Chantal Akerman (1975)
Jeanne Dielman is a highly focused, neorealist, character study of a widowed mother from Brussels seen over three days. The film was directed by Chantal Akerman, a 25 year old Belgian. A marvelous feat of filmmaking, especially for someone so young. The film evolves from Akerman’s previous films focusing on a realistic representation of life and a non-drama emphasis on screen that ultimately urges the viewer to appreciate the subtlety of change across arcs of the narrative. It also comes from a neorealist tendency in the 1970’s for matter of fact imagery and monotonous realism inspired by many, including Warhol’s long duration films. The themes of the film are made clear with the title before even beginning the screening. It is about one woman, living in one house, on one street in one city. The commonality of a street address and a name, preemptively imply an ordinariness to the story. This makes the viewer question what will occur and adds suspense. This film is all about the narrative because there is limited dialogue and nearly all scenes are minimal and lack extensive action. The first scene is Jeanne preparing dinner for her son in the afternoon. Simultaneously, she makes her money through prostitution prior to her son’s arrival home from school. The mechanistic efficiency with which Jeanne performs her daily tasks in the first day is fascinating. She has mastered the machine for living. Within the monotonous and drab scenes of Jeanne’s life, the viewer can begin to indulge in the minutest details of Jeanne’s expression, a missing button, a light left on, running out of potatoes one night or dinner not prepared on time. The repetitive nature of the film emphasizes the temporal nature of the narrative while also drawing attention to the slow unraveling of order in Jeanne’s household.
This film takes a feminist stance on the life of a woman depicting her daily routine minute by minute throughout three days. The narrative embarks on a slow procession from structure and harmony in the home to the eventual demise of Jeanne’s own psyche despite a desire for order. The viewer is enlightened to witness the daily life and work of a woman. These events are largely taken for granted in modern society. This is obvious when each morning, Jeanne prepares her son’s coffee and gives him clean clothes as well as plans her days to be ready for when her son, Sylvain, returns from school. Her son does little to show appreciation or gratitude towards his mother. Jeanne’s commitment to being a mother before anything is made apparent in the first day. Despite this, Jeanne seems indifferent to her son’s emotional indifference to her and she is quick to turn the lights out for bed. It is clear from the first scenes that this film is not about action persey but instead about a series of actions. Time plays an integral role in this film because it immerses the viewer in a woman's life from waking, dressing, bathing, running errands, cleaning, eating and sleeping in nearly three hours of speechless repetition spanning three days.
The narrative of this film meticulously describes the life of Jeanne Dielman. From before dawn to after dusk, Jeanne is depicted in the most realistic light. The sequence of the film is written in the form of a novel and could even be taken as a greek tragedy now represented in a modern setting. This is seen in the ways that the film follows a distinct chronology of events in a very simple way; daily routine. The narrative follows wake to sleep over three days with the same exact planned and ordered lifestyle. This eventually leads to Jeanne becoming upset with a client of hers after they had intercourse and killing him with a pair of scissors. This film seeks to first establish daily routine as baseline and then uses repetition with subtle change to focalize the way a woman could enter a frame of mind to commit murder. The use of repetition is the clearest narrative element used in this film. One example of such repetition is the use of lights and the emphasis on the sound of lights switching on and seeing lights turn on. Three days are repeated exactly with limited change occurring across all three days before the eventual climax of the film. Slowly, Jeanne forgets to turn off the lights as she leaves rooms or she turns on lights preemptively in the morning when she used to turn lights on and off based on the current space needing light. The theme of lights is repeated. More than merely light switches, there is a flickering blue light seen often in the film that seems to foreshadow distress. At the beginning of the film and throughout, the flickering blue light is emitted from outside shining inside Jeanne's house, even when it is daytime. This light is absent when Jeanne sits bloody at her kitchen table at the end of the film.
In the beginning, every event is planned and not a moment is wasted or spared. As the film progresses it is obvious that the time that Jeanne finds lingering throughout the second and third day are not moments of repose as they might be for a busy housewife, but instead are rife with anxiety and uncertainty. These moments are the clearest examples of Jeanne's demise when compared to the unspoken agreement that exists between Jeanne and Sylvain in the beginning of the film. They coexist in the same way everyday without cease and although they love each other, one can’t help but notice the disconnect. One example of this is an exchange between Jeanne and her son the first night,
Sylvain Dielman: [Referring to his dead father] If he was ugly, did you want to make love with him?
Jeanne Dielman: Ugly or not, it wasn't all that important. Besides, "making love" as you call it, is merely a detail. And I had you. And he wasn't as ugly as all that.
Sylvain Dielman: Would you want to remarry?
Jeanne Dielman: No. Get used to someone else?
Sylvain Dielman: I mean someone you love.
Jeanne Dielman: Oh, you know...
Sylvain Dielman: Well, if I were a woman, I could never make love with someone I wasn't deeply in love with.
Jeanne Dielman: How could you know? You're not a woman. Lights out?
Jeanne cares for Sylvain and Sylvain shows his desire to connect with his mother but neither truly seem to find a moment of understanding. There is tension immediately built at the end of the first night when Sylvain wants to talk about sex and intercourse between man and woman. Not only do the remarks get more intense in the second night referring specifically to his father’s death, but Jeanne is much more willing to wish him off to sleep despite the intensity of the moment. These remarks are perhaps hints at Sylvain's knowledge of his mother’s prostitution or they are based in an oedipal complex that Sylvain might hold in trying to replace his father and make his mother happy. There is limited expression of emotion besides the subtlety of Jeanne's facial expressions when she drinks coffee or realizes that her life is not one she had originally desired. Although Sylvain is an interesting character, he is merely a means to explain the way that Jeanne’s life has already begun to unravel.
Ultimately, this film is a character study. It tries to examine and bring to light all of the ways that women suffer or commit wrong outside of mainstreamed or sexist explanations of what it means to be a woman. This is not the tale of a modest housewife gone rogue. Instead, this film carries with it true weight of reality and there is an ominous tone from the beginning. The camera placement with motionless tracking and lengthy shots emphasize the singularity of each, sometimes excruciatingly long moment. This film can be largely characterized as an attempt to depict life not in large life altering moments, but instead as a slow and winding downward spiral. The life Jeanne lives is not without intrigue but it does seem to carry one without happiness. It is sad to witness and hard to connect with because of the tedious alteration of routine. This film speaks to the ways that the smallest things in life usually have the biggest impact. It can be easy to overcome the death of a loved one. This film shows that even harder than death itself is dealing with life day to day when it does not cease to burden you financially, emotionally and intellectually with day in and day out errands and responsibilities. Jeanne was once a very pretty girl with many aspirations but has now become a mother using her beauty as a way to survive. Unfortunately she is still taken advantage of and the murder scene is the only time in the film that Jeanne truly takes action against the monotony and idleness of life itself.
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