Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976)

Really - right now, I should  watch no films more depressing than Pass it forward. But of course I do. Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is not exactly the most optimistic film of film history. But it is one of the most ambitious films ever made. This piece of feminist experimental film-making revolves around a tightly knitted set of themes: work/labor, routines, time and space. Chantal Akerman, largely overlooked by the canonization-controlling, unhinged admirers of male crooks (did I say B---------, ok maybe I did), has made one of the most interesting films I have ever watched. Why is it so good? To answer that question, it is necessary to look into how Akerman works with images.

We follow Jeanne Dielman doing chores in her apartment, which she shares with her teenager son, and in shops and institutions in an anonymous-looking Brussels. We see her making beds, preparing dinner, cleaning the dishes and having mostly silent meals with her son (when she speaks, she reprimands him for reading while eating). These chores nonewithstanding, we get a glimpse into Jeanne's other job: once every day, while the potatoes are boiling on the stove, she receives a john. The film is divided into three days. During the first day, Jeanne's routines are new to us. During the last two days, we have already learned to discern patterns and moments of repetition. As the film spans 3 hours and 15 minutes, we are given some time to ruminate over these things.

It is this sense of repetition (but, as I will talk about later, ruptures) that is the heart of Jeanne Dielman.

Jeanne Dielman is a very restrained movie. All sounds are diegetic. If we hear a snippet of music, be sure it can be tracked to a radio. A large range of everyday sounds are heard; rushed steps, doors closing, the hum and odd screetch of kitchen machines, rattling dishes. In many scenes, we follow an action - almost always Jeanne's - in real time. Even the humdrum event such as peeling the skin off a potato is allowed the time to unravel without cuts. But Akerman does not work with long takes only. Sometimes the rhythm of takes follow the rhythm of the action portrayed (sitting down, silent) and in other cases a longish series of events are broken off with a sudden cut so that we really get only a blurry idea of what is really going on. Where are they going at night, Jeanne and her son? As others have pointed out, the rhythm of the film changes as the story changes. In some segments of the film, the abrupt cuts have an almost humoristic effect (I can tell you, this might be the only traceable element of humor here). Those particular scenes, of a claustrophobic hallway, lights constantly turned on and off, made me think of the great Resnais film Last Year in Marienbad, in which Delphine Seyrig (Jeanne Dielman) also acted (!). It is evident that Akerman is very interested in different notions of time and how time intersects with place and movement. The cinematography of Jeanne Dielman has nothing to do with a conventional sense of "conveying information" (what is 'information' anyway?, and so on).

The camera work enhances the detached style of the film. Almost all frames are long shots, the camera resolutely motioneless. If you hadn't guessed it already, what you may mistake as a shoddy "place the camera and SHOOT" reveals a stern sense of composition (just look at how Akerman plays with the reflection of a blue neon sign on the living room wall - esp. in the last ten minutes of the film. As the kids are prone to say, OMG!).

As in the early films of Michael Haneke (who was perhaps inspired by Akerman?) we see a minimum of emotional expression. For a while, this tempted me into dualist thinking: what's going on inside them? But of course, that leads us on the wrong track. I would say that if we are to take films like Akerman's seriously, we must somehow agree to seeing everything as taking place on the surface. That's not behaviorism (cf. Wittgenstein). Rather, Akerman challengus the viewer to scrutinize minute details of expression. With the long takes of everyday routines and short takes of Jeanne's running from room to room, working through her day as a housewife (what's up with on/off thing with lamps?), the film poses a question, what role do the routines have in Jeanne's life? What do we see of her in them? Or, more importantly, what does she become in them? 

As I said, the viewer gradually sees patterns in Jeanne's routines. During the second and third day, something is changed. There are small lapses and mistakes. She washes one plate, puts it into the rack, changes her mind, and re-washes it. She drops something on the floor. A shop is closed. The coffee is bad. In all this, it is as if the stern logic of her existence reveals some subtle cracks, only to be completely disrupted when Jeanne, to our horror and surprise, kills one of her johns. Life will not return to normal. At the last segment of the film, Jeanne is sitting in the living room, quiet. The only thing that moves is the reflection of the neon light. 

The denouement of the film isn't restricted to shock value. It calls for re-watching and re-thinking. What did I see earlier on? How did I view Jeanne? What happens in the film and what kind of change - is it a change - does she undergo? In most films, the role of change is very obvious: a "character" is built and gradually develops through what s/he experiences. In Akerman's film, change is a question mark. It is not a shallow one, either (it has to do with what it means to perceive somebody as having changed).
It is possible to interpret this film in fairly conventional ways (taking account of some strands of /radical/ feminism in the seventies): Jeanne is the typical housewife, trapped in a life as a Woman, trapped in an apartment, confined to the execution of mundane routines. But there is reason to believe matters are not quite that simple. Akerman has no vision of "another life". As my friend says, she does not portray Jeanne as a misunderstood artist who is not given to chance to express her creative spirit. One could, instead, say that Akerman takes a deeper look a domestic space. Space, for Akerman, is not just rooms inhabited by human beings, chairs and perhaps a set of crockery. Space is portrayed as an order (or perhaps dis-order) of things. In this sense, space is not just something that in different ways makes things possible or impossible in a physical (or metaphorical) sense. Here's the thing: we see Jeanne's apartment, her furniture, the lamps, the radio, in connection with what Jeanne does, in connection with her routines and almost-theatrical performance of habits. In the beginning of the film, Jeanne seems to be master of the space (despite and because of her feminine role). She runs from room to room, she makes things happen in an orderly way. There are no unforeseen events. And, then, something has gone askew. Jeanne's apartment is no longer the space of uninterrupted routines. Chance - and, later on, - action come to the fore. (Maybe I should put the blame on Akerman, but you see how it is; I am totally overpowered by Arendtian conceptualizations!)

I would say that habits and routines are understood in a more complex manner in Akerman's film than, for example, in Michael Haneke's The Seventh Continent. Haneke (in my opinion) seems to have relied on the notion of an underlying dread beneath the safe pattern of familial- and work relations. (Really, I should watch the film again to have more back-up for saying this.) But as I said, I am very unhappy with saying that there's any "beneath" in Akerman's film (or?). Routines are not rendered with the simple meaning of being "mundane" ("but she could be so much more..."). Jeanne's routines are her life. Throughout the film, the viewer battles the question of what this life is about; what meaning it has (and what is this question?). More and more, I am inclined to talk about Jeanne's routinized life as a sort of compulsion that is not only external (the concrete chores normally expected of the housewife) but also something Jeanne strives to impose on the world. Why? That is a question that haunts me throughout the film.

Akerman's study can be read on quite a few levels; as a study of ethnography, as social critique, psycho-analysis, feminism - even a sort of phenomenology of habits. I would say Haneke does not have an eye that is as compellingly observant as Akerman's.

END NOTE: A large part of the staff that worked on this film is female.