A passion project for director (and reticent star) Jacques Tati, who exhausted his network of financial benefactors and most of his personal fortune to see it through, _PlayTime_ is a difficult film to categorize. It’s both a comedy and a commentary, pondering the necessity of cutting-edge comforts by mocking and discrediting them. Tati stars as Monsieur Tulot, a Chaplin-esque character who wanders into a sleek new commercial mega-center seeking... something? Maybe a job? We’re never really sure, and it isn’t important anyway. In pursuit of a supervisor, Tulot grows hopelessly lost in the vast, glass-and-steel confines of the corporate maze. After the better part of a day, he finds his way back out to the street, only to round a corner and re-enter through the residential and entertainment gates. These areas, too, are modern to a fault. Big ideas accomplished as part of some larger, grander plan, but completely dysfunctional in a day-to-day sense.

While much bubbles under the surface, particularly the director’s feelings about a then-recent remodel of downtown Paris, the film employs an extraordinarily light touch. Its plot is simple and fleeting; dialogue a mere afterthought. Most of its focus is dedicated to an onion skin of recurring visual gags that interlace, interact and compound one another. Like an orchestra, revisiting old melodies in a new context, the humor swells and fades. We explore it from fresh angles, enjoy it in different ways, find its influence everywhere. The lack of up-front, traditional storytelling belies the wealth of detail in most every background. Sometimes there are half a dozen funny bits going on at once, and none are front-and-center. A fabulously funny picture, but you’ll need to seek out almost every laugh.

As Tati had full control of the set, he was afforded unusual levels of creative control. This empowered him to insist upon 70mm film stock and to indulge his pickier compositional habits. The end result is a film that looks astonishingly sharp and vibrant, even half a century later. Of course, this nearly cost him everything, as his production ran far over budget and was not immediately well-received. In retrospect, though, what does history really remember? The films that came in on-time and met the investors’ estimates, or those that best captured the creator’s vision? I have no doubts where this one falls. You can’t afford to miss the long, chaotic scene inside a club on opening night.