Day 16. Mon oncle Antoine

Maturation is characterized by a voyage into the night in Mon oncle Antoine (1971), a trip that occurs on Christmas Eve. In a 1940s Quebec mining town, winter is still the season promising holiday cheer, while in reality it just makes outdoor labour harder and everything darker and colder. The Asbestos Strike and Quiet Revolution will change the welfare and secularization of Quebec over the next two decades, but for now, the French working class observe the laws of tradition, and aren't necessarily happy about it.

Fifteen year-old Benoit (Jacques Gagnon) walks through life with a curious smile when his face is in resting position, annoying those around him. The movie is told, for the most part, through his eyes, and becomes a variation of the narrative trope of a kid "coming of age." I don't think very many people can identify a single moment where they "came of age" in life, but it works all the time in fiction, so I won't argue.

It also lends itself to the contrasts that make Mon oncle Antoine interesting. Claude Jutra's film is repeatedly voted the best in Canadian history in critics' polls, and that likely results from its impressionistic moments rather than its overall engagement. The movie opens on overhead images of the town against white hillsides, with music that sounds like a children's song re-arranged by Ennio Morricone. It's idyllic, briefly, until factories and smoke overtake everything.

This makes way for a first half with a near documentary-like aversion to obvious dramatic manipulation. In the days leading to Christmas, Benoit helps his adoptive uncle Antoine (Jean Duceppe) rebrand his general store for the holidays. Benoit flirts with his teenage female co-worker in moments that are amusing because neither kid has yet absorbed basic appropriateness. But Benoit's discovery of sex is more perfunctory and less profound than his encounter with death, and it isn't until the second half where Mon oncle Antoine becomes truly compelling.

Antoine doubles as an undertaker, and upon receiving a call that a different fifteen year-old boy has died, he sets off with Benoit on a night sled trip through snowy wilderness to retrieve the corpse. As the two of them eat dinner at the dead boy's mother's house, Benoit sits disturbed. He keeps looking to the dark opening of the kid's bedroom, beyond which that boy lays dead, cutoff from life at the very same age Benoit is now. The sequence works spectacularly as a short film in its own right.

Forced maturation through melancholy is a staple in Canadian film. Childhood interrupted by a realization of death is also vividly illustrated in French Canadian director Andre Melancon's 1984 beloved kids' adventure movie La guerre des tuques (The Dog Who Stopped the War). Mon oncle Antoine helped define this regional legacy, and whether we're happy with this formula or not, this is where the props go. 

Mon oncle Antoine and The Meaning of Christmas

Christmas is viewed here as a time of death and birth. Benoit's old self dies, leading to an uncertain awakening.