Playtime

'Playtime' was an inspiration to me, that entire, like, first section in the city. Just making sure that every background actor had a thing.

He mentioned that the film [Life of Pi] had made him think about the silent films of Jacques Tati, “about how you use space, how you frame things, how you move your camera. It’s really just the visual.”

On the DVD commentary for 'The Truman Show', director Peter Weir explicitly cited the observational style of French cinema, particularly the films of Jacques Tati such as 'Playtime' (1967) and 'Mon Oncle' (1958), as key influences on the film's aesthetic and thematic exploration of a character trapped in an artificial world. He noted their ability to depict the individual's struggle within designed environments, providing a framework for portraying Truman Burbank's predicament.

Pierre Coffin has documented his obsession with Jacques Tati, specifically with the way Tati built comedy from physical bodies moving through space without dialogue, using the environment itself as co-star. The Minions' gibberish is an homage to Tati's wordlessness. Their relationship to objects, the way they treat the world as playground, is learned from Mon Oncle and Playtime. Coffin admits this in interviews as the foundational DNA. Both Tati films are on Criterion Channel.