Hôtel Monterey

Hotel Monterey (1972)

*** (out of 4)

I'll admit that I had never heard of this Belgium film before it showed up on the wee hours of the morning on Turner Classic Movies. Even the plot description on my cable service was blank, which is just about right because there's very little "story" in this fascinating documentary. For 63-minutes director Akerman films various aspects of a New York hotel. We get footage of some of the people staying there. Other footage of the hallways as well as a few looks at the rooms there. You might wonder how on Earth any of this is entertaining and half way through the film I started to ask myself why I was so drawn into what I was watching considering there wasn't really anything to watch. There's no even anything to listen to as the film was shot silent so there's no dialogue, no score, nothing. I think what makes the film so entertaining is that you normally watch a movie and wait for the next thing to happen. This happens over and over until the movie is over yet that's not what happens here because you see a single image for fifteen to ninety-seconds and then it just goes to another random image. I think this works because while you're watching and studying one of these images your brain is pretty much preparing you for "what's going to happen next" but when that next thing happens your brain pretty much has to start over with studying the image and again going into the "what's going to happen" mode. I thought the film was extremely entertaining, although I'm sure most are going to grow bored within a matter of minutes. If someone did turn this off after a few minutes I can't say I'd blame them as this isn't a mass appeal movie. I think the ones I'd recommend this to the most are fans of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING because it's clear this movie was a major influence on that 1980 masterpiece. There are several tracking shots of the camera going down the halls and around corners, which of course was a major aspect of the Kubrick film. There's also a few shots of the elevators that will remind people of the Kubrick film and just check out how some of the people are shot and again you'll think of THE SHINING.

Chantal Akerman's first feature-length documentary is a look at the Hotel Monterey at 215 West 94th Street in Manhattan. It looks to be a Single Room Occupancy, a type of boarding house that still seems pretty obviously named. We called 'em "SROs" in ironic confusion with a hit Broadway show's "Standing Room Only." I had several friends who lived in SROs back then. They were usually filled with welfare recipients like my friends, and I always thought it was an economically inefficient way to house them. The SROs were privately owned and charged hotel rates, far more than the cost of a series of studio apartments. The SROs my friends lived in offered no services, so how the place looked depended on the roomer. The individual rooms in this movie look clean, well maintained, with decent if cheap linen and drapery typical of a lower-priced hotel in those days, a bit 1970s-gaudily patterned, but easily washed material. Perhaps the Monterey offered services.

The long sequences set in the green-brown corridors where nothing happens is what I have come to associate with Ms. Akerman's documentaries. With no soundtrack, it seems an attempt to show how low-key miserable these people are, stuck in this place like it's the Overlook Hotel. In truth, Ms. Akerman seems to have mistaken specific locations with where people live. My friends may have slept in their SROs, but they lived in New York City, or the library, or inside their heads.

This being Ms. Akerman's movie and not mine, she was free to offer her own view of life in Manhattan. I agree that it's a useful contrast to the glamorous sort of life usually offered in the movies, but just as false and ridiculous. I don't find it interesting enough to stretch out to over an hour. Rather than live in Ms. Akerman's Hotel Monterey, I'd rather live in New York City, or the library, or my head.

Clearly influenced by Warhol Zeitgeist (remember it's 1972), Chantal Ackerman's Hotel Monterey is a study in empty headed documentary, eschewing key elements in favor of some provocatively mundane images and scenes that are laboriously drawn on but say next to nothing beyond the obvious. How Akerman, who had made nothing but shorts up to this point, deemed this worth cutting upward to an hour is mystifying since it's clear it is going nowhere after fifteen. But plod on she does.

Located in lower Manhattan the dark semi polished Monterey is populated by dignified if somewhat down at the heels men and women. Tidy little old ladies throw butts on the floor while glum slow moving gentlemen eye the camera suspiciously as they meet in the halls and the elevator. Some folks pose and smile others peer through a crack of the door betrayed by a shaft of light. Welcome to the Hotel Monterey.

Ackerman strives for minimalism over realism with fractured imagery and long tedious shots and slow zooms of the bleak setting omitting sound and titles. No narration, no interviews, no music score and most importantly no ambient sound which amputates both mood and impact. She simply moves about the hotel filming surface and offering no depth or insight. This may have well been her intention but I see it as a missed opportunity at a more substantive documentary that would have been more informative and interesting by involving other senses instead of self indulgent MOS camera work of tawdry hallways that are not allowed to be heard. By the time you check out of Hotel Monterey you'll probably need a good night's sleep.

Chantal Akerman is arguably the most important and interesting female director of her era, yet she is sadly under-known here in the U.S. The range of her work is astounding, from largely experimental 'difficult' works like this, to frothy musical-comedy, and just about everything in between. Even if you don't respond to this film, you may well like other things she has done.

Hotel Monterey is an experimental silent 60 minute 'documentary' set in a cheap NY hotel. No story, just images that cross the sadness of Edward Hopper's paintings with the weirdness of David Lynch (who seems to have been influenced by this). It's like a great photo book come to life. It has a fascinating look (very grainy 16mm, with super rich colors). No question that by nature this feels dull in spots and some images are less powerful or repetitive, but its full of wonderful, disquieting moments, and it has a fascinating, hypnotic almost imperceptible build to a 'climax'. If nothing else, the film is worth it for the simple power of the moment when the camera starts to move after 30 minutes of still images.

Reminds me of running around, exploring the vacant spaces of ferries, hotels and various older buildings while traveling with my parents as a child.