Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1980

The Contenders:

Brubaker
Fame
Melvin and Howard (winner)
Mon Oncle d’Amerique
Private Benjamin

Despite All My Rage, I'm Still Just a Rat in a Cage

Film: Mon Oncle d’Amerique
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

When a filmmaker does something truly different, it makes the job of a critic (or even someone who plays at criticism like me) much more difficult. On its surface, Mon Oncle d’Amerique is a film very much like any other. Three people have different stories that intersect in places and that are frequently affected by their past and their present. But the film is much more than that, because it is also something of a psychological study of the three people, that study being performed by Henri Laborit, who plays himself in the film as more or less a narrator and explainer of everything we see.

Essentially, the film is an exploration of Laborit’s ideas of how people function in society and what truly motivates us. In Laborit’s world, our higher brain functions exist essentially in service to those instincts that keep us alive. Those basic instincts are the need to survive, basic drives like sex, and the avoidance of pain. Frequently, our characters in the film are compared to rats in cages that elicit electric shock.