Considering the number of acclaimed productions by English-speaking Canadians like Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, and Guy Maddin, it's interesting that the most celebrated of all Canadian pictures hails from the French-speaking province of Quebec, has little spectacle or high emotion, and doesn't boast well-known stars. Claude Jutra's coming-of age-story My Uncle Antoine, released as Mon oncle Antoine in 1971, has been named the country's all-time-best movie by the Toronto film festival critics poll every time balloting has taken place - first in 1984, again in 1993, and most recently in 2004. Two polls by the British magazine Sight & Sound have also placed it highest among Canadian movies. These are remarkable achievements for a plainspoken film with unglamorous characters, an understated visual style, and political themes subtly embedded in its deceptively simple plot.

The title character of My Uncle Antoine is an aging shopkeeper in a rural Quebec town where the local asbestos mine is the major employer. Set sometime in the 1940s, the story begins in the Christmas season, but the first major event is a gloomy one: the funeral of a worker, who probably died of lung disease caused by his rotten working conditions. Antoine arranges the ceremony, since along with owning and operating the general store, he's also the village undertaker; an important fixture in the town, he sells people the things they need to live and then provides no-frills burials when they expire. His main assistant is Fernand, a younger man with a mischievous streak, played by Jutra himself. Further help comes from two teenagers on the premises: adolescent Carmen, a lovely girl farmed out to work by her uncaring father, and Antoine's nephew Benoit, a smart fourteen-year-old whose experiences and observations are the movie's focal points.

For the first hour or so, My Uncle Antoine is episodic and meandering. The moods of the town and the lives of its people emerge gradually and organically, often seen through the eyes of Benoit, who learns a good deal about human nature as Christmas approaches and everyone works like crazy to enjoy the season despite the hard realities around them. Antoine hits the bottle too often for comfort. The grand unveiling of the store's Christmas display turns out to be less than grand. The pompous mine owner drives through town in his carriage, flinging tacky Christmas stockings to the residents and getting pelted with snowballs in return. A woman announces her engagement and tries on a wedding outfit. Carmen's father shows up to pocket her wages and barely has a smile for his neglected daughter. Benoit flirts with Carmen and she flirts back.

Just when it seems the movie will never develop a fully linear plot, a dramatic occurrence changes the trajectory. In a household some distance from town, the oldest boy has been sick. Now his mother phones the store to say that her son has died, her husband is far away, and she needs Antoine the undertaker to come right away. Antoine has a fair amount of alcohol in his system, so he recruits Benoit to help out, and together they head into the wintry night with a child-sized coffin on the back of their horse-drawn sled. At their destination they have a meal with the bereaved mother, who is clearly in a state of shock. Antoine has a few more drinks before going with Benoit to the deathbed, where they lower the body into the roughhewn box they've brought. Loading it on the sleigh, they depart for home in the dead of night.

The trip goes well until Antoine drinks himself into a stupor, leaving Benoit to take the reins - a grave mistake, since the high-spirited lad makes the horse go too fast and the coffin slides off into the snow. Benoit hasn't enough strength to budge it, much less load it back on the sleigh, and when Antoine finally recovers his wits he has nothing to contribute but random whining about the misfortunes of his life. Recovering the reins, Benoit races to town as quickly as he can - just in time to see Fernand canoodling with Antoine's wife, as it happens - and then he rushes off with Fernand on a quest for the wayward coffin, which is nowhere to be found. From here the story proceeds to a melancholy conclusion, punctuated by a dream sequence that puts a perfect capstone on these riveting events.

In an offbeat structural move, Jutra frames My Uncle Antoine with glimpses of a laborer named Jos, who doesn't figure importantly in the picture until the final scene. Early in the story he abruptly quits his job at the asbestos mine, telling his wife and kids that he's heading for timber country where the air is fresher and the work is less demeaning. Later he abandons the logging camp just as suddenly, fed up again with manual work offering few rewards. Scenes like these appear to be digressions from the film's main action, which revolves around Antoine's store, but Jos's exploits are keenly relevant if you take the time and place into account. The years between 1945 and 1960 are known in Quebec as the Great Darkness, or Grande noirceur, because the province was controlled by a far-right government that enforced its own version of traditional religious values based on obedience to authority, meanwhile exploiting the region's natural resources for profits from industrialists on the United States side of the border. During this time the province's French-speaking people were treated like second-class citizens by their own government, according to Canadian film scholar André Loiselle, relegated to low-grade jobs in mines, factories, and logging camps owned by English-speaking elites. Jos embodies the average people of the era, stirred up by rebellious impulses but unable to act effectively on them.

Things had changed in Quebec when My Uncle Antoine went into production in 1970, but not entirely for the better: Quebec separatism had arisen during the 1960s, and the allegorical violence of the young boy's death and the undignified treatment of his coffin subtly echo the actual violence and fear that were afflicting Canada at the time. A stunning last-minute twist drives this home, revealing that the corpse and coffin have been discovered by the dead boy's father, who is none other than Jos, returning to his family unaware of the tragedy awaiting him. The movie thus ends on a powerful and meaningful note.

Jutra's career was very uneven, reaching occasional high points but largely wandering from French New Wave imitations to little-seen documentaries and TV movies for English Canadian companies. My Uncle Antoine was written by Clément Perron, who grew up in the sort of surroundings depicted by the film, unlike Jutra, who came from a middle-class urban background and earned a medical degree before turning to cinema. It also reaps solid dividends from the cinematography by Michel Brault, known for his realistic camera style. Despite their expertise, the movie has significant failings, especially during the long spell of hanging around town before the narrative's drama finally kicks into gear. Its best scenes are truly memorable, however, and its portrait of French Canada's Great Darkness may be the best we will ever have.

Director: Claude Jutra
Producer: Marc Beaudet
Screenplay: Clément Perron
Cinematographer: Michel Brault
Film Editing: Claude Jutra, Claire Boyer
Set Decoration: Denis Boucher
Music: Jean Cousineau
With: Jean Duceppe (Uncle Antoine), Olivette Thibault (his wife), Claude Jutra (Fernand), Hélène Loiselle (Madame Poulin), Lionel Villeneuve (Jos Poulin), Monique Mercure (Alexandrine), Jacques Gagnon (Benoit), Lyne Champagne (Carmen), Mario Dubuc (Poulin child), Lise Brunelle (Poulin child), Alain Legendre (Poulin child), Robin Marcoux (Poulin child), Serge Evers (Poulin child), Georges Alexander (the big boss), René Salvatore Catta (the priest), Jean Dubost (the foreman), Benoit Marcoux (Carmen's father), Dominique Joly (Maurice), Lise and Michel Talbot (the engaged couple), Simeon Dallaire (a customer), Sidney Harris (the helper), Roger Garand (Euclide), and the people of Black Lake.
C-110m.

by David Sterritt