“Thought-provoking” is a nice term to open with in any discussion of the movies of Alain Resnais. Resnais was an intellectual himself and his films demand cerebral involvement on the part of the audience. Mon Oncle d’Amerique (sometimes called Les Somnambules) is no exception in that respect, but the potential rewards from engaging with this film are immeasurable. Here’s a film released in 1980 that explains, for example, far better than virtually any current day source, exactly why American troops are currently stationed in Iraq. In fact, viewing the film in the modern context gives a whole new meaning to the film’s title.

Historical Background: Alain Resnais’ productive period coincided with that of the French New-Wavers, his first film, Hiroshima Mon Amour, appearing in 1959 which also was to be the birth year of the Nouvelle Vague. Resnais was older than the true New Wave auteurs and also came out of the more conventional film school background, rather than making the jump from critic to director as was the case with Truffaut, Godard, and Chabrol. On the other hand, Resnais shared the propensity of the New Wave directors for jump cups, montage editing, and deep thematic substance. After his brilliant inaugural film, Resnais followed with one strong effort after another, including Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Muriel (1963), La Guerre est Finie (1966), Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime (1968), Stavisky (1974), Providence (1977), Mon Oncle d’Amerique (1980), Life is a Bed of Roses (1983), and Melo (1986). After 1986, the quality of his work began to recede at bit, though On Connaît la Chanson (1997) was his biggest box office success ever in his native France.

Resnais was courageous in stretching the boundaries of cinema and Mon Oncle d’Amerique nicely balances between experimental inventiveness and the more conventional cinematic rewards for the audience such as an engaging narrative and well-developed characters. In this film, Resnais interweaves the lives of three interesting individuals with behavioral theory that illuminates why the characters behave as they do. The behavioral insights are provided courtesy of French theorist Henry Laborit together with montage devices of Resnais’ own invention. The result is a profoundly educational and entertaining synthesis.

The Story: Our three guinea pigs (or case studies) for today’s experiment are Jean Le Gall (Roger Pierre), Janine Garnier (Nicole Garcia), and René Ragueneau (Gérard Depardieu). Prof. Henri Laborit will play himself and explain what transpires.

Jean Le Gall was born on a small island, owned by his family, off the coast of Brittany. As a young boy, Jean loved to read and was rewarded by his parents when he placed in the top three in his school class. He left his family home to work in public radio, moved up steadily to become director of cultural programs, and then a speech writer for the prime minister. As an adult, he marries and has children but meets his share of frustrations as well. He wants to write a book about the history of cultural views in relation to the sun, but has difficulty finding the time. He is suddenly fired from his job as speechwriter with no prior inkling of dissatisfaction with his work. He meets and falls in love with Janine, an actress, and moves out on his wife and in with his lover. Later, he returns to his wife for reasons outlined in the next paragraph.

As a little girl, Janine had decided that she wished to be an actress, but this preference was sharply discouraged by her politically-active father. She, too, had to make a break from her family of origin and strike out on her own. By good fortune, she gets a shot at a part in a play and it runs for an entire year. She responds angrily upon learning that the show is to close because the theater has been otherwise engaged. Planning to skip the closing party, she meets Jean and his wife who had been in the audience for the final performance and is sufficiently appeased by Jean’s lavish praise to return with them to the party. This chance meeting leads ultimately to an affair between Janine and Jean and their living together. Jean’s wife, Arlette (Nelly Borgeaud), pulls a fast one, however, convincing Janine that she only has a few months to live and begging her to allow Jean to return to her until she succumbs. It turns out that Arlette is a better actress than Janine! Janine manufactures a “fight” with Jean to force him to leave and return to his wife. Four years later, Janine discovers that Arlette is and always was perfectly healthy and had used the claim of impending death as a device to get Jean back. Still worse, from Janine’s point of view, when the ruse is exposed, Jean decides to stay with Arlette anyway. Professionally, Janine ultimately transitions from acting to fashion designer and ends up working for the same corporation as René.

René grew up on a family farm with parents who were hopelessly out of date in their farming techniques. After René meets the love of his life, Therese (Marie Dubois), the couple decides to break from life on the farm and move to the city. René settles into a somewhat routine middle-management job in a textile factory. When a merger is organized, René discovers that his position will be taken over by his counterpart in the other company, but he’s offered the top management position in one of the textile plants. The plant has to retool, however, and René proves to be inadequate to the leadership demands of his new position, after many years following orders. Moreover, Therese refuses to accompany René to his new location. When Janine and a company executive show up to tell René that he’ll be demoted to the number two spot in the plant (in charge of operations), his ego is badly stung. Their follow-up offer to him that he manage one of the company’s new line of gourmet shops fails to bandage his wounded self-esteem. With no one to lash out at, René turns his anger inward and attempts to kill himself with a combination of barbiturates and hanging.

Interspersed with these three intersecting life stories are the lectures and demonstrations of Professor Laborit (ironically close to “lab-rat”). Since my own professional expertise is neuroscience and psychopharmacology, the Professor’s comments were entirely familiar territory to me. Other viewers may find his points a bit more puzzling, but all one really needs is the gist of his viewpoint. Although I don’t agree in every detail with Dr. Laborit, what I found more impressive is that the essential points made by the Professor are as valid after another quarter century of research as they were in 1980. Laborit’s first crucial point is that we are conscious of only a small part of our mental activity – the part associated with the cerebral cortex, which is the highest and evolutionarily newest part of the brain. He describes the conscious mind as like the foam on the ocean – the visible outer layer beneath which there are many fathoms that are imperceptible. Most of our behavior is governed by the subconscious mind, which is associated with all of the subcortical portions of the brain.

Laborit’s second point is that the only part of the human brain that is substantially different than the corresponding portions of the brains of laboratory animals and other mammals is the cerebral cortex. All of the uniquely human capabilities belong to that part of the brain. The subcortical portions of the brain (and, hence, the subconscious mind) of humans functions almost identically with the same parts of the brains in animals. People behave like laboratory animals except when a behavior specifically involves the intercession of the cerebral cortex. Laborit’s first two points, by the way, are not mere conjecture or theory. They are supported by the weight of a tremendous amount of experimental evidence.

Among the aspects of human behavior that are mainly controlled subconsciously are our responses to threat and painful events. Emotional posturings, avoidance behaviors, and reward-seeking (appetitive) behaviors are largely determined by subcortical systems. Laborit then uses three experimental paradigms to illustrate how people and animals deal with painful circumstances:

The first experiment: Conditioned Avoidance Responding

At my University, we do this experiment every year for the Pharmacy students and use it to demonstrate the effects of certain drugs. Laborit, however, is simply examining the behavior itself. Here’s how it works. The apparatus consists of two adjacent compartments with a connecting doorway. Both compartments have a grid floor through which painful electrical current can be delivered. The rat is given a warning signal four seconds before the current is applied to whichever compartment it is in. If the rat runs through the doorway into the other compartment within four seconds, it avoids the shock. After a few training sessions, rats will become highly proficient at avoiding shock almost every time. Like you and I, they sometimes get lazy and need a “reminder”, but pretty soon they’ll be close to 100% proficiency at avoiding the shock. Rats trained in this kind of behavior do not show signs of psychological distress or physical deterioration. Why? Because they have a means of coping with the problem with which they are presented.

The second experiment: Learned Helplessness

In the second paradigm, put simply, we close the door between the compartments. The rat is now confronted with periodic shocks from which there is no escape. After a lot of this kind of experience, the animal exhibits behaviors analogous to what we see in depressed humans (diminished activity, lack of responsiveness to rewards) and physical deterioration (unkempt fur coat, etc.). The Learned Helplessness paradigm could be likened to a human being in a concentration camp, a poor person unable to find work, someone trapped in a cave-in, or any other kind of adverse situation for which there is no way out. When we can’t take action to alleviate our circumstances, the only option left is to direct the negative affect inward, resulting in depression, psychosomatic ailments (e.g., ulcers, high blood pressure, migraine or tension headaches), or, even, suicide.

The third experiment: Lashing Out

The third experimental design that Laborit shows us is really quite extraordinary. It is the same as the second except that now there are two rats in the closed compartment, each suffering from the periodic shocks. When the shock comes on, the two begin to fight. Their fighting is “irrational” because it does nothing to reduce the pain each experiences. Nevertheless, these animals will not exhibit the mental or physical deterioration of the rat in experiment #2. These animals have a means of directing their anger outward (however ineffectively) and did not therefore turn their anguish into mental depression or physical deterioration. Doing something – anything – felt better than having no options.

Themes: So, what have we learned? People and animals quickly learn to deal with problem situations provided that there is an option available that can be successful (experiment #1). People and animals become depressed and deteriorate physically when there are no options for evading painful circumstances (#2). People and animals will lash out at others even when there is no rational connection between the problem and the target of the aggression because doing something feels better than doing nothing (#3). In the narrative portion of the film, we see René lashing out at his kids when he is confronted with the threatening competitor at work and Janice lashing out at Jean when she discovers that he’ll remain with his wife.

How should we feel about option #3? If it’s healthier than option #2, is it also a right choice? Well, that depends on the consequences of the aggression that emerges in the third experimental design. The two rats were evenly matched and fought for a limited period of time. There was no harm done to either, long term. That could be likened to men or women sublimating their aggressive impulses in competitive sports. The aggressive nature of sports competition takes place within a structure of rules and a time limit which usually ensures that no permanent harm is done. What if instead, one rat was packing a pistol and shot the other one dead? The perpetrator rat would probably show no ill-effects but the dead one is . . . well, dead. With humans, the impacts of random aggression are often not benign. How many children have been abused because mommy or poppa had a bad day? How many wives have been beaten because the husband was disrespected by someone during that day?

This is where the cerebral cortex of humans ought to come into play. Our conscious minds should intervene to remind us that lashing out may feel right and even help to preserve our own mental health, but it becomes “the shock”, in effect, for the targeted individual(s). It causes the victim to either feel helpless or lash out in turn. Is the only alternative to lashing out suppressing and internalizing anger and suffering the health consequences? No, our conscious minds should provide us with creative alternatives. Alternatives might include (a) sublimation of the aggression into socially acceptable forms such as competitive sports or games or business competition; (b) finding a genuine tactic to deal with the actual problem; or (c) delaying response until a genuine tactic develops for dealing with the actual problem. Those are the kinds of alternatives that the conscious mind should provide for a psychologically healthy individual. They are also the kinds of alternatives that leaders of a nation should provide when a nation suffers a shock for which there is no readily apparent response – such as 9/11 for America.

The events of 9/11 were a shock to America – to our sense of security, justice, and national self-esteem. We were wronged, but the proximate perpetrators had perished in the act and those behind the act were nowhere to be seen. So what was America to do? There was no evident action to directly address the problem and doing nothing amounted to a kind of learned helplessness – it would be depressing to the nation. What America did was to lash out. We located a target of opportunity – a country with no apparent connection to 9/11 but with people of similar religion and ethnicity (sort of). Our leaders invented “reasons” by fabricating evidence and planting innuendo in the minds of American citizens. And even when those reasons proved false, many Americans still support America’s lashing out against Iraq. Why? Because doing something “feels” better than doing nothing.

Merely “doing something”, however, is a very poor standard for leadership. An aggressive response on the part of America was understandable and acceptable – provided that the aggressive action would actually address the problem in some meaningful way. Has invasion of Iraq reduced the threat of terrorism? Quite the contrary. The two factors that determine the threat of terrorism are the terrorists’ capacity for terrorism and their motivation. The invasion of Iraq did nothing to degrade terrorist capability. There were no weapons of mass destruction uncovered. Everyday, we read about new attacks on American troops and associated support elements throughout Iraq. Motivation for terrorism, however, has never been higher. Every Iraqi killed in the American invasion had mothers, fathers, and brothers. Many had sons. Some of those brothers or sons or fathers will now devote their lives to “lashing out” rather than live with their own episodes of learned helplessness in response to the shock administered by America. They don’t care about 9/11 – our victimization. What they care about is that we then victimized Iraq under the phony pretense that they bore responsibility for 9/11.

Most of the rest of the world recognizes that America’s invasion of Iraq amounted to lashing out in response to 9/11. The phony rationales have disintegrated and the evidence that the invasion was already planned before 9/11 has emerged. Half of America (give or take a few crucial percent) continues to believe that what America did made sense, but nearly all of the rest of the world knows better. By lashing out, we turned our victimization into wrong-doing. It’s bad enough that half the public is content to behave like decorticate lab animals but the ultimate danger comes from leadership that offers no better. Mon oncle d’Amerique could be understood as Uncle Sam, these days, and Uncle Sam is behaving no better than any marginally competent rat.

Production Values: In addition to correlating the behavior of the trio of protagonists with that of laboratory rats, Resnais deftly interjects another kind of influence on how we posture and emote. Each of the three characters has a favorite actor or actress (Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, and Jean Marais). Every now and then, when one of the characters is confronted with a charged situation, Resnais cuts away to a clip of the person’s favorite performer in a particular attitude or stance. When the film then returns immediately to the primary character, we see the character adopting the identical attitude. We learn our behavioral repertoire by imitation, to an extent. In real life, most of that imitation is based on people closer to us than movie stars – parents, siblings, and other family members or neighbors. Sometimes, however, we learn certain attitudes from public figures including film stars. Resnais’ predilection for jump cups and montage editing was ideal for making this kind of point.

Another cute device is that Resnais occasionally intersperses scenes in which one or more characters are wearing rat heads as they go about their emotionally-motivated activities. This further drives home the relationships between human behavior and that of laboratory animals.

Among the three lead performers in this film, only Gérard Depardieu went on to produce an extensive resume of film credits. A small sample of his work includes Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978), La Chèvre (1980), The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), Jean de Florette (1986) (See Jean de Florette/Manon), and Cyrano de Bergerac (1990).

Bottom-Line: The meaning of the title of this film relates to each of the three protagonists referring to an uncle in America who their respective families had visualized as a remote ideal – a distant person whose life was perfection. Resnais himself explained that the uncle in America was a Godot-like invention – an unattainable ideal of happiness. We have to be grateful for this DVD and its good quality transfer even if it comes with a dearth of extras. There’s a few filmographies on the DVD and a brief interview with Resnais in the companion booklet. The subtitles are in yellow, which is nice, but they are not optional, which is not nice. I highly recommend this film. We can hope that someday enough people in America will understand the foibles of human behavior and will come to demand as much from its leaders. Until then, we’re stuck in the endless cycle of lashing out, being lashed out at, and lashing out again. Mon Oncle d’Amerique is in French with English subtitles and has a running time of 125 minutes.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older