We humans supposedly use only five percent of our brainpower. Filmmakers are similarly timid with the possibilities of the medium. Virtually all directors employ the visual vocabulary established 90 years ago by D.W. Griffith, and the presumption of realism: that those actors are these characters. Resnais, in a career spanning a half-century, is not always so constrained. His Last Year at Marienbad had the smart set guessing what was real and what was fantasy—and missing the correct answer that, on screen, everything is a fantasy, literally an optical illusion. Mon oncle d’Amérique, written by Jean Gruault, is a science lesson, given by the biologist Henri Laborit, that is made lucid and entertaining by illustrative skits featuring three characters (Roger-Pierre, Gérard Depardieu, Nicole Garcia) and a lab full of white mice. Laborit’s questions about the impact of behavioral codes in inhibiting man’s so-called free will dovetail elegantly with Resnais’s and Gruault’s mission to overthrow the codes of film behavior. It’s an exemplary experiment, and the highest form of movie fun.
