Watch Mon oncle Antoine For Free

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This film is set at Christmastime in a remote village in Quebec, the main adornment of which is the mountainous pile of dirt at an asbestos mine.The story starts with Jos Poulin at the mine. Jos doesn't like the job, so he quits and goes to work at a logging camp. Jos doesn't like that job either, so he wanders home.In the meantime there's Benoit, a 15 year old who lives with his Uncle Antoine and Aunt Cecile. Antoine and Cecile own the general store, and Antoine is also the local undertaker. Antoine and Cecile employ a clerk named Fernand, who is also the undertaker's assistant. They also employ a girl of about 15 named Carmen, who lives with them. Her father drops by on payday to collect Carmen's pay. Carmen seem to be an unhappy person. She and Benoit lust after each other, but nothing comes of it.Benoit is an altar boy. He drinks from the bottle of communion wine, then he watches the priest do the same thing, so that's okay.On Christmas Eve, Jos's oldest son, Marcel, dies. Jos doesn't know this because he's still slogging home from the logging camp. Antoine goes to fetch the body, but he takes Benoit instead of Fernand with him for no discernible reason other than to allow Cecile to play Cougar to Fernand. So she does. And they do.Antoine and Benoit set out by horse-drawn sleigh to collect Marcel's body. Although it's the late 1940s (or the late 1960s, judging by the shortness of Carmen's dress), Antoine doesn't seem to have an automobile. But if he had one the main even of the film wouldn't have happened, and the film would be more pointless than it is.The main event is this: After arriving at the Poulin house with the pine box for Marcel's body, Marcel's mother offers Antoine and Benoit a meal, of which Antoine partakes in a rather crude fashion -- grunting and belching all the while. Oh, he's also drinking from the 1.5 litre bottle of grappa (or something more lethal) that he brought along for the trip.Antoine and Benoit get Marcel's body into the pine box and onto the back of the sleigh. And off they go, as Antoine continues to chug the bottle of grappa. When Antoine falls asleep (or into a semi-comatose state), Benoit decides to liven things up by stirring the horse into action. Now the thing that I expected to happen does happen. The pine box containing Marcel's body slides off the back of the sleigh.Benoit brings the sleigh to a halt about 100 feet from the box. After pounding on Antoine to bring him to half-awakeness, they trudge to the box, which Antoine is unable to budge because his muscles have turned to mush after so many oral doses of grappa. He cries about his wasted life.Antoine and Benoit return to the store -- which, cozily, is also where Antoine, Cecile, Benoit, Carmen, and Fernand live. Benoit, of course, opens the door to Cecile's boudoir to find Fernand there. Some muttering (but no violence) ensues before Fernand and Benoit set off to retrieve the box. Benoit, amazingly and despite the remarkable event that has just befallen him, can't remember which of two possible routes to follow back to the box.Well, it doesn't matter. Because they eventually arrive back at the Poulin house, sans box, which has somehow transported itself into the Poulin's parlor. There, the wandering Jos and his family are kneeling around the open box, staring at the dead Marcel. And wondering, no doubt, why the hell they agreed to act in such a pointless film.But maybe they knew that it would someday be voted the best Canadian film of all time. I'd hate to see the second-best one.

The flip side of the jollier Christmas is this sobering, low-key, funereal Eve day slice-of-life spent in a blink-and-you-will-miss mining town, where a boy orphan named Benoit (Jacque Gagnon) helps his "uncle" Antoine (Jean Duceppe) and "aunt" Cecile (Olivette Thibault), their teenage boarder, Carmen (Lyne Champagne), and clerk/assistant, Fernand (Claude Jutra, also director of this film) prepare the general store for its holiday-themed opening, complete with model manger scene in the store window, lights, and festive décor. Prior to this, Benoit helped Antoine (also an undertaker) prepare a miner for a Catholic funeral (Fernand dutifully receiving orders from Antoine and obeying without being sore as well). Benoit even serves as a bored altar boy going through the motions of a day as a priest rarely pays him much mind as he himself does his deeds quietly. The film hints at a tension between the miners of the town and the mine that hasn't given them raises and serves as a beacon of burden resting high above their home on a mountain nearby, like a looming thundercloud. Then there are the revelations that come as the day settles and Benoit does some growing up. Like how a drunken Antoine just unleashes his disappointments (no real child, a job in a poverty-stricken town, an undertaker when he would have rather been in charge of a hotel in USA instead of a general store in a small spot in Quebec) like a gushing wound bleeding forth, having to operate the horse buggy as Antoine is useless when the casket of a dead young man falls off (Benoit has a cast on one of his arms, and his attempts to get Antoine to help him fails), and discovering Cecile and Fernand fooling around while they are embracing adulterously; these events are life-altering and unexpected. Carmen and Benoit flirting (there's even a moment of sexual awakening as a horseplay leads to Benoit copping a feel of her breast while Carmen is okay with that, until embarrassment eventually causes her to flee), and her disgusting pops showing up to retrieve her income working at Antoine's store (the poor state of the people is especially noticeable here) are a glimpse into what this blossoming woman currently has going on in her own life. But what appeared to be a marriage somewhat solid (Cecile and Antoine), the film lets us see behind the curtain, and it proves to be a façade potentially fracturing.The cold, gloomy environs of the location, a local populace beholden to a mine that is unhealthy and unappreciative to its employees (the film is set right before a strike), and the solemnity of an introverted boy rarely vocal and more introspective are significant attributes to one of Canada's most celebrated films. Set in the 40s, the director perhaps deserves particular praise for the evocation of time and place, how authentic and realistic the characters are presented (it is as if we are time-warped right into a different era), and the dreary, colorless presence of a low income, grind-it-out, discouragingly dismal everyday existence for the miners who see no real light at the end of the tunnel. The final scene where Benoit looks into the window of the mother who lost her son when he just fell ill bookends the gravity of just how difficult life in the setting is.The subplot of a miner who grows restless and tired of the job goes a logging, leaving behind his family for what he considers a brief spell, not knowing his son would soon be dead upon return. That kid is the one put in a casket by Antoine and Benoit, with the undertaker inert and almost unaffected by the loss for the family (Antoine eating away at a supper prepared by the mourning wife is rather troublesome). When Antoine later can barely stand, a pitiful mess, Benoit seems to have lost all respect for him. Later, when he sees Cecile for who she really is, Benoit seems totally defeated…these people he looked up to are truly flawed and disappointing. Fernand and Cecile trying to tip-toe around what Benoit saw by appealing to him delicately, it failing miserably, proves that the kid has grown up and not duped any longer. My favorite scene has the sophisticated beauty married to the mine accountant arriving at the store looking for a corset, with the guys truly in awe of her.

This film had so much promise, and has had so many recommendations. My hopes were high.Those hopes were completely dashed, however, as I sat through this meandering tale of the hard life in Canada many decades ago. There are half a dozen minor plots held loosely together by a mischievous boy who steals communion wine, chases after his foster sister, and observes and interacts with the people around him. This is all set against a backdrop of a Canadian mining town which lives in the shadow of a large mine run by a heartless owner.I can understand why some people are captivated by the style, tone, and look of the film, but ultimately, for heaven's sake, there must be a plot: a beginning, a middle, and an end, with some sort of development and some sort of resolution.Instead, just when you least expect it, the film ends! It was as if the film's producer simply ran out of money and shut down the set. I've actually attended films where they couldn't play the last reel, and this felt exactly like that. This was made even more annoying for me because I was made to sit through agonizingly long scenes of almost nothing, watching characters do almost nothing, all with the expectation that there would be some sort of payoff. Yes, I understand this is part of the character development, but where is the meaning or the point in all of it?I contrast this to another slow-moving foreign film about a tough life full of constant threats, "Lives of Others." That film also has many scenes of everyday life, with people doing ordinary things, but oh my, what a marvelous and captivating ending they constructed, an ending which completely and totally brought together all of the characters and their individual story lines. In the end, that movie was about something. This movie was about absolutely nothing.So, for me, this film is entirely unsatisfying. I would have given it one star, but I did admire the actors' portrayals of their characters.

This Canadian coming-of-age tale is a magnificent example of how powerful a "small" character piece can be. Young Benoit (Jacques Gagnon, an amateur whose expressive face could put many a more-established actor to shame) lives with his uncle and aunt (Jean Duceppe and Olivette Thibault) in a tiny village in which the primary employment opportunity is mining asbestos. Over the course of a deceptively low key Christmas Eve and Day in the early 1940s, everything Benoit thinks he knows about his small world will be turned on its ear and he will become a man. There is possibly no way to do justice (at least for me) to the precision and delicacy with which the director Claude Jutra infuses the humdrum of day-to-day life. So much happens, and yet it could be argued that "nothing" really happens. In reality, Life happens. While some events are more dramatic and life-changing than others, most everything is given its full due, presented with perceptive grace. (A small barrel of nails taking up precious walking space in the general store that Benoit's relatives own—his uncle is also the town undertaker-- is just as prominent a storyline as some of the more devastating turns of events—and when it is finally picked up to be put away, the film gets its biggest laugh by having the young man carrying it still lift his leg high to step over it.) Jutra isn't afraid to take his time and thoroughly investigate all aspects of life in this depressing little town; the primary foci are on sex and death—about which Benoit will learn much, though he can't make sense of all of it. What's most amazing about Mon oncle Antoine isn't that it's unlike anything we've seen before, but that it shows us the utterly familiar and universal moments of life and makes us see them with a depth we're unused to. But what I've never seen anything like in any movie is an astonishing scene between Benoit and Carmen (Lyne Champagne, another emotive amateur), the young store clerk who his uncle and aunt have basically bought from her poor father. Upstairs in the storeroom of the store, Benoit and Carmen flirt and chase each other among the caskets, she in the bridal veil a customer waits for downstairs. They end up falling to the floor, and he puts his hand matter-of-factly on her breast. She turns away, crying, and flees; Benoit, shaken, lies down on the floor and realizes they've been observed by the store's chief clerk Fernand (played by Jutra himself). It is a simple, but almost staggering scene of such allusive beauty, with both characters caught up in a moment they can't quite make sense of. And the "sex and death" metaphor is unstressed, allowing us to try and comprehend all the subtext without a lot of editorializing. It is in the last third of the movie, though, that Jutra brings all his themes together. A young boy has died suddenly, and Antoine has to drive hours away through the snow on a horse-drawn carriage to retrieve the body. Benoit begs Aunt Cecile to let him go (Uncle Antoine warns him, "Don't get all excited"), and the literal journey to manhood begins. But Jutra never bogs the journey down, full as it is, with the weight of self-importance; we watch what happens, we process what it means to Benoit, and we are allowed to make sense of it on our own. Jutra stresses nothing, he just shows it. (Benoit has a moment when he has to touch the dead boy's body. He hesitates for a moment, and suddenly takes hold, and I thought, "I've just watched a boy become a man, right this second." His nascent maturity allows Benoit to react as he does when the trip back home—and the arrival at home, as well—completely knock him out of the world he's known; he's angry, he's hurt, but he's not confused. He sees what's what, and accepts it for what it is. I wish I could say Antoine is perfect, because it comes awfully damn close. There is a really silly dream sequence near the end that takes all the allusion we've witnessed and makes it rather obvious, but this is about 90 seconds out of a movie, and—though disappointingly lumpy—can't undo everything Jutra has so phenomenally laid out before. This movie affected me as few movies have; certainly nothing this year (with more than a few really fine films) comes close. In stressing again how small it is (which, as I've stated more than a few times, is right up my alley, aesthetically), I attempt to not overhype it. It's tiny, but it is as powerful a movie as I've ever seen. **** and Most Highly Recommended