After sitting for three and a half hours watching "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" I concluded a lot of ideas and criticism about this thing and none of them are positive enough. You sit there and watch over and over and over and over again the routine of one of the most boring housewives ever presented on the big screen so that a pretentious filmmaker and brainwashed viewers can look at this and see that something relevant was said about what being a housewife really is.
Director Chantal Akerman more than calmly introduce us Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) a methodical/lonely/bored widow, living for the things in her house, cooking, cleaning, knitting and doing what a housewife does except for being a prostitute, receiving clients in her house, and using the money to help her in raising a teenage son (Jan Decorte) that most of the time is out of house and when he's there there's not enough conversation between both except for "Sleep tight" or "Don't eat and read"; they're monosyllabic to the extreme of making you angry at them. In 200 minute of its running time, the movie presents us three long, dull, boring, endless days of her life, in a constant silence, imprisoned by the daily domestic routine of leaving a perfect house to live but not interesting enough to stay. Sometimes she goes out, goes to shop things here and there and that's it. Looking at the technical aspect of the film, the director leaves the camera rolling, static, with no close-ups, no cuts, the scenes go on for like forever. But on the third day, something breaks her peace when she has an orgasm with one of the clients, something she never had and....she kills the guy (?).
Films can be a giant force of communication, providing informations, reflections and expressing opinions, new points of view, presenting cultures and also a nice form of entertainment. At last use it's a wonderful way to escape the boredom of our lives or the stress of everything. It can be an experience that moves us, sometimes to aspire for better things. None of the above was "Jeanne Dielman". I sat there and all I could think of was the problems of my life, fantasying about everything and everyone, always waiting for the next dialog to come (and this thing is more silent than a silent movie). And I paused, stopped the film, tried to put me in the situation and I couldn't. The movie never gave me the chance to look at those characters and care for them, her routine was painfully displayed on screen. It never explains anything and not even gives us questions of why such things happen. Here's some questions one might ask: How did she became a prostitute? What these clients see in a middle-aged widow with no sexual attractiveness at all? That's how we must think Belgians are, obsessive compulsives for cleaning and for putting the right measure of water in the food?
This film offended without the intention of doing it. Not only offends the viewers for dragging everything for so long, something that has no place to go and no statement to say, but it offends one of the most sacred functions of every people's lives: the housewife, the mother. Here, the movie says this without saying a word, just images: they wake up, prepare everything, their daily preparatives are long, it is a hard work, we don't have time for not even listening to the radio or watching a TV but we might have some time to have sex with strangers and get paid for this (by the way, the movie isn't fair with this, in cinematic terms since we cannot see what's she doing with the customers, except with the third unfortunate guy. The other times the camera didn't followed her in the bed with them). OK, husbands might look at this film and think about positive aspects of their wives when they see how hard it is to make things in a house but this whole premise goes to waste if they rationalize about what their wives could be doing when they're not at home. It might be an overreact of my part but that's the way I translated what was shown to me.
Once and again, Mr. Schneider and hypist film buffs got very very wrong in praising this picture that has nothing to say, nothing to show but it can waste our precious time for hours and hours with the most dazzling and crystalline pretentious boredom ever filmed. Try to avoid if you can. 2/10
Director Chantal Akerman more than calmly introduce us Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) a methodical/lonely/bored widow, living for the things in her house, cooking, cleaning, knitting and doing what a housewife does except for being a prostitute, receiving clients in her house, and using the money to help her in raising a teenage son (Jan Decorte) that most of the time is out of house and when he's there there's not enough conversation between both except for "Sleep tight" or "Don't eat and read"; they're monosyllabic to the extreme of making you angry at them. In 200 minute of its running time, the movie presents us three long, dull, boring, endless days of her life, in a constant silence, imprisoned by the daily domestic routine of leaving a perfect house to live but not interesting enough to stay. Sometimes she goes out, goes to shop things here and there and that's it. Looking at the technical aspect of the film, the director leaves the camera rolling, static, with no close-ups, no cuts, the scenes go on for like forever. But on the third day, something breaks her peace when she has an orgasm with one of the clients, something she never had and....she kills the guy (?).
Films can be a giant force of communication, providing informations, reflections and expressing opinions, new points of view, presenting cultures and also a nice form of entertainment. At last use it's a wonderful way to escape the boredom of our lives or the stress of everything. It can be an experience that moves us, sometimes to aspire for better things. None of the above was "Jeanne Dielman". I sat there and all I could think of was the problems of my life, fantasying about everything and everyone, always waiting for the next dialog to come (and this thing is more silent than a silent movie). And I paused, stopped the film, tried to put me in the situation and I couldn't. The movie never gave me the chance to look at those characters and care for them, her routine was painfully displayed on screen. It never explains anything and not even gives us questions of why such things happen. Here's some questions one might ask: How did she became a prostitute? What these clients see in a middle-aged widow with no sexual attractiveness at all? That's how we must think Belgians are, obsessive compulsives for cleaning and for putting the right measure of water in the food?
This film offended without the intention of doing it. Not only offends the viewers for dragging everything for so long, something that has no place to go and no statement to say, but it offends one of the most sacred functions of every people's lives: the housewife, the mother. Here, the movie says this without saying a word, just images: they wake up, prepare everything, their daily preparatives are long, it is a hard work, we don't have time for not even listening to the radio or watching a TV but we might have some time to have sex with strangers and get paid for this (by the way, the movie isn't fair with this, in cinematic terms since we cannot see what's she doing with the customers, except with the third unfortunate guy. The other times the camera didn't followed her in the bed with them). OK, husbands might look at this film and think about positive aspects of their wives when they see how hard it is to make things in a house but this whole premise goes to waste if they rationalize about what their wives could be doing when they're not at home. It might be an overreact of my part but that's the way I translated what was shown to me.
Once and again, Mr. Schneider and hypist film buffs got very very wrong in praising this picture that has nothing to say, nothing to show but it can waste our precious time for hours and hours with the most dazzling and crystalline pretentious boredom ever filmed. Try to avoid if you can. 2/10