The hallowed Sight and Sound poll crowned a new best film in Chantal Akerman’s 1975 drama, ‘Jeanne Dielman.' Is it deserved? Beastobsessed weighs in:
has been rightfully hailed as a pioneering masterpiece, and it’s one that affords a portrait of female marginalization, subjugation, and suffering that’s as strikingly empathetic and relevant today as it was in 1975.tells the tale of its title character , who resides in an upper-floor Brussels apartment with her teenage son Sylvain .
It’s an existence of oppressive quiet—Sylvain barely speaks to his mother, except for immediately before going to sleep—and even more crushing mundanity. Even Jeanne’s method of earning a living—by working as a prostitute for regular daily clients who appear and disappear at her front door—is merely another chore to be handled with dutiful stoicism.
Seyrig’s face is a placid mask, its pleasant inexpressiveness concealing a wellspring of unhappiness.simply watches its subject as she goes about her humdrum customs , cocooned in silence and isolation. Akerman routinely frames her protagonist in constricting doorways and hallways, and in mirrors that provide opportunities for self-reflection.
She composes her drama with static set-ups in which her camera never moves, and only slightly deviates from its collection of fixed vantage points; sharp edits are the means by which the proceedings progress forward. It’s an aesthetic that’s highly attuned to Jeanne’s confining inertia and weighty misery.
In its kindhearted regard for this woman, imagined by Akerman as both an archetype and a complex individual,feels as fresh, alive and bracingly bold as ever. Whether it’s the best, or the second-best, or the fifth-best, is impossible to determine and completely unimportant. It’s capital-g Great, and any serious cinephile who hasn’t yet sought it out is only cheating themselves.
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