Mon Oncle D’Amerique

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: D     Film: B+

 

 

Alain Resnais continues to be the most underrated French director of all time, despite such French New Wave classics as Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year At Marienbad, and La Guerre Est Finie.  Furthermore, he continues to be prolific throughout his career, making challenging films of the highest caliber.  Mon Oncle D’Amerique (1980) is one of his best later works.  The lives of three people, and how they intersect are examined as life, nature, evolution, love, and anger are observed through the advanced philosophies of Professor Henri Laborit spells one of the most compelling French films ever made.

 

Whereas Francois Truffaut went into his Hitchcock phase, only to get back to his autobiographical films, Resnais kept pushing the boundaries of filmmaking in his focus on time, memory, and political thought.  Even Jean-Luc Godard gave up his ambitions for innovation by the late 1960s, choosing to make a set of ultra-cheap Maoist films, then dived into video experimentation before going back to film in the 1980s.

 

It is at the beginning of that decade that this film surfaces.  The title evokes the French comedy classic Mon Oncle, the 1958 Jacques Tati film, where the director plays his famous M. Hulot character.  This film does have some comedy in it, but is not the outright comedy Tati was famous for making.  It actually takes some very serious philosophical material and sees it in various lights.  We have comedy, drama, irony, and many takes of ho fascinating our world really is.

 

This DVD of the film is a rather basic edition of the film, but the content of the film is so immense that it is great just to have the film on DVD when so many Resnais films are not in print.  It offers an older analog transfer in 1.33:1 full screen of the film, but it is not a disaster.  This looks like the same transfer that has been bouncing around since the company issued it on VHS many years ago.  Though there is stock footage sprinkled throughout, even the colors looks washed out a bit, or the lack of definition cannot stop the beauty of some of the finer shots from coming through.  Cinematographer Sacha Vierny has been Resnais cinematographer since his landmark films of the 1960s, forming what might be the most underrated, underestimated director/cameraman collaboration in film history.

 

The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sound is presented well enough, considering its age. Dialogue, sound effects, and the remarkable (and remarkably placed) music score come through well enough.  It also manages to stay above being a poor disaster by not being too distorted or compressed, but shows its age.  The original theatrical materials had to look and sound better than this, but even in the condition this is in, it cannot stop the film’s greatness from coming through.  The “enhanced yellow subtitles” on the film itself do not hurt either.

 

The DVD case offers a gatefold slip of paper with a Resnais interview about this film, as well as his career.  This builds down to a mere, but valuable eight questions. The DVD itself also offers filmographies of Resnais and screenplay writer Jean Gruault, which are very informative.  Any information about either of them is most welcome.

 

The film stars Gerard Depardieu, Nicole Garcia, Professor Henri Laborit, and Roger Pierre.  Screenplay by Jean Gruault, based on the works of Professor Henri Laborit, Music by Arie Dzierlatza, Cinematography by Sacha Vierny, and Directed by Alan Resnais.

 

This is one of Resnais’ great later triumphs.  The film uses worldly images to suggest that we are far from grasping the world around us, then focuses on Professor Laborit’s groundbreaking work on the nervous system to show how little we also know about ourselves.  The film says that there is this path to self-discovery through science that can then lead to personal discovery that can make our world and ourselves better and happier.  This is easily one of the most optimistic films ever made, certainly in contrast to the fake feel-good films Hollywood overproduced in the 1980s.

 

The performances of the cast are also good, having to juggle comedy like it was drama, while the stream of consciousness form from the 1960s French New Wave is revisited here in a way that is almost a spoof of such films.  The idea was that the films would be writerly, offering documentary-like images, personal insights with people even talking into the camera, and a thesis of a particular philosophy weaved through the film to make an ultimate ‘big statement” by the end of the film.  Think of it as a personal epic.

 

Mon Oncle D’Amerique is probably the last film of this kind, with the likes of Godard’s recent In Praise of Love revisiting such an approach as a hybrid of retro steam of consciousness, then adding a new take on his video years.  Godard may get more press, and be more controversial, but Resnais ultimately triumphs as one of the great all-film director/survivors.  He has never let up as a filmmaker, forgot what that meant, or tried to be anything else.  This is why he is the last true survivor of The French New Wave.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo