Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
The greatest movie ever made? Lights, potatoes, action!
It’s been two years since Movie Night launched. At first, it was a humble little newsletter with a modest but loyal readership. Fast forward to the present, and Movie Night is now a humble little newsletter with a modest but loyal readership. For the one-year-anniversary, Dae and I chatted about my personal favorite movie, but for the two-year, we’re going to chat about the taste-makers’ favorite movie: that’s right, per Sight and Sound (the harbinger of cinema taste in the white western world) Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) is the greatest film of all-time. It unseated Vertigo (1958), which only enjoyed the top spot for ten years. Vertigo unseated the fifty-year-long champion Citizen Kane (1941). JD23QDC1080B, as we’ll call it moving forward, for brevity’s sake, seemingly came out of nowhere (in terms of the glacial pace of S&S’s decennial survey) to take the top spot.
A movie’s true worth, however, isn’t decided until Movie Night weighs in! (Disclaimer: Humor) To celebrate two years, we’re going to do just that: in the form of a conversation as Dae and I watch together. We bring this conversation to you in a bold new format: a Wordcast™. Think of it kind of like a podcast, but you read it! Writing about art imitates the art itself this week as we dedicate a Jeanne Dielman-sized post to Chantal Akerman’s masterpiece.
As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for joining us for movie nights!
-Jeff
Ed. Note: For clarity, context from our watch is provided in parentheses, and timestamps from the film are provided in bold.
Dae: (Reading the description of the film) Holy shit: “A lonely widow turns to prostitution to make ends meet”?! Also, holy shit, 3h22m!
Jeff: lol
Dae: Press play in 10 seconds?
Jeff: Let’s do it
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4
Go
00:00:00
Dae: Long ass title. Like a pretentious restaurant using its address as a name.
Jeff: The title definitely matches the description of the movie per every rave review: long and pedestrian. I love watching old arthouse films like this, especially the ones that are critically adored because I know some aspiring filmmakers will see it someday, think it looks easy enough or that they could do better and make something great.
Dae: The dad in me loves watching Jeanne turn lights off promptly when she exits a room. I should show my kids this movie.
00:18:30
Dae: Jeanne’s been turning tricks for a while. She knew exactly how long that older gent would last and timed her cooking so the food would be ready to come off the stovetop when he was done. Wow, two courses! That looks good. I wish my mom were more like this lady.
What’s that blueish glimmery light? Kind of like police lights.
Jeff: That’s what I was thinking, just ambient annoyances from living in a city, I suppose
Dae: (Jeanne and her son are eating dinner.) I wonder how many takes this scene took. The actor who played her son probably had to eat a lot of potatoes.
Jeff: I’m guessing one take. Do you think the minimalist style was born out of Akerman just really hating adjusting a tripod? Their dinner table, with supper, a newspaper, and now her son’s books, actually makes me yearn for a cell-phone-free past. And then she reads a letter from family in Canada! Remember when family couldn’t call you on the phone? They had to care enough to mail a letter to bother you.
Dae: Jeff, just put your phone away at the table. You don’t have to be crushing those candies or swiping right all the time. (Jeanne is knitting a brown scarf that would later be discovered to be a sweater.) That scarf looks like a rag.
It’s a shitty sweater! Note how the music becomes more dramatic when we find out it’s a sweater.
Jeff: It was quite a twist in what has been a rollercoaster of modern emotional turns.
Dae: (More lights get turned out.) Man, these guys respect electricity. God bless them. Where do you learn this kind of careful frugality?
Jeff: Maybe the electricity bill at the time made people respect it. We left the hose on in our back yard two months ago and the water bill was over a thousand dollars. We’ll never make that mistake again. Maybe if electricity cost this much we’d be afraid to leave lights on, as we should be.
Dae: Jesus fucking Christ, Jeff. That hurts my immigrant sensibilities. (Dae returns to watching the movie.) What just happened? They went for a walk wordlessly and then returned home? I didn’t see the source of that odd blue flashy light.
Jeff: According to Sight and Sound critic Laura Mulvey:
Halfway through the film, the narrative harmony between Jeanne’s time and space is shattered. There have been intimations of this instability from very early on. Jeanne’s interior autonomy is complicated by a presence from outside, a hint of a parallel, perhaps film noir-ish universe: a blue neon light flashes continually into the sitting room, its penetrating beam hitting a glass-fronted case that stands directly behind the dining table. Almost invisibly, the flashing light unsettles the interior space, like a sign from the unconscious pointing to a site of repression. And then an innocuous domestic object becomes a metonymic representation of Jeanne’s prostitution: after each client leaves, she immediately puts her money into a decorative soup tureen that sits on the dining table. As she does so, she walks past the flashing light reflected in the glass behind her, accentuated by the semi-darkness of the room. As Akerman, characteristically, holds her shots for a few seconds after Jeanne has left the frame, the flashing light has time to become more acutely significant. Each evening, mother and son sit at the dining table. When the camera faces Jeanne, the soup tureen is half visible to her left at the edge of the frame, while the light flashes beside her, creating – as it were – a triangle of guilt.
Is it weird to just post an entire paragraph from a better critic just to bolster our wordcast?
00:43:20: End of the first day
Dae: It’s probably something she learned during the war, you know, turning lights off and on.
Jeff: This movie makes me feel like I’m in a museum, watching one of those visual exhibits in the dark room where people go in, sit down for a few minutes, leave.
01:02:23
Jeff: Ok, temperature check: one hour in, how are you feeling about the greatest movie ever made?
Dae: Doubtful, but still interested. Greatest movie of all time is a tough crown to wear.
She lets men inside her body, but she doesn’t let men under her bed cover and into her bed sheets. She has weird boundaries.
Her son must wonder where the money comes from. He must suspect how she gets it. Maybe he comes home and smells the musk of a strange man in the house. Or finds a stray pube.
Jeff: It’s possible! I’m enjoying the movie quite a bit, but if I’m being honest it’s because we’re sitting here shooting the shit about it while we watch it. This would absolutely be a challenging watch (read: slog) for a person watching it alone. I think the idea of people watching this together and talking over it is a valid way to enjoy it.
Dae: This movie sure gives you a lot of opportunities to type! Or read a book. Or crush candies, right Jeff? (A bank teller uses a pencil tied to a string) Look how that bank teller is using a pencil tied to the counter with a string. They don’t trust him to not take it home. Is this the opposite of a Wes Anderson movie? Quaint, but not cute?
Jeff: May is actually watching the movie with me, and when I checked the time-stamp on where we were at she exclaimed “Wow this is a long movie!” and then went upstairs. Opposite of a Wes Anderson? It shares too much tripod love. If memory serves, the palette is very similar to Tenenbaums. Like right now, she’s walking down the street, perfectly centered; totally static shot. Paul Schrader was asked on Facebook once if he likes Wes Anderson movies, and he said something like ‘I like them without sound.” If by sound he meant needle drops and dialogue, then this is definitely the opposite of that.
Dae: Yikes, I like them without sound? He talks about that movie like a misogynist talks about women. I wonder how many outfits she owns. I love that housecoat. It’s so practical.
Dae: (A man knocks on the door and drops off an infant.) WTF? Where that baby come from? They just delivered it to her like a pizza.
(Jeanne is breading two cuts of meat.) She only owns two plates. That’s why she had to put the flour on the table. What cut of meat is that? It’s like a big slice of ham.
Jeff: Gotta be chicken, right? Chicken Milanese?
Dae: Chicken is not that flat, Jeff.
Jeff: Man, she does not seem thrilled about that baby.
Jeff: It’s veal! Big re-VEAL!
Dae: Yes!
Jeff: Thank god the neighbor stopped by. The chatty neighbor.
Dae: What was the baby doing there? Did someone drop it off for the mom to pick up? What is this baby delivery service? And why don’t we have it here? It would be called Baby Dash, PostBaby, InstaInfant…
Jeff: Seems like she’s watching the baby for the neighbor lady, who is not only burdening her with a baby, but is now making Jeanne into her therapist.
Dae: UberEats+Baby…
01:28:45
(A second male caller visits Jeanne’s apartment.)
Dae: This isn’t a Tennessee Williams play, Jeff.
Jeff: This latest guy threw off her routine. She’s leaving lights on, looking stressed. Throwing out overcooked food.
Dae: Maybe he took too long, and now her life is unraveling.
Jeff: The potato scene! We’re back!
Dae: The way she peels these potatoes says something about her life. She doesn’t enjoy peeling potatoes, finds it obnoxious, but she needs to do it to eat. Like all the sexing.
Do we just shine a stroby light on an ordinary scene, and it becomes the #1 movie of all time? Is that how cinema works?
The son knows. He’s clenching his jaw. He probably smelled man on her when she gave him a smoochy kiss. (Sorry, watching too much Bluey with my kids.) They don’t talk much because that’s the only thing on their minds. He knows exactly why her hair is mussed today.
Jeff: Nahhh, I think he just wants to read at the table. You’re looking at this movie with the expectations of something more modern, something that would require some kind of dramatic propulsion to keep an audience interested. I think they’re just having another standard day.
Dae: Jeff, if your mom were with some man earlier in the day, you would know. A son knows! A son always knows.
02:00:25
Dae: I hate this boy, this chinless mama’s boy. Too afraid to call his mom out. Too dependent on her to make food, for a little spending money, to pick out his fucking outfits every morning.
Jeff: Is she picking his outfits? Did I miss that!? I’m fascinated and horrified at your projection on this kid, but also here for it. Woah, the conversation in the movie just took a turn. How old do we think he is?
Dae: The last convo they have at night is always inappropriate and the most interesting thing they say to each other.
She hasn’t bathed since she was with that man from earlier. She needs to bathe in between clients, right? Isn’t that a rule?
She missed the button on her house coat. She’s coming apart. Lights on/off with precision, potatoes cooked just right while I’m with a customer. If everything I do is normally precise, and I miss a button, something is very wrong. How long can she keep doing this? Is she caught in a hell? This is Groundhog Day but Belgian and sophisticated.
Jeff: That’s life baby. These days have been going long before we got here as viewers.
Dae: Yeah, my life is repetitive too, but I do things that I enjoy sometimes. She doesn’t have any joy. She doesn’t do anything for herself unless she’s into the banging. We see every aspect of her life except for the banging. The banging is a black box.
In the morning, Jeanne asks her son if he washed his hands. The son is the man of the house, but still a boy, dependent on his mother for everything. It’s an awkward position. If the father were still alive, the boy could be just a boy, but because he’s gone, he has to fill a space he cannot fill. And instead, he has bizarre conversations with his mother about hating his father for having sex with her.
This movie is taking a weird turn. Kids with briefcases prowling the streets. The seaside bank is closed. Passing men laugh at Jeanne because the vending machine outside the bank is out of whatever it normally dispenses.
Brussels in the 70s is apparently Ukraine in the 2010s. Everything reminds me of Ukraine. The shops, the shopkeepers’ indifference, the way meat is sold, having to bring your own plastic bags everywhere, oddly casual banks, the interiors of homes, tiled kitchen walls, the shitty sweaters worn by men-children (weird pluralization), the insistence on tablecloths, wallpaper galore, living rooms that transform into bedrooms, women wearing housecoats/mumus, and even the language, oddly.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dae lived in Ukraine for a while.
02:31:14
Dae: She’s really massaging that meat.
Jeff: Was literally just about to write how hypnotizing this is. Like watching an arthouse lava lamp.
Dae: I think she’s going overboard. There’s only so much massaging meat will do. Meatloaf?
Jeff: Yum.
Dae: Meatloaf is underrated. We need a fancy chef with a restaurant named after the address to bring meatloaf back.
A middle-aged mom prostitute is a ticking timebomb. You are very aware of your shelf life. And your customers’ too. That first old man isn’t going to be around much longer.
Is Jeanne going to recenter herself somehow? Also, what is she drinking? Must be coffee in a thermos.
Jeff: (Jeanne can’t decide between coffee or milk, or a mix.) Ohhh, but now she just wants the milk. Oh, she’s mixing them again. I don’t know what she’s doing. Is this her melt-down? Overthinking a simple pleasure? Unable to find satisfaction.
Dae: Nothing tastes right, but she hasn’t given up. Although, if she doesn’t get it right this time, I think she’s going to flip the fuck out. Everything depends on the red wheelbarrow.
Jeff: If she has anything resembling an actual melt-down, I think it would hurt the movie: it’s purporting to be (by virtue of its monotony and length) an average few days in the life of this woman, but if she has some sort of epiphany/crisis/growth, then that would become the point, and we’d feel like the movie wasted hours building to a pretty standard third act. This does feel like a climax of sorts. What is the red wheelbarrow?
Dae: That poem by William Carlos Williams. It was in Mr. Robot. I need to reread it later to see if that made any sense, but it felt right. She’s dusting the inside of a closed cabinet. How much dust gets inside a cabinet?
Jeff: The suspense was killing me. Practically an action sequence at this point.
02:51:11
Dae: (Jeanne sits down for a moment.) This is the first time she’s just resting. Otherwise, her life is constant motion. Baby delivery! Amazon Baby Prime. Cosmo Baby. Anyone remember Cosmo? It was a delivery service from the early 2000s for food but mostly booze and cigarettes.
Jeff: There was some strange movement in the reflection on the table; like wires or something that were moved. Whatever it was, it’s gone now. Anyway: Jeanne really just spends her days propping up other people’s lives. Even this terrible baby.
(Jeanne speaks for awhile with a tailor.) She had quite a bit to say to that tailor. The first time she’s really talked about herself?
Dae: Yeah, right? She was a chatty Cathy that time.
Jeff: Who will play Jeanne Dielman in the Hollywood reboot?
Dae: Kate Winslet
Jeff: Oh damn. Yeah, that’s correct. Leo, in a casting twist, will play the dead husband in flashbacks. The screenwriter will overdo it and make every flashback some sort of explanation for various scenes in the original, like the potato peeling scene. Leo: “Jeanne. You, uh, you aughta take it easy with yer peelin’ hand.” Jeanne: “I wish you were dead! I’ll always be good at peeling and boiling potatoes!”
03:10: 58
Dae: (Jeanne has a customer, and for the first time in the film, we see what happens in the bedroom.)We finally get to see! He’s not moving. Was she trying to get away from him? Or did she have an ok time?
Jeff: It’s like Klimt’s kiss. No way to tell. We run the risk of looking very stupid as two men asking if she just had a good time. Seems likely that she didn’t?
Dae: Why didn’t Mario undress her? (Her customer looks like a character from a Nintendo game, and Dae gets a little racist when he’s tired.) She has a nice body. Why wouldn’t he want all of her? What?!!!!
Jeff: WOW. Ok. Wow. Well we don’t want to spoil it, but I am genuinely surprised at what just happened. This definitely clarifies her feelings on some things.
Dae: It’s over! I can go pee.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Written and Directed by Chantal Akerman
1975
202 minutes
French
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Criterion Channel, HBO Max