Mon Oncle D'Amerique
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Movie Reviews of Mon Oncle D'Amerique
Movie Review: Thought-provoking
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an amusing and thought-provoking film. Humans operate to dominate the space. At the end, the filmmaker pans across a desolate landscape, perhaps Dresden. My American uncle really knows how to dominate a space. It seems this movie was ahead of its time.Movie Review: The erratic behavior of the human...
Summary: 4 Stars
Resnais' penchant for film as cognitive experience first and foremost here comes to the fore, although emotion is certainly on display as well. The three main characters of the film--an actress turned fashion industry stylist (Nicole Garcia), a media executive (Roger Pierre), and a textile middle manager (Gerard Depardieu)--all undergo changes in their lives that intertwine with the theories of human behavior put forth by Professor Henri Laborit, a famed French psychologist and scientist, who plays himself in the film.
Bearing in mind that the film was made in 1980 and that psychological theory has advanced significantly since then--largely founded on one after another breakthroughs in neurobiology/neurophysiology--this is nevertheless an entertaining piece of cinema whose theme is really how we respond to external circumstances--specifically, those that could potentially be very stressful.
For some people, a specific circumstance will be manageable; for others, it will be tremendously stressful. In this film, all three main characters respond to various experiences as very stressful ones, and consequently exhibit behaviors reflecting that: attempted suicide, psychosomatic illness, emotional outbursts. Laborit comments on the reason for this stress, which is primarily the inability to dominate (i.e., control) a situation. Regardless of new discoveries in neurophysiology, his statement is absolutely true, and Resnais fuses Laborit's voiceover discussion with interrelated events in the lives of the three main characters that illustrate the scientist's words.
Once in a while, Resnais gives human characters the heads of white lab rats to wittily capture Laborit's points (not for long; just a few seconds or so). Yet in spite of this visual cleverness, the dexterity of the lead actors embodying the emotional intensity they experience given certain changes in circumstance is truly skillful.
What's also interesting is that, early on, two of the three characters profess their love of past French film stars--in particular, Jean Marais and Jean Gabin. When each of these two (the Nicole Garcia character and the Gerard Depardieu character) are confronted with these changes in circumstance, Resnais cuts to a snippet of a scene from a film starring Marais (for Garcia) or Gabin (for Depardieu) in which the viewer can easily tell the emotion experienced by the older actor. This is, again, a clever cinematic device that adds to the film's richness.
Rated one of the best films of the 1980s by numerous film critics, Mon Oncle D'Amerique is a substantial piece of work that bears a number of viewings. It's easy to see why the critics voted this way.
Highly recommended.
Movie Review: New Yorker Does well by Resnais
Summary: 4 Stars
Finally! An affordable New Yorker home release! One of Alain Resnais' more accessible - and funny - films, "Mon Oncle d'Amerique" is also one of his last to find an American distributor. The transfer is less than scintillating, with a picture earning maybe a 2 or a 3 (5 being the highest rating), and the sound getting a 2 or lower. But New Yorker has "enhanced" the subtitles, making them yellow and enormous. Since this is a talkative movie, the subtitles often threaten to subsume the entire picture. But until Criterion deigns to remaster it (with optional subtitles), this is the best we could ask for.Movie Review: Minor Resnais
Summary: 3 Stars
*Mon Oncle d'Amerique* is a smoothly crafted, occasionally funny, but ultimately rather thin exploration of the theories of behavioral psychologist Henri Laborit. Juxtaposing interviews with Laborit that feel like lectures with fictional scenes illustrating his theories, it all feels more than a touch diagrammatic. Laborit's ideas allow Resnais to explore his familiar interests in time and memory, but the film never escapes an air of cute pointlessness. The idea of mixing didactic material with fictional constructions is certainly intriguing, but this example of it isn't much more than a promising sketch. Though certainly not "sketchy" or "unfinished." With the possible exception of the rather tepid *Je t'aime, Je t'aime,* Resnais seems incapable of making a film that isn't polished to the nines. Once again we're treated to the smooth camera moves of *Marienbad,* the artful editing of *Stavisky* and *Hiroshima, mon amour,* the lovely, delicate shots of the seaside first seen in *Muriel.* Although New Yorker's transfer is never much better than adequate (and would be improved considerably by being presented in a widescreen aspect ratio), it's good enough to prove to any doubters Resnais's consummate technical finesse.
Unfortunately, the film also supports the criticism frequently leveled against the director, that in the pursuit of exquisite form, he abandons all interest in character. I don't agree with this criticism. (Even if I did, I don't know why anyone feels comfortable dismissing "mere" formal perfection as if it were an everyday occurrence.) Nonetheless, with Laborit quietly intoning every few minutes, it's far too obvious that the characters are being pushed this way and that to fit his theories, walking through a demonstration rather than living convincing lives.
Maybe the film needs a bit more skepticism. There are sardonic touches at the edges. For example, when one character high on the bureaucratic ladder arrives at work, everyone in the hall he passes makes a point of shaking his hand. We realize he's fallen when he arrives and everyone looks away from him. There's nothing that undercuts Laborit's basic thesis, however. If Resnais felt as playful with the ideas as he does with the characters (he occasionally has them acting out their aggressions dressed in rat costume, for example), if he weren't so impressed and convinced by them, the film would have more spark. Instead, *Mon Oncle d'Amerique* is a neatly turned experiment, defined and limited by the validity of Laborit's theories.
Movie Review: Good Resnais
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm not usually that big a fan of Resnais' films, but this dissection of middle class France circa 1980 is quite engaging. The movie intertwines three stories, loosely connected: the story of a civil servant, that of a middle manager in a textile firm (Gerard Depardieu, in the most interesting segment) and that of an actress (Nicole Garcia, the least interesting one). The stories are commented by biologist Henri Laborit, who elaborates on how we respond to external circumstances in modern society and at one point compares the reactions of the characters to the pressures of society to those of rats in a laboratory. (The constant references to actors in French classical cinema is less interesting, as cinephilia seems to be a particular French obsession). Laborit's theories might be outdated or naive, but they make a funny counterpoint to the action. I came out of the movie with the idea of modern capitalist society as a pressure cooker to those who want to play high in the game - nothing new, but it's well illustrated in the film. And to those of us old enough to remember the late seventies and early eighties, is fun to see back the clothes, the cars, etc., that people use back then on the screen.