Watch My American Uncle For Free

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The intersecting stories of three people who face difficult choices in life-changing situations are used to illustrate the theories espoused by Henri Laborit about human behavior and the relationship between the self and society.Alain Resnais is a director who seems to be well-known by film buffs, but is not terribly well known by the general public. Perhaps because some of his films are strange, or perhaps because Americans don't watch very many foreign films. For my money, "Last Year at Marienbad" is one of the all-time best films ever made.While this may not be "Last Year", it again stands out. Taking an abstract concept and trying to flesh it out as a narrative? That is something rarely seen, and seems appropriately French. And to include the man himself within the structure trying to present his idea? Even more interesting.

By making "Mon Oncle D'Amérique" / My American uncle, French director Alain Resnais made a strong as well as serious attempt to comprehend whether human beings are same as rats ? He wanted to portray the fundamental behavior of human beings when confronted with a rival or dealing with life's tough situations. For this film, Resnais teamed up with famous French neurobiologist Henri Laborit to investigate whether the behavioral traits of human beings can be observed as precisely as those of rats in laboratories ? This film features outstanding performances by Gérard Depardieu and Nicole Garcia.In many ways, the acting performances of this film's actors is a direct tribute to the glorious past of French cinema. Each major actor is shown as connected to another colossal figure of French cinema. This is done by linking Depardieu with Jean Gabin and Jean Marais and Nicole Garcia with Danielle Darrieux.My American uncle is neither difficult nor intellectual in nature.It is a different film as before Alain Resnais no director thought of amalgamating a feature film with shades of documentary film's aesthetics. It is a film which requires viewers to display some form of intelligence in order to comprehend scientific explanations which are "Raison D'être" of its characters' behavioral as well as personal traits. The historical importance of "My American uncle" is due to the fact that Resnais' film features creators as 'real stars' as opposed to actors as 'real stars'.

Its a lot like a Greek Tragedy, except the chorus is supplemented by evolutionary psychologist and pharmacologist Henri Labroit explaining the actions of the characters in terms of his ideas concerning human and mammal behavior; consumption behavior, escape behavior, combat behavior, and inhibition behavior. We trace the lives of three characters from birth through childhood, and into the drama of their adult lives. Their adult lives are full of struggles with career, family, relationships, intersecting at times, but only as dramatic as real life allows. Its the way Alain Resnais constructs the stories that makes them fascinating. We observe them largely as a scientist might, in terms of parents, environment, traits, and habits. At one point Labroit discusses shock experiments done on mice, in later scenes we flash back to the characters who have giant mouse heads, the effect is startling and funny, at once. The most complex human emotions are rendered as functions of the animal brain, human relationships are as simple as mice being given aversion therapy, or as complex, depending on how you look at it. Labroit and Resnais seems at odds at times, about the miraculousness and simplicity of it all, but it helps to make the movie more dynamic. Its educational and informational as a science documentary, but the drama is so well entergrated the intellectual stimulation is offset, by a real sense of attachment and catharsis for and with the characters. The problems of their lives are those everyone experiences, Gerard Depardieu is a devout catholic, raised on a farm, who works at a factory and is struggling with being downsized. Nicole Garcia is raised by communist parents, and becomes an actress and later a stylist, having an affair with the married...Roger Pierre, the head of the French Ministry of Radio, raised by an affluent family, who longs to write a book about the history of the sun. I've only seen two Resnais films, "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and "Last Year At Marienbad"(which I fell asleep while watching twice), and this is somewhere between the emotional fallout of the first and the experimental daring of the later, but its my favorite of the three. An enthralling, fascinating, and profound film, that's as emotionally disarming as it is intellectually engaging. Visually it's stunning as well. The final image of the Forest mural on the building speaks volumes. I need more Resnais in my life.

I just saw this - after having heard of it, seen it on video store shelves for over a decade. A movie that begins oddly, drily, repays anyone who pays attention for at least 15 minutes with something absorbing, warm, fascinating and often quite funny. It is one of the most thought-provoking movies I've ever seen in my life. I disagree that its appeal is limited to intellectuals or those who like the director (I'd seen only Last Year at Marienbad, couldn't tell hide nor tail, and that was all I thought of Resnais). Depardieu's character is one we can relate to fully as much as we do to Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman - but all the principal characters (except the cold as ice boss of Depardieu) are greatly sympathetic. This is just so moving and powerful a movie about the life we life - our work, our anger, our sorrow, our obsession, our ambition, our ideals and the way we deal with the things we want in life. Just stay with it for 15-20 minutes - you'll be fascinated. This is truly superb, truly absorbing, truly unique.