The Scrap Heap

Jacques Tati launching into the construction of "Tativille". Ph. André Dino. All pictures © Les Films de Mon Oncle.

Assuming it is well made enough that the handle won’t slip off during use, a knife will only be dangerous when employed dangerously. Likewise, under similar assumptions, architecture and technology will be as good or bad as the uses to which they are put. Le Corbusier wanted his houses to be machines for living in and, whatever you may think of his grand urbanising designs (I, for one, am glad he couldn’t convince the French authorities to raze half of the Rive Droite to the ground), a walk through the full scale model of one of his unités d’habitation at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine should convince you that these present no inherent danger to the soul, just the opposite. (Better yet, it is possible to visit the real thing at the Cité Radieuse in Marseille.) Le Corbusier (as Walter Gropius before him, and Otto Wagner, and others) intended to benefit the population above all else; budget was always a concern, yes, but only after human needs (as he saw them) were attended to. In less idealistic hands, this order was reversed and the idea was soon being reproduced randomly, thoughtlessly, but most of all cheaply, a bit everywhere; neglecting elements as varied and vital as the proportions of the apartments (based on the Modulor anthropometric scale of proportions he devised); the careful inclusion of well-cared, well-landscaped green areas (not just stretches of lawn), as well as commercial and service units; the enlivening use of colour and material. In the end, the machines for living in often turned into human crating by misapplication (wilful or not) of cost-effectiveness. This resulted in the sort of buildings that actually merits the Prince of Wales’s quips. [1]

Jacques Tati  never finished explaining that Play time (1967) was not a manifesto against modern architecture or modernity in general. (“I’m not very intelligent but I am not going to tell you that we should build small schools with tiny windows so that the pupils won’t see the sun, and that hospitals with dirty sinks, where one was badly looked after, were brilliant.”) By then, he was schooled in such charges: they had been levelled against his previous film, Mon oncle (1958), which covered a miniature of the same ground as Play time, from a more sentimental, less ambiguous angle. Objections notwithstanding, Mon oncle was an international triumph among critics and public; won multiple awards; was hailed as his masterpiece. As it happened, Tati disagreed. He felt he had relied too much on traditional narrative, taken a step back from the nearly plot-free Les vacances de M. Hulot (1953), and in doing so, lost his way, been distracted from what he really wanted to do.

Indeed,

Advance warning: the post that follows necessarily reveals the resolution of both Éric Rohmer’s Conte d’automne (Autumn Tale) and Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet.  If you haven’t seen either and would rather do so without spoilers, save this for later.

I’m convinced that at some point in the 80s a law was passed forbidding the making of pictures without twist endings (or, the more the merrier, a final twist to the twist; usually one twist too many).  This was already questionable when confined to genres that might more obviously benefit (mystery, suspense, horror); but it has spread everywhere, to far less interest far less often than filmmakers seem to hope.  A recent example of an otherwise enjoyable film messily impaling itself on its final twist was Tom Ford’s A Single Man, which managed a quadruple whammy: it was facile, it was pompous, it insulted the audience’s intelligence and, astonishingly, betrayed everything that preceded it by keeping the original end. I’ll explain: the structuring device Ford invented to hang his film on was clever, strong, very believable and very moving. Unfortunately, it also completely undermined the conclusion of Isherwood’s source novel, which, by following on from said device, fell from poignant reminder of life’s unpredictability to cloying, pseudo-profound “message” on the (cheap) “ironies” of life. In other words, what had been a twist in the novel turned into a waste in the film. Good twist endings follow:

"Paris", Moshi Moshi Records 2007, artwork Edward Gibson

It’s touching, because it sounds so naïve – just saying “One day we’re going to live in Paris” already marks you out as a starry-eyed innocent. Paradoxically, it might mark you out as unimaginative as well – as dreams go, it’s hardly exceptional in these days of incessant pressure to try and explore everything within reach of transportation, and then try and find something beyond it (because to be satisfied nowadays is to betray your own potential; worse even, you’re refusing your sacred duty to keep the economy running). Neither difficult, nor original, dreaming of Paris is conventional, provincial even: it ushers in nostalgia, it’s old-fashioned; it almost smells of under-achievement, one should really be striving to spend one’s next holiday in another planet or bungee-jump from a satellite.

Not that any of this should have even crossed the mind of the boy who sings  Friendly Fires‘s Paris (who may or may not be Ed McFarlane). But it’s precisely the simplicity and the intensity of this wish that make the song so powerful. Unlike the narrator in Opportunities (Let’s make lots of money), who strives to be cleverer and more manipulative than everyone else in a world of schemers (and, by Neil Tennant’s own reckoning, is doomed to fail), the boy who promises to take his friend (lover?) to Paris doesn’t come across as even knowing the word “cynicism”. It’s an affordable dream, he doesn’t have to trample over anyone to achieve it. However…