Mon Oncle Antoine
"Mon Oncle Antoine" is a celebrated Canadian film directed by Claude Jutra, often recognized as one of the finest feature films in the country’s cinematic history. Set in the 1940s in a small asbestos-mining town in Quebec, the film follows the coming-of-age story of a teenage boy named Benoit, portrayed by Jacques Gagnon. Through Benoit's eyes, viewers experience the complexities of family dynamics, societal issues, and the stark realities of life in a working-class community, particularly the tensions between French Canadian miners and their English-speaking bosses.
The narrative explores themes of adolescence, including Benoit's encounters with death, religious irreverence, and the discovery of adult relationships, such as his aunt's infidelity. Notably, the film's cinematography, executed by Michel Brault, captures the haunting beauty of the Quebec winter landscape, enhancing the film's emotional depth. "Mon Oncle Antoine" is distinguished by its authentic portrayal of life without narrative embellishments, earning it significant acclaim, including eight Etrog Awards. The film remains a poignant reflection on the struggles and resilience of a marginalized community, making it a vital piece of Canadian cultural heritage.
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Subject Terms
Mon Oncle Antoine
Identification Canadian film
Date Released in 1971
Director Claude Jutra (1930-1986)
This motion picture marked the beginning of what was expected to be the “new wave” of Canadian feature films, when exciting new directors were just starting to create a Canadian film mythology. Jutra’s film provided important insights into the lives of rural French Canadians during the grim, repressive era before Quebec’s Quiet Revolution of the 1960’s, when a Liberal government improved the image and reality of French Canada.
Still widely regarded as one of the best feature films ever made in Canada, Mon Oncle Antoine (my uncle Antoine) is a poignant study of teenage Benoit (played by Jacques Gagnon) as he discovers his world and family in Black Lake, a small Quebec asbestos-mining town in the 1940’s. Director Claude Jutra forsakes his penchant for abstract style—as seen in his 1964 autobiographical film À tout prendre (take it all)—in favor of narrative simplicity, characterization, and a strong sense of milieu. The story is told through the eyes of Benoit, and it follows events and experiences in the lives of his family members, especially his uncle (Jean Duceppe), an alcohol-loving store owner and undertaker whom the boy reluctantly helps in delivering a coffin to a family that has lost a son during preparations for Christmas.
Fundamentally a rite-of-passage tale, the film, shown in French with English subtitles, depicts Benoit’s religious irreverence (he secretly consumes a Communion wafer and wine), burgeoning sexuality, ability to look death in the face, discovery of his aunt’s (Olivette Thibault) infidelity with her clerk, and his uncle’s pessimism and self-contempt. The film also affords a glimpse into the rancid relationships between working-class French Canadian miners and their British bosses, while also capturing the harsh beauty of a Quebec winter landscape through Michel Brault’s remarkable cinematography. The film was shot on location in mostly natural light and without cranes, dollies, or klieg lights.
Moreover, the feature scores political points without strident rhetoric. By concentrating, for example, on Joseph Poplin (Lionel Villeneuve), who bitterly quits the mine to work in the bush, and on an episode during which the rich mine manager throws cheap toys to children in the street during a carriage ride, the film depicts a grumbling, often grim and biased society. The film makes clear that the local French Canadians know that they are being exploited by Americans and English-speaking Canadians who take advantage of their cheap labor and resources without giving much back in return.
Impact
One of the most honored Canadian films of all time—it won eight Etrog Awards, including Best Film and Direction–Mon Oncle Antoine is distinguished from most of its forerunners and contemporaries by virtue of its fresh observation, uncompromising realism, lack of narrative artifice, strong characterization, and humor in the midst of oppression and pain. Jutra does not sanitize anything in telling his story (for which he wrote the screenplay with the help of Clement Perron), and he ensures that the boy’s point of view is not diluted or altered by an adult bias.
Bibliography
Feldman, Seth, ed. Take Two: A Tribute to Film in Canada. Toronto: Irwin, 1984.
Knelman, Martin. Home Movies: Tales from the Canadian Film World. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1987.
Wine, Bill. “Mon Oncle Antoine.” In Magill’s Survey of Cinema: Foreign Language Series, edited by Frank N. Magill. Vol. 5. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1985.