Mon oncle d'Amérique (1980)
Directed by Alain Resnais

Film Review

The extent to which human beings are able to forge their own destiny in what, according to one scientific school of thought, is a deterministic universe is a theme that would impinge heavily on the later films of director Alain Resnais.  In Smoking / No Smoking (1993), a series of seemingly trivial decisions made by a handful of characters result in twelve very different outcomes, suggesting that man does have free will and can decide not only his own fate but also those of others.  A decade before this, Resnais made another film, Mon oncle d'Amérique, which appears, on the face of it, to assert the counter argument, namely that a person's future is entirely governed by factors over which he or she has no control, factors that stem from a mix of primitive biological impulses accumuated over millions of years of evolution and social conditioning.  Our behaviour, particularly in stress situations, appears to be predictable and mirrors that of laboratory rats subjected to a series of stress-inducing experiments.  Free will may be nothing more than the ability we think we have to choose the one card that is offered to us.

In making this film (one of his most commercially successful), Resnais collaborated closely with the eminent French philosopher Henri Laborit, whose theories of evolutionary psychology are illustrated by reference to fictional stories involving three very different characters.  Laborit appears in the film, talking to camera and lending his voice to the documentary inserts, so that the human protagonists in the unfolding melodrama come increasingly to resemble the subjects of a strange laboratory experiment.  At one point, two of the characters even acquire rat-like heads and start fighting like rats, a scenario that is patently absurd as it is prohibited by our social conditioning.  At first, we struggle to make the connection between Laborit's didactic intrusions and the fictional narrative.  The characters appear to be ordinary people, acting in a way that is entirely rational.  It is only when their lives reach a crisis point that Laborit's assertions hit home and we see them less as individuals and more as animals acting in what seems to be a completely predetermined manner.

Not only are the three main protagonists seen to be controlled by biological, social and environmental factors, they must also adhere to the rules of melodrama.  Before we see them as guinea pigs fighting their way through an existential maze, they first strike us as classic French film stereotypes - the bourgeois intellectual (Roger Pierre), the artist (Nicole Garcia) and the self-made man (Gérard Depardieu).  Their destinies are determined less by what they do than by who they are, their place in society and their childhood experiences.  Another factor that constrains their behaviour is how they see themselves.  Each of them identifies closely with a legend of French cinema (Danielle Darrieux, Jean Marais and Jean Gabin), and as they do so they adopt a false persona which further limits their freedom to act and think independently.

Any individualism the protagonists may have had as children and young adults is completely erased once they have reached middle-age.   Their dreams, characterised by the uncle of the film's title who promises unbound wealth and freedom, turn out to be childish fantasies, soon forgotten.  Social pressures, coupled with the bourgeois imperative to conform and secure a comfortable life, soon take hold and transform them into bland, unquestioning middleclass nonentities.  The remote Brittany island belonging to one of the characters (the failed intellectual) serves as a potent visual metaphor for past ideals that have been lost, a place of memories that now seem arid, childish and frankly unreal.

And yet, whilst the behaviour of the three main characters is certainly constrained, they still act as if they have free will.  The intellectual is free to choose to leave his wife and children and move in with a pretty young actress.  The actress is free to walk away from her lover when his wife tells her she is dying.  The self-made man is free to attempt suicide when his world falls apart, overriding his Catholic beliefs.  But what seem to be decisions made by a free, rational minds inevitably look like entirely predictable reactions to situations that offer few credible alternatives.  Like melodrama, real life offers fewer options than we like to think and we often delude ourselves into thinking we have a choice when there is in fact none.  Once their lack of autonomy has been exposed, the characters in Resnais's film end up resembling rats in a laboratory experiment and appear to vindicate Laborit's thesis that human behaviour is largely, if not entirely, deterministic.  Their freedom to choose is illusory, as illusory as their mythical American uncle.

Film Synopsis

Henri Laborit is a world-renowned biologist who conjectures that human beings exhibit virtually identical patterns of behaviour to other animals in stress situations.  To test his somewhat revolutionary theories he applies them to three very different individuals, all of whom have arrived at a point of crisis in their lives.  Coming respectively from bourgeois, artistic and rural milieus, these are: Jean, an ambitious writer with political aspirations; Janine, an independent woman from a Communist-leaning family, determined to make it as an actress; and René, a farmer's son who ends up running a large textiles factory, without much enthusiasm.

Jean and Janine meet by chance one evening and, despite their very different backgrounds, they soon succumb to a strong mutual attraction.  Jean immediately turns his back on his wife and children so that he can start a new life with Janine.  The latter also gives up her old life, abandoning her insecure artistic career so that she can get a well-paid job with a large corporation.  It is in this capacity that Janine comes into contact with René, who finds himself in some difficulty as the economic downturns starts to impact on his business.  Ill-equipped to deal with the challenges facing him, René is driven to attempt suicide.  All of this appears to vindicate Laborit's theories about human behaviour...