Customer Reviews

Mon Oncle D'Amerique

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Mon Oncle d'Amerique" is a film that explores and tries to explain some very profound things. Who are we? What makes us do the things we do? Is human behavior really predictable?

These questions in the hands of another filmmaker, say Ingmar Bergman or Andrei Tarkovsky, could have been turned into a somber chamber piece that most audiences members would describe as "bleak". But, in the hands of French filmmaker Alain Resnais we have a film that is at times joyous and carefree. The movie blends elements of drama and comedy so effortlessly we sit and wonder why can't more films be like this.

Gerard Depardieu, Nicole Garcia and Roger Pierre star as the three leads characters whose lives will intertwine. As we see of the story of their lives, the soundtrack plays Prof. Henri Laborit (who also appears in the film as himself) as he explains human behavior. We then immediately get the connection. These characters are really pawns that we be used to take on greater dimension. It isn't so much their story we are watching, but instead our story.

Rene Ragueneau (Deparddieu) grew up on a farm, and pretty much had his life planned out for himself. His father wouldn't to give him and his brother the farm after he dies. One day Rene stands firm and tells his father he is not going to follow in his footsteps. Rene has other plans for his future.

Jean Le Gall (Pierre) is running for Prime Minister. He comes from a wealthy family, they even have their own island. Which is where Jean was born and spent most of his childhood. Jean is married with two children, but is having an affair. And he even leaves his family for the other women.

That other woman is Janine Garnier (Garcia) a young actress who grew up as a member of the young Communist club. Her parents never wanted her to become an actress but Janine was determined to follow her dreams.

"Mon Oncle d'Amerique" is not just about human behavior. I also felt the film explored elements of the effect art plays on our lives. Rene loves to watch movies with Jean Gabin. Janine is an actress. Through-out the film Resnais inserts clips from various movies that correspond to the characters emotion. Does life imitate art or art imitate life?

And as for the title, all three characters speak of an uncle from America. But the uncle is never shown. Perhaps there never really was an uncle. America is suppose to represent an idea. A place of freedom. An escape.

The film was written by Laborit and Jean Gruault, who worked several times with other great French directors. Namely Francois Truffaut on such titles as "Jules and Jim", "The Wild Child", and "Two English Girls". He also worked with Godard on one of his best films, "Les Carabiniers".

For those unfamiliar with Alain Resnais, he was at one time a highly experiemental filmmaker and part of the French New Wave with titles "Hiroshima, mon amour" and "Last Year at Marienbed". "Mon Oncle d'Amerique" would find Resnais playing around with story structure again. And many feel it was the best work he did since 1967's "The War Is Over".

In the end "Mon Oncle d'Amerique" is a movie that makes us laugh and think. It never takes the subject matter too serious. The film never becomes a lecture, yet it is thought provoking.

Bottom-line: One of Alain Resnais best films. An ambitious films that doesn't over reach. A thought-provoking, highly entertaining piece of work from a great director.

I don't know about the actual movie... The DVD audio is just awful -- imagine the distortion you get when the volume is set higher than cheap computer speakers can handle, now imagine getting this distortion every time somebody speaks no matter what volume your tv is set at.

Also, people move at the wrong speed, and not even a "consistent" wrong speed. The subtitles are part of the picture; they can't be turned off.

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.

Winner of the 1980 foreign film award, this didactic film, by Alain, Renais, is based on case studies of the French physician, psychologist, behavioral scientist, writer and philosopher, Henri Laborit, who plays himself in the movie. It uses the stories of three conventional French social climbers to illustrate his theories on evolutionary psychology and the relationship between the self, the workplace and society. The movie appealed to me because it takes the form of a series of dramatic essays about three highly motivated, social striving, but extremely mixed-up persons - sort of a prototype of the typical American Yuppy.

The movie has the feel of a CIA behavioral specialist explaining to his staff how the world of people in the workplace actually, work. In particular it shows how people defer to the pressures of higher and unseen office powers and forces. They do so primarily by inhibiting their primal urges -- redirecting them inward in order to avoid disapproval, save their pride, garner respect and popularity, honor and most of all to protect their livelihood and means of making a living.

René Ragueneau (Gérard Depardieu), plays the role of a hapless, unimpressive fellow who leaves the farm to seek his fortune in the city. He makes steady progress until he begins to lose the unfamiliar game of office politics; and then unaccountably he loses favor with his boss and mentor who unceremoniously ships him off to the office's equivalent of Siberia. His status declines even further from there on. Being a farm boy, he is completely unprepared for this demotion in status, but being a civilized man, does not fight back. Instead, he develops an ulcer and his health steadily declines.

Similar challenges and negative consequences expressed as physical illnesses befall the other characters in the movie. They too occur in ways befitting their respective personalities and stations in life.

Laboit's point seems to be that societal adjustments in behavior in the work place amount to subtle but insidious forms of social control; that, while operating mostly in the background (in the subconscious and at the emotional and nerve level), eventually become tightly connected to, woven into, and physically wired to the human emotional structure. When they do, the two then continue to evolve in tandem, so much so that the individual personality and even physical well-being is redefined around the dependency on the powers and forces at work: That is, on how one is viewed within the work place; i.e., obedience to work rules, performances reviews, societal and organizational approval, friendships, winning in office politics, etc. Without realizing it this all amounts to a reorganization of ones complete emotional structure and make up, including his personality. And they are continually modified with each turn of the wheel in the process.

I believe this is a thought-provoking and valuable movie because it gets at the psychological under brush that we all know exist in the workplace, but it is under brush that rarely rises to the level of open discussion. I know of no American movies that even remotely get at these kinds of issues, even though, arguably Laboit's theories, apply more appropriately to the American workplace than they do to the European. Five stars.

This film is a masterpiece, Mon oncle d'Amerique, Alain Renais directed a movie faithful to the scientist's work, the use of archive footage in the middle of the movie brings it a level of warmth that makes up for some of the coolness in the other parts of the film. Henri Laborit uses three people to discuss theories of survival, competition, rewards and anxiety. Rene is a manager of textiles who faces corporate downsizing, Janine an actress having an affair, and Jean who is a writer and politician.

It's perfect and cannot compare to other movies in the genre, it is parlayed into narrative episodes and odes where the chorus, in this case psychologist Laborit, explains the meaning of the episodes, it makes clear the pretenance to everyday life of a discourse which is very rich as an interpretation of life, in exactly Matthew Arnold's sense, but at the same time so abstract that most people just, for example, reading Laborit's "Decoding the human message" would not see the immediate relevance of what was being said to their own daily concerns.

I plan on using this in a class to showcase psychology alongside language development.
In the film, we cut from scenes of the human characters involved in various relationships to Laborit showing how lab rats react to stress under various conditions. The result is not dry or pedantic but funny as hell. It comes off as the rats doing a low burlesque of the human comedy. We also see the characters as children and as adults and scenes from various formative episodes along the way. We see one character as a tiny girl interacting with her factory worker father. He is a communist and he is teaching his newly articualte baby girl to repeat after him "USA go home".

It's impossible to compare to other movies of this genre, it really is a masterpiece and will hold the attention. Recommend.

Aryan Somers

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.