In a nearby room at Bozar, Jeanne Dielman plays across multiple monitors: we see Jeanne sitting at her kitchen table, peeling potatoes, checking if the milk is sour, finding herself at a loose end as the day begins to unravel and she remains in her apartment, as if suspended in time and space, until that final, fateful client arrives, and she. Jessica Winter on Chantal Akerman's "Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" and its No. 1 spot on Sight and Sound's list of the best films.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles[a] is a 1975 art film written and directed by Chantal Akerman, and starring Delphine Seyrig. Distinguished by its restrained pace, long takes, and static camerawork, the film is a slice-of-life depiction of a widowed housewife (Seyrig) over three days. Love the movie, even though I found myself constantly distracted by the kitchen chair that kept appearing and disappearing.
I have been unable to decide if that was intentional or not. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is Chantal Akerman's masterpiece, a mesmerizing study of stasis and containment, time and domestic anxiety. Stretching its title character's daily household routine in long, stark takes, Akerman's film simultaneously allows viewers to experience the materiality of cinema, its literal duration, and gives concrete meaning to a woman's.
Kitchen chair disappears, reappears, disappears, and reappears. In one scene in the kitchen, the thermos is on the window ledge but appears on the table when the camera cuts to a different angle. After dinner on Day 2, Sylvain sits down on the couch at the far end, but after the cut, he is sitting.
In Semiotics of the Kitchen, American conceptual artist Martha Rosler confronts her viewer with a stone-faced, aproned woman in her kitchen. In Jeanne Dielman, Chantal Akerman masterfully illustrates the quiet rage beget by female oppression. The Jeanne Dielman-inspired episode is the best, IMO.
I saw all 13 episode on an all-region NTSC DVD that was released in Hong Kong in 2008 but has long been out of print (Yesasia page). The 2022 list delivered a thunderbolt by proclaiming Chantel Akerman's Jeanne Dielman 23, Rue Du Commerce, Bruxelles number one. Vertigo, the top one last time, falls to two and Citizen Kane is at three.
The DIELMAN film-in which the spectator peculiarly becomes a coolly curious voyeur and jurist watching a case history-is often a breathtaking, crisp, and luminous example of shallow-boxed framing. The drily pugnacious title (JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DE COMMERCE-1080 BRUXELLES) is a give away on the movie's politics and mental set.