As a film, Jacques Tati's PlayTime (1967) is rightly considered as one of the best films ever made. A satire of hyperconsumerism and corporate takeover of life that is more relevant than ever.
At the time, this wasn't the case, with the film losing money, which would in turn bankrupted Tati.
It is however, a new experience in the world of films, and fiction in general. Tati had intended the film to be something new, to be something he called a “spectacle cinématographique”, something similar to live theatre. However, what most people do not know is that PlayTime (1967) is more than a film —— it's atheme park.
Welcome to TatiVille. Enjoy your disorientation and reality!
A Life time comes and goes..
And my friend the rose
Told me this morning
At dawn I was born,
Baptized with the dew,
I blossomed.
Happy and in love
The sun shined through
And by the night time I was old
My friend the rose told me that time destroys everything. Time will bring things to irreversible decay, and all we can see is who will leave first, and what will be left behind.
Throughout 2020 and 2021, a lot of us are spending our time in home, adjusting an isolated, repetitive new life away from sickness.
What if Isolation and Repetition brings comfort? And what if those are the only escape from hard times?
Our everyday lives are often repetitive that we sometimes find crushingly boring, meaningless, and less-than-alive. It is a cycle that keeps repeating. A seamless system of repetitions.
Wake up, eat, go to work, go home, shower, eat, sleep.
Such is life under capitalism.
But at times, repetition is the only comfort we can have in a troubled world. In a world where we cannot control a lot of things to our comfort, the controlled repetition of everyday life can be an escape from the uncontrollable, constantly-changing external lives of us.
Dreariness and Repetition is a thing we can comfortably expect and control. It’s easy to handle workdays without new things, because we know what will happen, and we know how we will handle it.
We have autonomy in repetition. We have freedom in isolation. Isolation brings us comfort.
But what if the repetition breaks down? Will we be glad or angry
shunji iwai is an independent japanese filmmaker specializing in dreamy melancholia. despite that, he has worked in many genres, although he is most popular for directing the coming-of-age hits all about lily chou-chou (2001) and hana & alice (2004).
these are several short musings on his films in one post.
is the internet truly artificial when real life is so artificial that it becomes an awaking dream? when real life no longer needs us, can we turn to the internet to find others who need us?
shunji iwai asks those questions in his 3-hour dreamy epic a bride for rip van winkle (2016), through the nomadic journey of a woman in the artficial city of tokyo...and her attempts bring realness in her life through internet.
This is it. 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie that changed movies in the Anglosphere forever. A movie that shows the evolution of the medium itself, and shows what the medium can do.
Reception of Stanley Kubrick (Star of the City) Final Act:A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
My eyes, buttered and wide open, have seen it all to the end.
This is a Steven Spielberg film. The sensibilities, feel, and philosophy is all Spielberg. But it also all Kubrick.
This is the final send-off from a futurist who envisioned a future. 2001: A Space Odyssey imagines a future of mechanical humanity from 1968 lens, A.I imagines a future of human mechanism from 2001 lens.
Reception of Stanley Kubrick (Star of the City) Act 8:Lolita (1962)
That was....a lot. For starters, I read the book back in highschool and actually planned to see this adaptation, but never gotten around to. Took me 6 years but I guess better late than never?
And yeah, very different from the book. This is less of “Vladimir Nabokov'sLolita” and more of “Stanley Kubrick'sQuilty” (drop your ao3, king stanley!! you're good at making canon-divergent fanfics of books!!!) to me.
Reception of Stanley Kubrick (Star of the City) Act 5:Full Metal Jacket (1987)
People didn't lie, the first part is simply....chef's kiss....perfect. One thing I am beginning to notice about Stanley the Manley is that his comedic skills are pretty good. R. Lee Ermey and Vincent D'Onofrio out-Joker'd the hell out of Modine that it's funny to see 'Joker' being the cringe one in the beginning.
But the second part is where the film shines. It is a good piece of anti-war film. And with that, we say goodbye to our sweethearts....
