jacques tati's MON ONCLE (1958)

Mon Oncle isn't as eagerly, broadly funny as M. Hulot's Holiday or as ponderously existential as Playtime, but instead offers a middle ground as intriguing as either extreme. Tati's beaming ode to the scourge of suburban modernity offers only slightly more form narratively than those bookending films, but nonetheless takes its situational comedy to sharper levels; more than once he strongly suggests Buñuel as humanist, as humorist. Tati's craft is as close as any to truly qualifying as painterly, not only in light but in sound, but he's just as much a cartoonist as a painter, and grasps the capabilities for truth and beauty in each. Most importantly, Tati's is a singular sort of comedy that dazzles with its sure-footedly alien pacing and surprises us with belly laughs just as we've become lost in the poetry of simple human procedure, however stylized. and as a counterpoint to the sublime hopelessness of Playtime, Mon Oncle is buoyed by a lively but affable indignance at the symptoms of what, by Playtime, seems a lost cause.