I just finished watching a movie and I can’t decide whether it was a great film or a horrible one.
I can’t decide whether it was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen or a complete waste of 3 hours and 21 minutes.
I had never heard of “Jeanne Dielman 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles” until recently, when I saw that the 1975 French language film had been named the greatest film of all time by “Sight and Sound” magazine in its most recent survey. S&S surveys 1,639 critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics and publishes the results every 10 years.
It’s a fascinating list. The top 250 films with no superhero movies, no Hobbits or Rings and only one “Star Wars” (the original one). Only one Steven Spielberg movie and it might surprise you (“Jaws”).
But I …
Digress. We know, we know.
Anyway, the previous winners — “Vertigo” in 2012 and “Citizen Kane” (1952-2002) — were wonderful movies, and I was appalled to realize the one now rated as the greatest was a film of which I knew nothing at all.
Delphine Seyrig
I looked back at earlier lists and saw that “Jeanne Dielman” was 38th on the 2012 list, 74rd on the 2002 list and 127th on the 1992 list. Impressive gains, although I have a hard time believing it all of a sudden became better than all the giants of film history that previously ranked ahead of it.
I need to say this carefully, but “Jeanne Dielman” is almost a painful movie to watch. There is only one moment in director Chantal Ackerman’s film that is remotely cinematic in an action sense and it happens so quickly its difficult at first to believe it really happened. There are times in which she is doing mundane housework — folding towels, washing dishes, etc. — that are just the opposite. They go on and on and seem as if they never will end.
In some of the scenes, I found myself thinking all right, all right. That’s enough. Move on. Although I suppose
The movie is in French with English subtitles, but there is so little dialogue and it is so mundane that not understanding it really wouldn’t make much difference. In fact, it could have been made it 1925 as a silent film instead of 1975 and not have to change much.
Some of the scenes are so similar from day to day that you almost wonder if they just reused the earlier scene.
Those who hated the film’s position atop “Sight and Sound’s” 2022 list have called it a “woke” movie, even though it was released 49 years ago. It is clearly a feminist film. In fact, when it was released in 1975, the “New York Times” called it the “first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema.”
Am I glad I watched it?
Yes, I suppose.
Will I watch it again?
Probably not, but I never rewatched “Schindler’s List” or “Saving Private Ryan” a second time either.
Would I recommend it?
Only to people who love cinema and look for meaning in their movies.
The rest of you can watch movies with Roman numerals.