Mon Oncle D'Amerique
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Movie Reviews of Mon Oncle D'Amerique
Movie Review: Poor DVD quality aside, this release is WELL worth the price
Summary: 5 Stars
There are certain directors whose films can survive even the worst video transfers, and Resnais is one of them. Not that New Yorker Video should not be chastized for giving us yet another scandalously poor video and audio transfer of a classic film. Rather, one should not let the poor DVD quality deter one from buying this DVD, as Resnais' MON ONCLE d'AMERIQUE is masterful and argueably the director's greatest achievement. To be completely honest, in my humble opinion Resnais is the greatest living director. For what it is worth, I have seen everyone of his feature films, including everything in the 80s and 90s, and I find this picture to be the most compelling. Having carried out his most rigorous investigation of the time and memory of personal consciousness in "Je T'aime, Je T'aime," Resnais' work in the 70s undergoes a gradual shift in emphasis toward a time and memory belonging to community. At the risk of sounding overly reductive, one might locate the decisive moment of this shift in "Providence," in which the radically subjective, stream of consciousness narrative is completely undermined in the film's epilogue. In reflecting on Mon Oncle d'Amerique, I think it is paramount that one sees the film in the context of this decisive shift (which is not to say that Resnais simply abandons his earlier project). The film produces some of the most extraordinary images of time and memory reconfigured from the standpoint of community, and argueably marks the director's crowning achievement. One need look no further than the opening sequence in which a camera circles around a canvas comprised of still shots from scenes in the film, such that already at the film's outset the viewer is confronted with an image of the whole. Having laid out this context, I strongly disagree with the general presupposition, betrayed in Maltin's summary and many of the customer reviews below, that Resnais has somehow attempted here to illustrate the behavorial theories of Henri Laborit. Resnais himself (in the DVD notes) expressly rejects this reading, which is nowhere corraborated by the film itself. He explains that in the film he has tried to set the biologist's theories and the narrative side by side, such that the two elements can co-exist, without either one dominating the other. The unmistably ambivalent tone of the ending testifies to the success with which Resnais has executed this vision. The superb direction and screenplay are supported by an outstanding score and an excellent cast. I cannot recommend this DVD more highly.
Movie Review: Resnais' best film as far as I know.
Summary: 5 Stars
I haven't seen 'Smoking and Non-Smoking' and not that singing film he did recently, but otherwise I'm pretty well informed about Resnais and amongst his other work I rank this film as being his best.It lacks many of the 'arty' touches, that Resnais otherwise and most regrettfully endulges in. This one tells it to you straight - most people live lives that resembles what rats do in captivity or otherwise. The comparison is most amusing but there is a very serious side to it as well. In the end Resnais states: "As long as we do not realize that we use the cortex of our brains chiefly in order to dominant others, then nothing can change." Power'full' (powerless really, since directed against power) words indeed.
People break their necks in order to fit in or make a career, which in truth is as rediculous as when Stan Laurel speaks of it in that wonderful short "Their First Mistake". When will this madness of competition between people cease in order to leave room for a competition directed towards your own ability to enhance your consciousness instead? When will competition for competitions sake alone cease, a competition which does not even care about what it is competing about, as, for instance, present competition of market economy, which is just a competition about the 'skills' of cheating one another? That is the question and Resnais doesn't have the answer but at least he poses the question.
Movie Review: A wonderfully intelligent movie
Summary: 5 Stars
Fascinating, off-beat piece of filmmaking, brimming with intelligence rarely found in movies. Three storylines are traced and eventually come together, and involve a harried businessman (Gerard Depardieu), a politician/writer (Roger Pierre), and a single-play actress (Nicole Garcia); while these three stories unfold, director Alain Resnais intersplices an on-going lecture by a psychologist expounding on his theories of behavior. These theories have to do with the way people behave toward each other, mainly through learned societal traits, and how those behaviors must be counter-balanced by the more instinctive patterns inside of us, especially when it comes to the dominance of others. Resnais is brilliant in the way he combines the lecture with the unfolding lives of the three protagonists. The only mis-step I felt was the last minute of the movie, which shows burned-out buildings and makes a social statement not congruent with the rest of the picture. But other than that, it's a terrific movie.
Movie Review: Roger Ebert wasn't wrong to include this among his top films
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie has something of everything: witty humor, depth, and craft. The characters are developed well enough to elicit sympathy even while serving as similes for rats in cages. The conceit of the deepest level of the film is clearly articulated by the narrative of Henri Laborit, the non-fictional psychological theorist on whose ideas the movie expounds.
But it is the craft that fascinated me the most. Like the great filmmaker Antonioni, every frame counts; every detail is emblematic for something either already stated or portending, from beginning to end. It's like having a built-in Criterion Edition: by the end everything has been replayed just enough to "get it" entirely, yet the details are either complex, interesting or just fun enough to make it worth watching many times.
Movie Review: Most interesting...
Summary: 5 Stars
...Especially for those who have read the books from HenriLaborit about behavior studies. Anybody who is interested in knowinghow (and why) it is working inside will appreciate it. Laborit was nota psychologist, but first a surgeon and then switched to fundamental search (specialized at first in anti-pain and reanimation) which led him to what he called "behavioral biology". He got a very sharp viewing of how the building of responses and action-reaction since the amoebia stage have shaped our present behavior. His demonstration of the interaction inside the three levels of the brain is my favorite. Too bad teachers of this sort are not enough.