Monday, September 7, 2009

Some Thoughts on Jeanne

Last month Criterion released Chantal Akerman's masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. To my knowledge this amounts to the first time that the film has been available on video in any format, and as such it constitutes an important cultural event. Forgive my tendency for proclamation, but it is one of the greatest films ever made.
…..
I wonder why it has taken so long for such an important masterpiece to become available on dvd. Is it that the film is purely cinematic and thus irreducible to the video image? Or is it too slowly paced and lugubrious for even Criterion's audience of cinephiles (I have mentioned this release to many friends who write about film professionally or semi-professionally, and none of them seem to think this constitute an event)? Jeanne makes very particular, very unique demands of its audience and it strikes me that one must have an unusually sophisticated understanding of cinema to appreciate it. Jeanne is a pure cinema, yet unremarkable to many people who would use such terms.
…..
I checked out the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, and was surprised... baffled actually, to find unanimous approval among the eleven critics who reviewed it, a group which includes Jonathan Rosenbaum and Vincent Canby (!?). My personal experience with the film suggests a more reaction would be the norm. For instance, I once attended a screening of Jeanne at the Harvard Film Archive. When the movie began the theater was about half full. By the end of the nearly four hours, the audience had dwindled to very low double digits, perhaps fifteen or twenty people remained, and at least one of them had only stayed long enough to blurt out “What the hell was that?!” to voice his disgust after the screen went black. More telling was the time I watched this film in a classroom during the first few weeks of graduate school. There was a minor revolt during the screening, and the subsequent discussion was so hostile and narrow-minded that our professor decided he would never show the film to a class again.
…..
Many viewers will see Jeanne as a response to Fassbinder's Herr R. This comparison is fair enough, but I would shy away from calling it a Feminist response. Akerman herself has resisted this categorization throughout her career, yet remains a very popular selection in college courses on Feminist film. I would be interested in the varieties of Feminist interpretation of Jeanne and what they bring to light as well as what they exclude. For instance, if we take the film's conclusion as symbolic - if we interpret it as a "message" what is the nature of that message. Is it merely a longer, slower-paced Thelma and Louise? How else might the ending be interpreted? What if we interpret it in terms of its tragic narrative structure?
…..
The importance of Jeanne has more to do with Akerman's observation of human behavior and attention to detail than whatever her ideological affiliations may or may not be. More than any other film in her oeuvre, Jeanne is the work in which nothing is not only something, it is the only thing. It is not mere observation, but revelation arrived at by spending time and looking hard. Making meatloaf has meaning. Drama is created by context rather than by plot. Missing a button on a housecoat becomes an event.