The Monumental Mundanity of Jeanne Dielman
Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is a film that is unapologetic in its form, and its lasting power lies in that commitment. The film spans the better part of three days, following Jeanne as she goes about her days, running errands, tidying her home, cooking. Except for the occasional trick she turns, her days are about as basic as they get.
Akerman is deliberate in her technique, focusing on long takes with a still camera locked at waist level (or in line with a tabletop). We watch without comment, without score as Jeanne collects the mail, folds her son’s clothing, boils water, peels potatoes, and reads the newspaper. She talks with her son, Sylvain, or with store clerks, but there’s rarely other dialogue. Occasional brief music from a radio in the evening.
This is a stripped down view of a stripped down life, as Akerman puts to use many principles that Paul Schrader would denote as calling card techniques of slow cinema in his updated introduction to Transcendental Style in Film: long takes, lack of camera movement, sparse plot and dialogue, offset editing, a removal of non-diegetic music, and a heightening of noises within the scene. Jeanne Dielman exemplifies these principles and does so to sharp (if indirect) purposes. We hear the clatter of every dish, the slide of every drawer, the click of the light switch switch, the gurgling of water from a faucet, even the rustling sound of clothing. Nearly always does the camera “enter” a room before Jeanne does—rather, it’s always already there—and it exits after she leaves and switches off the light. Akerman even refuses to refocus the camera when characters walk down a hallway, allowing them to blur out of focus as they wait for an elevator or open a door.
Schrader emphasizes that, as a film removes the stereotypical markers which situate an audience in a story—score, editing rhythm, camera movements, cutting on action—the movie forces the audience into a new rhythm, breaking them of their a priori expectations. This may be felt as distancing, or as a lack of engagement, or as boredom, and Akerman opens up her film to the possibility of all three as audience reactions. But these choices, when employed with skill and care, also reorient an audience to the potentiality of a richer emotional or spiritual encounter.
It is undeniable that each choice in Akerman’s movie is intentional, long before the resulting effect comes into view. Jeanne, herself, wears fairly simple outfits of mostly solid colors, while others are often seen in thick sweaters or patterned coats; it’s as if Jeanne is being de-textured—Akerman knows the audience’s gaze will grow bored as the simple scenes extend, so she invites the eye to wander elsewhere, to the outfits of others, or the green wallpaper, or to wonder at what lights shine into their apartment in such an odd rhythm. Jeanne Dielman shapes the audience to embrace new patterns. The lights that Jeanne ceaselessly switches become nearly liturgical, signaling the changing of the scene and of the action.
It is from this rigidity of form and this new rhythm of audience expectation that Akerman is then able to disrupt the viewer. A change in camera angle feels disruptive, as when Akerman places the camera behind Sylvain during a dinner conversation. A simple, unremarked shift, but it tilts the sense of the scene. When Jeanne forgets to turn off a light, it feels like an albatross. Jeanne’s life is careful and measured, but even the most meticulous life gets upended. We have bad days; sometimes, we have very bad days.
Jeanne Dielman is a film to be pondered, reflected on, studied: all of which denote particular forms of enjoying a movie and not the lack thereof. In these particular ways, the film is monumental. Every shot is mundane to the point of absurdity, but every angle and cut is so clearly purposeful. (Late in the film, when an object is placed barely, just within the corner of the frame, it carries as much thrill as any complex camera move.) Likewise, everything is at once a pregnant symbol and merely simple, at-hand objects. A hand towel foreshadows penetration, the inevitable invasion of Jeanne’s commerce; the boiling water mirrors her impatience; a button crystallizes her inability to keep filling this role of mother and provider. Yet these things are also just a towel. Just water for coffee. Just a button.
There’s a power in that dialectic: we seek to delve beneath the surface, but the surface pushes us back again. We aren’t wrong to pursue something deeper underneath the sheer plainness of the movie, but neither are we guaranteed to arrive at the truth. Jeanne Dielman knowingly invites varied readings and facets of analysis, whether technical or existential or feminist or phenomenological. Jeanne remains separate as a character—while there are avenues for empathy, it’s not clear if those get to the core of her emotions. We are invited in, but only so far. We are partial and fractured witnesses, leaving with our interpretations but without certainty—c’est la vie.
