Playtime 4K 1967

This satire on the consumer era could be called dystopian, if Jacques Tati's fantasies had not become reality. Vera Pavlovna's nightmare from the novel What Is to Be Done? about a future where everything is made of glass and metal turned out to be prophetic.

A hollow airport, Parisian skyscrapers, waiting rooms, office labyrinths, employees, meetings, product exhibitions, televisions... American tourists in this world are counted by headcount and alphabetically. The Eiffel Tower can only be seen by chance—reflected in the glass door of a skyscraper. Welcome to a world where the main attraction is a light-up floor brush!
The story of the film's creation is comparable in its destructive power to Coppola's Apocalypse Now. The costs exceeded the initial budget many times over. The long search for a filming location ended with the construction of an entire city, which was then destroyed by a hurricane. The director got into debt. The film turned out to be too long to watch. Not to mention the long downtimes in production caused, for example, by the fact that the clouds refused to move in the direction Tati wanted.

The film is very useful for modern workaholics, shopaholics, and people who simply lack imagination and a sense of humor. Perhaps they will see their world from the outside and wake up.