Mon Oncle 1958 ★★★★½
“Mon Oncle” displays Tati coming into his own, with content galore, wrapped up in the spirit of playfulness that exudes his entire body of work.
I recall Truffaut dissing this movie as simply pitting Old Paris vs. Modernistic Paris. It does. The two halves are connected by a broken down wall, which the dog pack and Hulot and his nephew transverse a few times.
On one side is Hulot’s sister’s house, a modern hell-hole (my interpretation) so fashionable that probably a year after release it was out of fashion, and now to nearly anybody it appears as absurd futurism as interpreted by the mind of a clown. On the other side is the quaint Parisian neighborhood where the boys play jokes and the adults enjoy each other’s company at the local cafe.
Tati’s “Hulot” is the go-between that connects the two worlds. The meta joke in the movie is that the Modern “connects” everything; three times his sister says that their house is grand because “everything is connected,” plus the Plastac office has a map of the Earth, with connecting lines all over it.
However, Hulot and the dogs connect both worlds, and yet Hulot is the DISCONNECTOR. He snips off the ends of the bushes. He breaks down the gate. He accidentally screws up the long hose made by Plastac. He punctures the line to the fish fountain. And yet, despite all that, the movie has the common movie through-plot of Hulot connecting his nephew to his father, who is jealous of Hulot’s influence on the boy.
Hulot exudes the playfulness of children and the dogpack, both of which run wherever they please, while all of the adults and cars stay within the lines constructed for them. He’s a conscientious clown. While the movie could’ve easily characterized the Modern as “evil,” and while it does downplay it as absurd, Hulot’s touch brings a light absurdity to any environment. It’s Tati’s view of humans, I think, that they are absurdly funny and construct environments so that they can act that out. Even if the Modern world is excessively noisy and gaudy, it’s a playground. With that idea, Tati was ready to make “Playtime” ten years after he works it in “Mon Oncle.”
I think Tati is on the side of quaintness and particularity, versus whatever uniformity the Modern brings to the world. Witness Hulot’s cute apartment in the old three story building — completely eccentric, with the touch of the reflection of the sun on the chirping bird. Compare it to those ugly boxes they call “flats” on the other side of the broken down wall. As well, compare the horse-and-buggy on which Hulot makes friends with a potential foe, while the modern cars are just noisy and smelly.
The movie is better the second time because you know its frequency and have some idea what to expect. The gags don’t get less funny but more so. E.g., when the neighbor lady comes over and they think it’s a rug salesman.
Ultimately, the subject matter in the movie is of vast importance, affecting the entire planet. That’s billions of people — how much does the new Modern environment, including the fashion churned out by industry and the architectural schools, alter our perceptions of reality? How absurd is it that the automobile dominates urban areas, which have been completely altered away from an ordinary human scale? Tati makes a light mockery of all this, while keeping in mind that the spirit of Play is the way out of any of these problems.