MovieChat Forums > Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976) Discussion > Should I give this movie a second chance...

Should I give this movie a second chance?

posted 12 years ago by poodles_and_noodles
7 replies | jump to latest

I really wanted to appreciate Jeanne Dielman, but what bothered me wasn't necessarily the movie's inertness but its overall lack of intrigue. Jeanne's character and routines did not particularly fascinate me and the minimalist aesthetic of the film didn't do much to compromise that lack of involvement. Also, for a picture so hell-bent on portraying unremarkable chores with such a calculated sense of meticulousness, the pacing still managed to feel choppy and unengaging (mind you, it may not have helped that I stopped the DVD on-and-off and then had the film playing at 1.5x its speed during the last quarter, but still).

Is this worth a second viewing, perhaps with me watching it from start-to-finish with my preferred 1.5x speed set for the whole movie?

[–] Catrician 11 years ago

To "appreciate" Jeanne Dielman's effect, one has to submerge oneself. i.e. watching it in realtime, to get a feel for how boring Jeanne's life actually IS, and how Akerman makes you FEEL this boredom.

It's like watching Wavelength in 1.5 speed, or not watching a Tarr film properly and letting yourself not get hypnotized, etc.

Jeanne Dielman is NOT a film for everyone, so I think that if you really DIDN'T get it on your first try, that's okay. I personally wouldn't give it another try, but it's up to you.

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[–] BelleCBelle 11 years ago

I just watched it for the first time and found the film heartbreaking and agonizingly slow. I guess I'm in the "I love it" AND "I hate it" camps, but either way I am very glad I watched it.

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[–] CaptainTerrific 11 years ago

I would say yes, but I love this film. I do think the on-off viewing, and then the 1.5 speed for the last quarter would affect your experience.

Like an earlier poster said, the tedium has a point. You need to be utterly bored out of your gourd for the climax to really set in.

To me, this film is like investing year after year after year in the stock market, for little return, then...BAM!, you just made a million bucks.

[–] Tin_ear 9 years ago

This film reminded me of Godard's Weekend, which has several meandering seven-minute shots that could easily have been edited, and Solaris which has a laughably bad artsy shot of a freeway ride, that goes on for five straight minutes with no dialogue. To say nothing of Antonioni.

This is probably blasphemous for most people to hear, but if someone edited this down to its essential parts and cut out the lard like a fan did to George Lucas's Phantom Menace I would probably give it a shot. I caught the beginning and had to tune out it was so dull, and then by chance caught the end which was literally six minutes of the protagonist sitting in a chair in the dark doing nothing. Now obviously the rest of film might make a big difference, but if I know art-house movies from the late Sixties or Seventies, probably not. If we can admit Lucas or Tarantino can lose themselves in their own art (and up their own ass) why can't we admit that other "respected" auteurs can't too?

[–] TopFrog 9 years ago

The first time I saw Jeanne Dielman I was where you are now regarding its pace -- I found it slow, very slow. "Okay, I get it already, she's making a meatloaf. Let's move on." I came here and made a post poking fun at the movie, then crossed off another title from the Sight and Sound critics list, and figured I was done with it.

But I continued to think about the movie, and after several months I settled down to watch it again. And much to my surprise, on a second viewing I found the story unfolding at a downright snappy, almost breakneck, pace. Considering that this movie is attempting to give us the sense of stepping through this woman's entire daily routine, what is up there is pretty lean. The movie covers about 50 hours in her life. Excluding 16 hours for sleeping, you've got about 34 hours that are condensed down to a 200 minute movie. That means that the movie is about an order of magnitude removed from real time (although the individual scenes unfold in real time). Far from being tedious, once you get a sense of the rhythm of the movie and what it is trying to accomplish, you might find that it's not one bit too long.

[–] tseybert 9 years ago

The fact that you're wondering if you should see it again makes me think that you should see it again.

I saw it last night and I liked it. But the more I think about it, the more I love it! By the time I rated it on IMDB a few hours ago, I had decided to rate it a "10."

I would really like to see it again, although maybe not for a while. I think it would be funny to live blog it in IMDB comments.

"She's washing the dishes."

"She's still washing the dishes."

"She dropped a fork."

"Oh! She got a letter from her sister! I hope she reads it out loud!"

"She's going outside! I love it when she goes outside!"

"How many button stores are there in Brussels?"

Janet! Donkeys!

[–] kino66 9 years ago

Yes, watch it again.
Beneath that dull, repetitious, robotic, closed off life is a volcano ready to blow.