Word: laborite
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...shortage. They talked of condoms melted on top of pizzas and sold to the unsuspecting; of rag mops left in water to soften, then dried, cut up and served with egg on a sandwich; of apples that cost a month's wages. "We are like lambs," says Elvis Sierra Laborit, a bakery worker from Havana, who is not a rebellious man. "We will be eating grass soon." Even he realized it was time...
...makers' mixed blessing of cleverness saves the movie from the clutches of dullness and banality. Cleverness is Mon Oncle's dominant characteristic, but in cinema--as in any other art form--excessive cleverness can be deadly annoying. Resnais' and Gruault's three main characters serve as mere puppets of Laborit. Early in the film, we race through the childhoods and adolescences of Jean, Janine, and Rene, learning quickly and concisely all the important biographical details. Sure it's interesting that they all had long solitary periods in their childhoods, or that their parents didn't understand them, or that they...
...Oncle combines art and science and art comes up short. When we're dealing with case studies instead of characters, we observe without compassion, we analyze without sympathy. Laborit tells us how these people will behave, so every decision they make becomes predictable. One of the male protagonists attempts suicide. Big deal. Laborit said he would, right? You can't argue with science...
...fact, if it weren't for Laborit's commentary, Mon Oncle would be a trifle of a film; a sweet, melodramatic little story. But, thanks to the good doctor, Resnais doesn't have to rely on a compelling plot or intriguing characters to hold our attention. We needn't strain ourselves looking for clues to motivations, we needn't ponder the out-come of events. Laborit knows all, tells all. Resnais displays his utter confidence in Laborit's theories when he has his actors don white rat heads to walk through some of their scenes. The director's joke couldn...
...performances aren't what one remembers best from Mon Oncle--it's the haggard face of Dr. Laborit that lingers in the mind. Toward the end of the film, he applies his theories more broadly, saying that large social groups--nations--only live to dominate and that they will stop at nothing, not murder, not genocide, not war. Resnais' camera then takes us for a sudden, completely unexpected, brutally chilling brief tour of the South Bronx. If Laborit's analyses seem a little too pat when concerned with the pointless, emotional cruelty we inflict on one another in our personal...