Tati implies it's only by becoming a pedestrian that we can begin to recover our human values."
(I somewhat disagree with my younger self: for all Tati's satire of technology, his films above all convey his fascination with it - and I suspect he'd have loved the digital age!)