My American Uncle

Usually with films we supply our own model of viewing, what values and parameters we accept to matter. Here the model is built in the film itself. It's an epistemological vision of human behavior patterns, guided by a behavioral biologist. We are provided with a set of criteria that govern our actions, fight or flight, actions taken to prolong pleasurable sensations or to avoid their opposite, and based upon the scientist's research, Resnais creates scenarios to exemplify them. Theory in practice, more or less.

This is the first handicup of the film for me. Resnais's consistent mark of genius has been his ability to visualize the mind as a threedimensional space, where by characters who act as our proxies into this world of the mind we can wander that space in an effort to discern the mechanisms that sustain it. How the forms we later experience as real come into being, illusionary. His vision is poignant for me precisely because it is translated as cinema, which as a blank canvas where upon it various flickering narratives are projected, is an ideal replica of the mind. He gave us Hiroshima and Marienbad, which is more than most directors contributed to the medium.

But Resnais always approached his subject as a poet, with capacity for awe and mystery, whereas now his vision feels constricted to fit criteria and structures.

Nonetheless the film does well to present us with situations we may know from life. An illicit thryst, frustrations at work, various ambitions for love or power thwarted, the outcomes of these don't matter. We're meant to identify the roots of suffering, how it arises in the form of sensation within the matrix that we experience as reality.

So far the film is wise, in showing us to be lab rats trapped in a glass panel box which is intermittently electrocuted by unseen devices. Perhaps we come to understand by this how suffering is an inate response to life in the cage, therefore inescapable. And how the devices that produce our suffering are invisible to us from inside the cage. Even more importantly, how our various attempts to imprint meaning on the objects of our world, by naming them or pretending to arrange them into patterns or hierarchies, are merely masks we have devised to conceal simple impulses and desires. To be safe or sated, or to avoid pain.

But the film is cautiously scientific, and will not venture further. The above important realization is mute for me without the spiritual. It is a dry understanding of fascinating stuff.

None of which is very subtle anyway. We're lectured a bit. We actually revisit excerpts of earlier scenes so we can identify specific reactions as narrated to us by the scientist. The lab rat metaphor couldn't beat us around the head more, if we actually saw the actors with the head of a rat reenact an angry exit. Wait, we do! But none of this bothers me overmuch. What bothers me is the pessimism.

Which is to say that having understood all this, the mechanisms that control the apparent reality we experience as our everyday routine, we are in position to transcend them. Our bodies may remain in the cage, yet having understood all this, how various forms of ego and desire blind us, our consciousness is already out of it. A glimpse out of the box is possible. Or as the film says, understanding the laws of gravity does not mean we escape them but we can get to the moon.

This is of course a fundamental attribute of how we are not like animals. We are not even animals with the unique ability to remember and form connections between the objects of memory. We are spirited beings. The film, conservative as issued under the credence or pretence of science, does not dare to articulate as much.

But then we have the final image, which says more than most films ever did. It's something I'll want to keep inside of me.

We see the mural of a tree painted on the brick wall of a building. From a distance, it looks beautiful, perhaps the real thing. But once up close, we see the beautiful, harmonious shape for what it is. Bricks as particles, a structure ugly, functional, nondescript, bearing no resemblance to the overall shape.

Two levels of reality then, apparent and ultimate. Order, shape, meaning from afar. Distinctions between brick and tree, as created in the eye. But once inside we understand the emptiness, the sameness of everything. How the above attributes are illusionary, imprints of the eye upon the wall. Will this image terrify or soothe you?

Perhaps the film understands more than it lets out from its cautious application of science. This is one of the 5 best metaphors in the history of cinema. It's so good, it's worthy of being in Blowup.

Yes, as my summary went, Mon Oncle d'Amerique did for me, what the clever but emotionally vacant "Adaption" did not(could not). It impaled me.

I have always had a bad taste in my mouth with that Jonze/ Kaufman offering, because it was too smug for its own good and worse, it was emotionally condescending.

But here comes a classic that thumped its nose at conventional human drama and yet came out becoming more humane than most films I have ever seen. Who knew Biological Psychology/ Behavioural Science could breathe such life and heart into a seemingly inconsequential story?

Anyone know where to find a transcript of the film? The last lines uttered by the Doctor summed up everything I loved about this film(and I have seen it just this once!!).

Excellent.

Again, many thanks to my enlightened film buff friends I have met on the net for their strong recommendation of this exceptional master work. For my experiential education in film has received that giant leap with this film.

Will definitely revisit this thought provoking film to fully soak in its wisdom and movie magic. One of the best films I have seen this year!! If you can get hold of it, by all means take that leap, much like I did and be immeasurably rewarded.

I've seen this film twice. The first time, it told me how to view the world. The second time, it represented my view of the world. Everyone's actions are determined by a small number of forces, it says. Everyone's behavior fits into only four categories, it says. And yet, it presents such a wide range of emotions, actions, and thoughts that it seems to contradict its very hypothesis. And yet, it doesn't. Turn your brain on and watch this; give it time to sink in, then watch it again. I guarantee it will change your way of looking at the world. The editing is top-notch, and Resnais is at the top of his form, as he was 20 years earlier with Hiroshima Mon Amour. The ending is a stunner, and it encapsulates the film while at the same time extending its meaning. The cinematography and message will remind you of Resnais' Night and Fog. Brilliant performances from all three leads and Laborit. Give it time, use your brain, and view it multiple times. You will be rewarded.

This film will only appeal to two types of people 1. Resnais die-hard fans (including me) and intellectuals. This film is extremely odd and infuriating if your an average cinema goer. The film is a cinematic science lesson. But it is absolutley amazing. Resnais uses documentary techniques and surrealism and a narrator (a world renowned expert on human behaviour) who discusses the characters through out the film. It follows three people who are all loosely connected. What makes the film so superb is the fact that it is am intellectual avante garde arthouse film, that instead of isolating the viewer like they usually do. Resnais creates a wonderfully warm film. You end up really liking the characters. Who grow up before your eyes over the years. Resnais doesn't put a foot wrong.Gerard Depiedieu is great as the frustrated office worker who struggles raising a family and hassles at work.

ten out of ten

Henri Laborit finishes with these words (if I remember correctly) - no spoiler really - :As long as we do not understand, that (today) we use our cortex predominantly in order to dominate other people, then nothing can change (for the better).

I myself coined the phrase: If I had power like Hitler, then I would be Hitler.

The point made here is not that I'm Hitler or want to be as little as it is Henri Laborit's point that it is allright for us to continue to use our brain as dominator over others. The point is, that if we get accustomed to power, then all we do turns out bad, in spite of 'good' intentions.

There is no 'good' power. That's the simple truth. To claim so is as ridiculous as to say that there is 'good' evil or totally erase the borders between good and evil and wind up in total confusion like Bob Dylan sings about in his songs 'Ring Them Bells' (They're breaking down the distance between right and wrong) and 'The Disease of Conceit'.

In attempts to dominate his surroundings, man is driven to madness and suicide. The film demonstrate this and Laborit compares rat behavior with human behavior when human lives are ridiculed by this animal quest for power instead of being allowed a quest that would be truly human (in the good sence of the word): the quest of the total destruction of all power and dominance in order to create a truly human society of decency and brotherhood.

We possess a refined and beautiful cortex - why not use it for its proper purpose?, is the conclusion we find ourselves in after having seen the movie (well, not all of us).