Jeanne Dielmann, Sight and Sound, and the Discourse

 

Well, it happened.For the second time in a row. Every ten years since 1952, film publication Sight and Sound asks a group of film professionals what the best movies of all time are. A list of ten is selected by each. The first poll conducted had The Bicycle Thieves (1949, Vitorrio De Sica) top the list. From 1962 through 2002, the reigning champion was Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles). Then in 2012, Hitchcock's 1958 masterpiece Vertigo- unrecognized as such at the time of its release- toppled the mighty Kane to place 1st on the list. Both of these films are major works in film history. Welles inventing many techniques with his 1941 debut that would be utilized in the future. While Hitchcock crafting what is viewed by many to be th ultimate tale of obsession. This years sees feminist masterwork Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (whew) top the list. 

The criticism of Jeanne Dielman being on #1 borders on laughable and absurd. Some of the comments I've come across: 

"The Critics List has officially jumped the shark."

"The day the cinema stood dead." (My personal favorite. The thought of something standing while dead is amusing.)

"RIP Sight and Sound poll"

"The majority of critics decided to sacrifice art to the altar of political correctness and woke ideology." 

Even Paul Schrader got in on the action. Calling Dielman topping the list a case of 'distorted woke reappraisal.'

Then there were the additions of Get Out, Portrait of A Lady On Fire, Moonlight and Parasite. Four movies from the past 10 years that were deemed unworthy because of how recent they were. With Shrader's logic, would these films- which focus on the black experience, LGBTQ and class struggle- be woke reappraisal? Films like Battleship Potemkin and Battle of Algiers are fervently political but they still manage to make the list. Why are those film not considered 'woke' but more recent films are? I've always been repulsed by identity politics but in the case of art, the notion of rejecting a film like Parasite because it is too recent or too woke kind of crumbles when you consider that, in 1952, the film that topped the poll was a film from 1949. Should we just put a stop-gap on any films made after 1980? The entire argument is missing the point. We are no longer looking at the films themselves. Instead, we're looking at the social issues the films tackle and whether or not they are released within an acceptable time frame. 

The best part of this list is the individual results rather than the collective. Did Michael Mann's list change from the last time? What about the new directors who were polled like Ari Aster and Robert Eggers? Lists like these are always helpful when navigating new stuff to watch. 

The potential to dismiss something that you are uncomfortable with doesn't cross my mind. Shunning people or making people feel stupid is a good way to perpetuate this toxic discourse. The more we hold people to an untenable standard, the more cinephiles you will see out there saying "fuck Jeanne Dielmann, never heard of it". The problem here is that no one wants to show that person the film or educate them as to why it is important. 

Jeanne Dielman is not an easy film to just throw on and watch and if you were to tell someone it is, you would be lying. You don't start with something like that if you want to get a taste of what the filmmaker Chantal Akerman is about. You start small. Start with her New York films like Hotel Monterrey or News From Home. Or start with other French filmmakers making films during Akerman's time. Agnes Varda for example. To tell someone they don't understand a 3+ hour long foreign film and just go watch it, then have them sit through it all only to have them say they didn't like it is missing the important cultural context and place in film history the film belongs. Akerman was turning a sharp left while even some of her more radical contemporary peers (Like Welles and Hitchcock) were still turning right.

Even within those films like Vertigo, it's important to understand just how different a genre film made today differs from something like Vertigo. Everything is hyper stylized. The editing is more frenetic. Sitting in a theater nowadays, there are more cuts in the trailers leading up to a movie than the entirety of JFK. Now compare that to a handful of cuts in a movie over 3 hours long. 

From a personal standpoint, what made me love Jeanne Dielmann was how it managed to slow time down to the point where the everyday routine of a woman bordered on an action film. What differs from the first time she makes veal to the next time? Well her hair is disheveled. Or she pours the water to make tea slightly different than the last time. By focusing on the minutaie, we are able to extract the details that carry us along the runtime. 

Process has always been something of a fascination to me. As a kid, I'd love watching the capsules get sucked up the tubes at a bank drive thru. I would even imitate the sound of my grandparents garage door opening and closing. This led me to begging my mom to buy me a little gingerbread house contraption so I could mimic the opening and closing of the little door to my hearts content. This fascination with process would carry over into my love of film. I was attracted toward police procedurals, docudramas and even a show like The Wire. Bresson's films like A Man Escaped and L'Argent would follow and while they would examine things like how a prisoner escapes or the transaction of a dollar bill across characters, nothing would prepare me for what I would get myself into. 

When I first saw Jeanne Dielmann, I felt like I hit the goldmine. This was the ultimate movie about process. More than that, the experimentation with narrative was of a kind I never saw before. Up there with when I first saw Eraserhead or 2001. 

To give some context, Chantal Akerman, born in Belgium, moved to New York in 1971. A place where she would begin her craft. She was exposed to the avant garde filmmaking of Michael Snow and Jonas Mekas which she said were "the most determing factor on my cinematography." It was during this time, that Akerman discovered that cinema could be unshackled from traditional narrative, that one doesn't need to tell a story to generate suspense and emotion from images. 

The films she made during that time often consisted of few set ups and long takes. Hotel Monterey being crucial in the lead up to Jeanne Dielman. The film takes place in a run down Upper West Side hotel. The shoot would last night, around fifteen straight hours. It would be her first experiment in duration. Getting the viewer lulled into the passage of time as well as the boundaries of space. We see this explode in Jeanne Dielman, where she pushes that experimentation to its limits. She was only 24 when she made it. 

In the BFI Classics book on the film, Catherine Fowler posits that of all the traits the movie shares, being 'contrary' is the one that is most prevalent. "This is because it puts on display the ambivalence that strongly accompanies the work of the housewife and the mother. Those who saw the film on its first release agreed that it shows actions hardly ever seen before in cinema, and what is more it shows them in excruciating detail." Fowler continues "It accomplishes something that very few other films have managed: it makes the housewife and mother see,"

Being led to a film like this requires a sense of nurture in discovery and discourse We were all budding movie fans at one point. The more we are able to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, someone who was at the same point we were, the better the discourse. 

Here's what my list would be:

The Devils (1971, Ken Russell)

Sorcerer (1977, William Friedkin)

Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)

Magnolia (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson)

GoodFellas (1990, Martin Scorsese)

A Brighter Summer Day (1991, Edward Yang)

The Mirror (1975, Andrei Tarkovsky)

The Battle of Algiers (1966, Gillo Pontecorvo)

Possession (1981, Andrzej Zulawski)

What would your list look like?