Before we start, I swear to you that I wrote and scheduled this post before the 2022 Sight and Sound list dropped.
Chantal Akerman is an avant garde filmmaker more than she is a documentarian, a feminist filmmaker, a Belgian filmmaker, or a Jewish filmmaker, though of course she's all of these things and more. For a while, I was under the mistaken impression that she was a French New Wave filmmaker, since many of her films are in French, and sometimes use similar aesthetics. The New Wave is certainly an influence on her work, but not nearly as much as experimental filmmakers like Jonas Mekas and Michael Snow, and the structuralist movement of the 1960s. These were filmmakers intent on stripping cinema down to its absolute basics.
I'm a little hesitant to choose "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" to write about for this feature, because it's Akerman's most famous film and has been analyzed by everyone who has ever taken an interest in her work. It's not representative of everything she is as a filmmaker. Akerman directed both experimental and narrative films, documentaries and fictional works. In the '80s, she even made a full-blown musical, with an accompanying making-of film documenting the process. Her most touching features were very personal, including film diaries about her own life and her relationship with her mother.
"Jeanne Dielman," by contrast, feels like a feminist manifesto in cinematic form. It follows three days in the life of a widowed mother in Brussels. And in those three days, almost nothing interesting happens. With a running time of roughly 200 minutes, the audience is forced to experience the tedium of daily domesticity along with the protagonist, played by Delphine Seyrig. Long sequences take place in the kitchen, where Jeanne meticulously cooks and cleans for herself and a barely seen teenage son. The structuralist influence is the most apparent here, as the long, long static shots and a lack of any usual cinematic artifice help to emphasize the unrelenting dullness of the situation. We're taken through Jeanne's entire, strictly regimented daily routine, and then the whole thing starts over.
The film does have a plot, but the visual storytelling is so unlike what we see in most narrative films, it doesn't register what's going on until the second half of the film. Akerman is more interested in getting the audience on to the same wavelength and rhythms as the main character, to make them identify with Jeanne, and learn how her tightly controlled universe functions. Initially there's nothing out of the ordinary about the Dielman home or anything that Jeanne is doing. Even when it's revealed that she's a sex worker, with regular appointments in the afternoons, there's a matter-of-factness about the whole business. It's only when the viewer has internalized Jeanne's particular way of existing in the confines of her home that the disruptions to the routine begin to occur, and things are allowed to escalate from there. The abrupt ending doesn't come out of nowhere if you've been paying attention.
Seyrig's performance as Jeanne is hypnotic and absorbing. She bears the weight of the audience's attention in practically every frame. At the same time, there's a distance maintained between Jeanne and the viewer, an opaqueness to her motives and mindset, despite the intimacy of the camera. The film often feels voyeuristic as a result. Jeanne stubbornly remains a mystery, despite our opportunity to observe her in such excruciating detail. In the opening scenes, where everything is going right, there's a sureness and an exactness to her motions that create an illusion of perfection. However, the illusion is fragile, and perhaps Jeanne depends on it too much. When her world starts to fall apart, you can pinpoint the exact moment that it happens, but not why it happens.
Along with the unusual use of time in the film, there's also a very effective use of space. Jeanne's home is lovely and well-kept, but unexceptional. And after spending an extended amount of time there, and seeing so much of Jeanne's labor expended on its care, it starts to feel oppressive and vaguely sinister. Objects take on significance through Jeanne's interactions with them - her kitchen implements, her soup tureen, and a pair of scissors. The camera stays mostly static, there are few cuts, no music, little dialogue, and nothing fancy going on with the art direction. And yet, through those long, unbroken shots, and Seyrig's precise performance, we come to understand that Jeanne's home is a prison.
"Jeanne Dielman" is one of Chantal Akerman's darkest films, with a heroine who is revealed to be so alienated that she feels more like an automaton than a human being. I'm a little sad that Akerman rarely made anything this bleak again - most of her subsequent narrative films are about messy romantic relationships - but on the other hand, I can't blame her for choosing to move on to happier subjects.
What I've Seen - Chantal Akerman
Hotel Monterey (1973)
Je Tu Il Elle (1974)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
News from Home (1977)
Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (1978)
Toute une nuit (1982)
Golden Eighties (1986)
Night and Day (1991)
D’Est (1993)
La Captive (2000)
Down There (2006)
No Home Movie (2015)
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