Noticias de casa

The narrator -- Chantal Akerman, the director of this movie -- reads seventeen letters from her mother. Meanwhile, the audience gets to see shots of a Manhattan where people don't look at the camera, unless they are on the subway or teenaged girls.

It's a far piece from the world of Kenyon & Mitchell, but Akerman is not filming events where the attendees might hope to see themselves in a theater. I watched this movie and tried to figure out where each shot was taken. I think I was pretty successful. That game, however, did not take up the whole of the 85 minutes of the movie, and what was someone who was not an adult in Manhattan in the 1970s supposed to do? After ten or fifteen minutes, I decided that the audience was supposed to make of this a portrait of the recipient of the letter, an individual whose mother thinks she is hungry for news of the family, who never writes about whether she is happy or has made any friends (inference: she isn't and hasn't), and the shots are of her world in New York: first downtown near the River, then a long sojourn in the Times Square Subway Station and finally a ten-minute shot from the stern of the Staten Island Ferry setting out of Manhattan.

I think that with this movie, Akerman is trying to rewrite the relationship between film maker and audience. A film maker makes a film that tells a story, and the audience is the perceptive receiver of that tale, whether it is fiction or fact. We infer plot from the course of actions, from the changes in the personality, status, and relationships of the characters. We derive character from the way in which individual performers differ from the stereotyped roles. What, however, are we to make when you don't see the performer, don't hear her voice, except as a hurried reader of letters?

Well, the stereotypical responses fall neatly into two types. The first type says "Dagnabit! I came here to see a movie with interesting characters and a story! This is awful!" The second says "Ahah, this is new and interesting technique. I get what the auteur is trying to do, and approve, because that makes me a smarter, more percipient viewer." Which are you?

As for me, my reaction is "Interesting technique, but I'd prefer a little more effort from the film maker than forcing me to either fall asleep or make up my own story out of rags and tags." That's because I don't insist on a purely conventional story, but rather than being such an intelligent viewer that I get exactly what Akerman is trying to do, I'd like to have some character.

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, to dark, thoughtful dramas, and just about everything in between. I'm so glad Criterion is finally putting out much of her early work.

As for this film, it's an interesting experiment, if far from Akerman's most important.

It's all images of New York City, mostly still at first, with ever more movement as it goes along. The soundtrack is all letters to Ackerman from her mother in France being read aloud over the images. Odd as it sounds, it easily held my attention, though never really got emotionally involving. Once again, Akerman's city images are great, evoking Edward Hopper's paintings. But both the images and overall impact seem less powerful to me than Akerman's somewhat similar - and to my taste far better -- 'Hotel Monterey'.

However with this kind of experimental film, everyone is likely to react differently, and I'd urge you to see it for yourself.

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman reads letters from her mother with her concerns about the twenty one year old in the big strange city. The visual is Chantal recording the everyday lives of regular people in the city which is almost a reply to her mother. It is experimental for its time and very fascinating. As a piece of nostalgia, it is fascinating to see 70's New York in an everyday setting. There is no character or plot or flashiness. It's simple street level observational filmmaking. Even as a travelogue, it's a little interesting.

If you've ever wanted to just stand in front of a painting and stare at it, this is your chance. Or, alternately, like a whole gallery of your favorite artist for you spend an hour and a half studying their pieces.

"News From Home" gives you that chance. It isn't a movie for the average viewer, or even the average museum goer. It's introspective, spellbinding and gorgeous, given a chance. I loaned it to a friend and suggested he "let yourself go" while watching it, and he reported "it turned into magic once I let it flow through me."

If you want things that blow up, swear words, and sex, you are in the way wrong place sister. This is one of the best art films I have ever seen, without all that inaccesible interiority of so many other "art" film makers.

It's more like a personal documentary, which sounds impossible to pull off doesn't it? Well, Derek Jarman's "Blue" pales to this private gallery of scenery and emotion, which makes "News" far advanced, cuz "Blue" is my fave of his.

Following the epic JEANNE DIELMAN Akerman has relocated from old Europe to the very heart of the new world,in other words New York City.She has also made a much shorter film and one without a star,in fact without any stars at all.The images of New York,its streets,subways and buildings ,lovingly shot by camera-person Babette Mangolte,act as counterpoint to the soundtrack,not just the monotonous sounds of everyday life but the sound of the director's voice reading the letters written to her by her mother in Belgium. Akerman left home when she was twenty without telling her parents and this film records the sights and sounds of the strange city she found herself in,her alienation reinforced by the news her mother related from a distant continent.At once a film about America,urban life,loneliness,the place of the spectator,the film is incredibly sensual,a mosaic of images,colours,sounds.