I spent a lot of this series not knowing who my next auteur
would be and whether I would be able to track down any of his or her movies,
but I’m ending it on a positive note. Not only am I finishing with one of the
directors on my original list, but she also adds some diversity to the group,
becoming my third woman of the 11 auteurs I’ve watched for this series.
That would be Chantal Akerman, the Belgian director whose
life came to a tragic end when she committed suicide in 2015 at age 65. So I guess it’s
only sort of ending the series on a positive note.
When I looked for Akerman earlier in the year, I swear I
could not find any of her stuff available for streaming or rental. I
guess I should say, I couldn’t find Jeanne
Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles anywhere, and didn’t look
beyond that because I didn’t see any point in watching Akerman if I was not
going to watch that. It may have been user error on the search or its
availability may have actually changed over the course of the year, but when I
took another look in November, voila, Jeanne
Dielman was available for rental on iTunes. Not only that, but I could
select my second film from a handful of others also available for rental.
I have a funny pre-existing relationship with Jeanne Dielman, which is that it has
taken over the mantle of the title I go to when I am looking for a random
obscure movie with a long and unwieldy title. In these situations I used to always
use The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But
Came Down a Mountain, but Jeanne
Dielman has eclipsed it in perceived humor value, probably because it’s in French and has all those commas. And as
I did eventually see Englishman, I
figured I was destined to one day catch Jeanne
Dielman. That day ended up being December 4th. And 5th.
But we’ll get into that in a moment.
First, a bit about Akerman. She was born in Brussels to a
Holocaust survivor in 1950, and attended a Brussels film school at age 18. She
claimed to have been inspired to become a filmmaker by Godard’s Pierrot le Fou, and you can see that
Godard’s non-traditional approach to filmmaking has rubbed off on Akerman’s
films. Stylistically, she’s known her for use of long takes and for her
incorporation of feminist themes into her work, specifically the toxic
intersection of femininity and domesticity. However, Akerman also rejected the
labels critics tried to ascribe to her, be they “Jewish” or “feminist” or “lesbian,”
and claimed to feel more of her identity stemmed from her relationship to her
mother, with whom she was very close. She killed herself in October of 2015
after being hospitalized with depression.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
This is not just a long title – it’s a long movie. I knew
that going in. I can’t imagine getting much more bang for your rental dollar, on
a per minute basis. The movie is three hours and 21 minutes long.
That wouldn’t be a surprise if it were some kind of war
epic, but Jeanne Dielman is as far
away from that as you can get in. In fact, it’s a portrait of three days in the
life of a suburban Belgian mother who feeds and houses her young adult son. And it’s
three days in which nothing much happens. Jeanne’s life is one dominated by
chores – washing the dishes, preparing meals, doing the laundry, running
errands around the neighborhood. Oh, and there’s also the occasional sex with a
stranger. See, Jeanne supports herself and her son through prostitution.
That makes this movie sound exciting in some way, but it’s
really not, and that’s by design. Dialogue is sparse, and usually pedestrian
when it does occur. The interactions with the johns are mostly boring as well.
This is meant to be a stultifying 200-minute document of the tediousness of
this woman’s domestic life, and though something does happen in the final 15
minutes, I think it’s worth not spoiling for you what that thing is, or how
effective it is as an outcome of what’s come before.
Any movie that goes on for more than three hours involves
some kind of strategy for watching it, whether that’s splitting it up over the
course of several viewings or engaging in some other task while you’re
watching. I did both. In fact, I got this idea that the best way to watch
Jeanne do chores was to do chores myself. So I did put away laundry. I did
write Christmas cards. I did wash dishes. In fact, there was one brief moment
when Jeanne and I were both cutting vegetables at the same time. It was
sublime.
Watching this for three hours and 20 minutes is some kind of
endurance test, but it does have its moments of reward. Although Jeanne’s
interactions with her son are mostly banal, each night as he’s going to bed he
plunges into some kind of thoughtful and in-depth analysis of a past event in
their life, involving his father, or a dream he had. In a movie chock full of
dialogue, a moment like this might not mean much, but in this movie it does
make you sit up and take notice. Ditto a scene where Jeanne reads a letter from
her sister. I thought the film’s most profound moment is when Jeanne is
standing at her door after returning the baby she’s been babysitting to the
mother. You can’t see the mother – you can only see Jeanne on her side of the
door – but you can hear the mother’s disjointed comments on being at the
butcher and trying to figure out what to order. When she gets to the front and
hasn’t decided, because it’s not her comfort zone, she panics and orders the
same thing the woman in front of her ordered. This little anecdote mirrors the
desperation we are starting to realize that Jeanne also feels.
There are some interesting formal things Akerman is doing
here as well. The camera is exclusively stationary as the film is composed
entirely of long takes of mundane activities. One thing that’s interesting,
though, is how many of the shots involve Jeanne walking into or out of a room
and turning its lights on or off. It demonstrates the way Jeanne’s life can be
compartmentalized into all these little “rooms,” these chores and tedious
obligations, which get switched on and off ad infinitum until the end of time.
I ultimately came out positively on Jeanne Dielman, but I kind of feel like the same effect could have
been accomplished in half the time, and it still would have felt quite long and
tedious (in the useful ways Akerman is intending, I mean). There’s certainly
something impressive about how the actress, Delphine Seyrig, goes through these
tasks in a single take without botching them, and how her commitment to the
project brings home the soul-killing nature of this woman’s existence. However,
as can be the case with art films, you get the concept pretty early on, and it’s
hard to compute exactly what quantity of it is really needed to achieve the
goal. Why 201 minutes? Why not 401 minutes? Why not film three days in real
time? Certainly, part of what makes Jeanne
Dielman Jeanne Dielman is the torturous running time, and it wouldn’t feel
like nearly the experiment it is at only 90 minutes. Even at 90 minutes,
though, it would still be a distinct creation, and would have been possible for
me to take down in a single sitting. And maybe consider watching a second time
at some point in the future.
I actually watched Jeanne
Dielman for even longer than I needed to. The resumption of one of my
pauses during the 48-hour rental window brought me back to an earlier point in
the running time without me initially realizing it. I watched footage I’d
already seen for somewhere between 15 or 20 minutes before realizing I’d
already watched it. I just thought the repetitive nature of it all was part of
the point.
No Home Movie (2015)
Flash forward 40 years and Akerman is still interested in some of the same things, though this time, they relate to her own mother. No, her mom was not a prostitute -- I think we established earlier she was a Holocaust survivor. And though I suppose those two things are not mutually exclusive, let's give her the benefit of the doubt.
This is a documentary that consists largely of conversations between Akerman and her mother in the last months of her mother's life -- some in person, some over Skype. There's a lot of eating of meals in her mother's home, some chores, even some turning on and off of lights. It made me wonder if this also constituted the core text of Akerman's other films that I haven't seen.
It appears she may have finished filming but not finished editing before Natalia Akerman died. Akerman never states that her mother died -- that would not be very Akerman of her -- but the images she chooses to close the film create that impression. After two hours of footage mostly of her mother pottering around her Brussels house, her health steadily deteriorating, the final shots are of the house without her in them. These are not the movie's first lingering shots of the house -- lingering a bit too long, some might argue -- but they are the first in which the elder Akerman does not eventually wander into the shot. That's saying something without actually saying it.
The film has other footage that doesn't obviously relate to Natalia Akerman and her immediate environs/circle of acquaintances. There are a number of long takes of a camera looking out the windows of moving vehicles at barren landscapes and the like. This is travel footage but there is no overt explanation of its relationship to Akerman (who appears regularly in the film) and her mother. Some of them last for five or six minutes. In fact, the film's most profound shot is its opening shot, which shows a tree against such a landscape being buffeted about by violent winds. This too goes on for several minutes, and is sort of hypnotizing.
As with Jeanne Dielman, there are a number of profound moments, but a lot of material that strikes me as a bit indulgent. Comparing this to other documentaries or narrative features is a bit apples to oranges, as this is clearly a personal film about an extremely personal subject -- which is also why I feel very hesitant about criticizing it in any way. Never mind the fact that it was Akerman's last movie, as she killed herself the year after her mother died, which was the same year the film was released. Clearly her relationship with her mother was one of the things that had been sustaining her.
But it did beg the question, for me, of what questions she asked herself about which material would comprise this movie. Of the 40 hours she purportedly shot, how did she choose these particular 115 minutes? Quite a bit of it seems to be lacking in thematic import. It's tricky because neither do I want her to be on the nose, though there was never any risk of that with this filmmaker. I guess I just prefer a bit more rigor in terms of the choice of what to include and what not to include, and to have the reasons for each seem clearer to me. Put another way: Would this even have been worth making as a film had her mother not been dying? That's cold but it's a legitimate question on my part.
Part of me also wondered if she knew her mother was dying when she started making the film, although the fact that she was 86 at her death indicated it was in the relatively near future no matter the state of her health when filming began. There's never any prognosis, negative or otherwise, about Natalia's health mentioned in the film, though she asks if the physio is coming in an early scene, and as the movie goes on, she develops an alarming cough that does not portend good things. If the younger Akerman had just wanted to record her mother's stories, I suppose that's reason enough to make the movie, though I wonder if it then does belong more in the realm of the "home movie" it claims not to be. Maybe it's Akerman's mere status as a filmmaker that makes her mother's stories worth sharing with a larger audience. Maybe if we all had the capacity to do so, we'd tell our parents' stories too.
Okay! That brings Audient Auteurs to a close. Instead of recapping what I watched and which were my favorites, I'll give you my regrets: the auteurs who were on my list who never made it into the series, in all cases because I couldn't source their movies despite repeated checks throughout the year. They are:
So the other seven names I gave you in my original post back in January did make it into the series, which I guess is pretty good. With Hartley I may not have looked hard enough, because I think his stuff is generally available, and I feel like I should be able to get my hands on some Eric Rohmer. Well, it's in the past now, so I won't worry about it.
A few others that I added to my list during the year but could never find:
Charles Burnett
Philippe Gurrel
The Shaw Brothers
Lav Diaz
Once the clock strikes 2019 I'll be back to tell you about my new monthly series for the new year. Thanks for reading!
No Home Movie (2015)Flash forward 40 years and Akerman is still interested in some of the same things, though this time, they relate to her own mother. No, her mom was not a prostitute -- I think we established earlier she was a Holocaust survivor. And though I suppose those two things are not mutually exclusive, let's give her the benefit of the doubt.
This is a documentary that consists largely of conversations between Akerman and her mother in the last months of her mother's life -- some in person, some over Skype. There's a lot of eating of meals in her mother's home, some chores, even some turning on and off of lights. It made me wonder if this also constituted the core text of Akerman's other films that I haven't seen.
It appears she may have finished filming but not finished editing before Natalia Akerman died. Akerman never states that her mother died -- that would not be very Akerman of her -- but the images she chooses to close the film create that impression. After two hours of footage mostly of her mother pottering around her Brussels house, her health steadily deteriorating, the final shots are of the house without her in them. These are not the movie's first lingering shots of the house -- lingering a bit too long, some might argue -- but they are the first in which the elder Akerman does not eventually wander into the shot. That's saying something without actually saying it.
The film has other footage that doesn't obviously relate to Natalia Akerman and her immediate environs/circle of acquaintances. There are a number of long takes of a camera looking out the windows of moving vehicles at barren landscapes and the like. This is travel footage but there is no overt explanation of its relationship to Akerman (who appears regularly in the film) and her mother. Some of them last for five or six minutes. In fact, the film's most profound shot is its opening shot, which shows a tree against such a landscape being buffeted about by violent winds. This too goes on for several minutes, and is sort of hypnotizing.
As with Jeanne Dielman, there are a number of profound moments, but a lot of material that strikes me as a bit indulgent. Comparing this to other documentaries or narrative features is a bit apples to oranges, as this is clearly a personal film about an extremely personal subject -- which is also why I feel very hesitant about criticizing it in any way. Never mind the fact that it was Akerman's last movie, as she killed herself the year after her mother died, which was the same year the film was released. Clearly her relationship with her mother was one of the things that had been sustaining her.
But it did beg the question, for me, of what questions she asked herself about which material would comprise this movie. Of the 40 hours she purportedly shot, how did she choose these particular 115 minutes? Quite a bit of it seems to be lacking in thematic import. It's tricky because neither do I want her to be on the nose, though there was never any risk of that with this filmmaker. I guess I just prefer a bit more rigor in terms of the choice of what to include and what not to include, and to have the reasons for each seem clearer to me. Put another way: Would this even have been worth making as a film had her mother not been dying? That's cold but it's a legitimate question on my part.
Part of me also wondered if she knew her mother was dying when she started making the film, although the fact that she was 86 at her death indicated it was in the relatively near future no matter the state of her health when filming began. There's never any prognosis, negative or otherwise, about Natalia's health mentioned in the film, though she asks if the physio is coming in an early scene, and as the movie goes on, she develops an alarming cough that does not portend good things. If the younger Akerman had just wanted to record her mother's stories, I suppose that's reason enough to make the movie, though I wonder if it then does belong more in the realm of the "home movie" it claims not to be. Maybe it's Akerman's mere status as a filmmaker that makes her mother's stories worth sharing with a larger audience. Maybe if we all had the capacity to do so, we'd tell our parents' stories too.
Okay! That brings Audient Auteurs to a close. Instead of recapping what I watched and which were my favorites, I'll give you my regrets: the auteurs who were on my list who never made it into the series, in all cases because I couldn't source their movies despite repeated checks throughout the year. They are:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Hal Hartley
Jacques Rivette
Eric Rohmer
Lina Wertmuller
So the other seven names I gave you in my original post back in January did make it into the series, which I guess is pretty good. With Hartley I may not have looked hard enough, because I think his stuff is generally available, and I feel like I should be able to get my hands on some Eric Rohmer. Well, it's in the past now, so I won't worry about it.
A few others that I added to my list during the year but could never find:
Charles Burnett
Philippe Gurrel
The Shaw Brothers
Lav Diaz
Once the clock strikes 2019 I'll be back to tell you about my new monthly series for the new year. Thanks for reading!
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