Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
- 1975
- Tous publics
- 3h 22m
A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet, but something happens th... Read allA lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet, but something happens that changes her safe routine.A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet, but something happens that changes her safe routine.
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But we don't understand the film, right? If we understood it, we would acknowledge its greatness, right? No. We fully understand that the message the director wants to convey is that many women's lives suck and that they are fed up with society, life and being housewives and that men are to blame. They become depressed and crazy because of this. We do understand this. However, that political message in itself is not enough for a great movie.
How could this be ranked as number one on the Sight & Sound poll? It is sad. She was so young when she directed this film and you can tell by watching it! It is absolutely not the greatest film in the world. It is more like a typical film one would do if you lacked the resources to do something greater.
There are some clichés in the movie as well.
I give the film a 2-rating because I acknowledge some qualities. For example, the movie became pretty creepy in the end.
Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is 201 minutes of three days in the life of its titular heroine, played intentionally blank by Delphine Seyrig. That's a run time of about three and a half hours--time Akerman spends following Seyrig's Dielman around doing errands, cooking food, watching a neighbor's baby, sitting around, doing some sex work, and caring for her young adult son. Yeah, sex work is the odd one.
The film deserves credit for depicting her sex work as a clean and unsensationalized expression of self-ownership--until of course it throws that all away in the film's stupid sex-is-death conclusion and squanders the only good will it had earned with me. Dielman's relationship with her son is wrapped up in a lot of dated Freudian BS, and rings utterly hollow to those of us living beyond the 1970s. That leaves a whole lot of boring stuff, and that stuff is a whole lot of boring.
The bulk of this film consists of a static camera watching a woman do housework. It's like the much-lauded maid scene of Umberto D, but stretched across three excruciating hours. This is presumably meant to be oppressive and disturbing, and here Akerman crucially misunderstands the effect of her art on its audience: the only possible spectatorial response, so far as I can tell, is supreme disengagement. Just as I daydream when I do housework, so does my mind wander while watching Jeanne Dielman of 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles cook the potatoes. People retreat to their thoughts when they do this stuff in real life, and they retreat when you faithfully reproduce it on screen. The film can't possibly engage me politically or emotionally as art if I'm spending the entire run time thinking about whether I get paid this Friday and what I'm going to cook for dinner.
The question is, is Akerman aware of the human proclivity toward idle thought during mundane tasks? Because this film is only oppressive and uncomfortable if it's empty, if this woman doesn't dream then this numbing boredom could have something to say. But that doesn't work: we all think all the time, we all daydream. Does Jeanne Dielman of 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles daydream? Presumably so, but the film is so damned externalized that I have no idea what she's thinking. And without her thoughts to guide me through these three and a half irretrievable hours of my one wild and precious life, I'm left with my own.
As such, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles's conclusion is spectacularly unmotivated and completely unearned. The finale is entirely unsupported by its previous action because this was, for me, a film about what type of sandwich I'll eat when I get home and what's going on this weekend. -TK 10/7/10
Movies are about movies. The borrow plot, character, lighting, sound editing and camera angles from what went before. Since "Birth of a Nation" introduced close-ups, cross cutting and cutaways in 1915 everyone has adopted that vocabulary for story telling. This movie throws all that out: The camera is fixed and stares at a scene for a very long time. Scenes had to be performed all the way through when they were filmed, because each was done in a single shot.
Movies use telescoping of time to compress the happenings of a long period into two hours. This movie tries to avoid that, depicting mundane tasks in their entirety. We watch Jeanne Dielman prepare a meatloaf, step by step, wash the dishes (her back is to us!), smooth the bed, or go shopping.
Movie use facial expressions to express feelings. Spoiler alert: When we get strong facial expressions from Jeanne Dielman there is a very good reason. And that only happens once in a three-hour, 21 minute film.
Movies use broad strokes to carry the audience along. Spiderman supplements explosions with 3D to keep me occupied. By contrast, this film uses subtle changes. You must watch closely to see what happens.
Most movies come to you. This movie requires you go to it. If there is dullness it is among those viewers who think that because they don't get something it's not there to get. There is plenty here but instead of being served to you it has to be harvested. And it is very fresh.
The wonderful Delphine Seyrig here plays Jeanne with an astonishing subtlety and restraint, almost emotionless throughout the three hours and twenty minutes of running time, yet it remains one of the most affecting, powerful performances that I have seen in cinema.
Did you know
- TriviaJeanne Dielman's obsessive and exacting ritualistic behavior was inspired by director Chantal Akerman's mother, Natalia Akerman.
- GoofsFrom around 01:11:18 to 01:11:36, we can see the boom mic on right of the frame.
- Quotes
Sylvain Dielman: [Referring to his dead father] If he was ugly, did you want to make love with him?
Jeanne Dielman: Ugly or not, it wasn't all that important. Besides, "making love" as you call it, is merely a detail. And I had you. And he wasn't as ugly as all that.
Sylvain Dielman: Would you want to remarry?
Jeanne Dielman: No. Get used to someone else?
Sylvain Dielman: I mean someone you love.
Jeanne Dielman: Oh, you know...
Sylvain Dielman: Well, if I were a woman, I could never make love with someone I wasn't deeply in love with.
Jeanne Dielman: How could you know? You're not a woman. Lights out?
- ConnectionsEdited into Les variations Dielman (2010)
- SoundtracksBagatelle for Piano
Composed by Ludwig van Beethoven
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- Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels
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- $41,466