on Mon Oncle

10 September 2010

A quick note for those few who might, for whatever reason, read my class required blog entries :

I am at least three times as old as any of my fellow students in this class and more than twice as old as our beloved Professor. I am auditing the class and so am not at all concerned with grades – I’m simply trying to learn something new (can you really teach an Old Dick new tricks?) before I shuffle off this mortal coil. My entries are not meant to be curmudgeonly, clever, offensive, or erudite, they are simply what I might write if I were keeping a diary.

OK, now – about Mon Oncle:

I first saw this Jacques Tati film in the early 1960s, while in graduate school at the University of New Mexico. It was part of a series of French films being shown at the local Albuquerque ‘art theatre’ and was my particular favorite in the series. At the time I was a battle-scarred veteran (4 years in the US Army), an oc-casional user of perception altering chemicals and a paid up member of the Young Socialist Alliance.

My general understanding of the film then, in addition to enjoying the obvious comedic bits, was that it seemed to illustrate – through satire – the French hopelessness at the outcome of class struggle. Hulot and his neighbors, symbolic of the working class, having little or no chance against Arpel and the plastics industry ­– heartless, capitalist exploiters of human labor.

Watching the film again, well past my days as a ‘Young’ anything, I still felt there still might be something of the class struggle involved – if only in sub-textual form. But there also seemed to be a little more hope as well. The symbolic acceptance of the industrialist’s dachshund into the horde of worker dogs, the Hulot visits to the dominion of the well-to-do, and ultimately the acceptance of some shared values by the nephew, Gérard and Arpel, as Hulot departs for what I sincerely hope are greener pastures.

Listening to the sound (which I honestly didn’t remember even hearing during my first viewing) was an eye (ear?) opener for me. Not only the music, but also the sound ‘effects,’ offer the potential for a much deeper understating of the film. I’m beginning to understand a little of what Chion means by added value.