Watch Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles For Free

Memorable, crazy movie

Admirable film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

There can be no doubt that Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is a masterpiece, but above that it's one of the greatest and most powerful films ever made. Akerman introduces us into Jeanne's boring life-routine that by little details starts crumbling apart, the film is divided into two parts (Jeanne's second and third day), the movie starts with Jeanne already in the middle of her first day, in the first minutes of the film we discover that she is a prostitute, after we see her son, Sylvain, a teenager who spends most of his day in his school, their relationship as mother-and-son is not very good, they almost don't talk or show any kind of feelings for each other, especially Sylvain. After dinner she reads quickly a later from Canada from her sister Fernande, she reads quickly without showing any kind of emotion. After she seam and listen to classic music at the same time, they go out to a place (which is never told or shown)and come back to home, she combs her hair and briefly talks with her son before they go to sleep. Then the second day comes, and almost everything is repeated, so we can get into Jeanne's life, but, it is on the second day that things starts to become difficult, she forgets to buy potatoes and goes quickly to buy them before the night and her son comes, we see her for the first time worried, she cuts the potatoes with no apron and with her hair all unkempt, and then her son comes without she have cut all potatoes, which during the dinner gives them some minutes to talk, a big tension is build up in that scene, Jeanne briefly talks with her son about his school and after, the potatoes are read. Another signal that things are going wrong is when she forgets to the turn the radio on, after, reminded by her son to turn the radio on, she tries to answer the letter from her sister Fernande who now lives in Canada, but for some unknown reasons she can't and tries to seam, and Jeanne and her son go out again, and the same thing that happened in the first day happens again, almost like a ritual which Jeanne can't or won't escape, at least, not in that day. In the third and final day is when things really starts to go wrong, Jeanne forgets to button up one of the buttons of her dress, which serves as a premonition for the day she will have. Her alarm wake up her one hour earlier, during this time, where she has no work to do, she tries to play with the baby that her neighbour left there for sometime after go get it back, but the baby starts to cry louder and louder, so she stops playing with him. Later she goes to the city to try to find the button of one of her son's coats but she can't. Later she receives a present for her sister Fernande, she goes open it in her bedroom with the help of a scissors, one of her clients touch her bell, she left her scissors in her bedroom and go open the door. For the first time in the film the sexual act is shown (both are wearing shirts) and possibly in the first time in Jeanne's life she has an orgasm, she seems traumatized while button up her shirt, then she looks to her scissors and then the tragedy happens. Akerman manages to make small and ordinary little details like forgetting to buy potatoes, drop a spoon, later a mop fall to be as impactful as the death of an important character in another film, the film builds her routine so well that those little details become powerful. This is a must-see for anyone who considers himself a cinephile, it's a movie that requires patience, much patience of the viewer, but as a reward it gives you one of the most powerful experiences you could have with not just a film but with a work of art.

Really, really wanted a slice of meatloaf while watching this. Just a few observations from someone with a huge Criterion library who enjoys "artsy" films:(1) This film might have appeal to students who want to see the results of static scenes. Or it might impress those who need to actually see boring routines play out to get the point (the pocketbook on the table gets my vote for best actor). Or it might be an opportunity for people to yell advice at the screen ("Sit down while polishing shoes!" "You're kneading the meatloaf wrong!" "Turn on the radio while you're working!"). Otherwise...meh.(2) For those who insist that the length is appropriate, I haven't noticed anyone saying that the film would be better at six hours. If she really wanted to make a point, why not film six days? Heck, who knows what exciting things she does the rest of the week...perhaps Ackerman just chose the three days when little happens other than routine (seemingly embraced by the protagonist with little effort to perk up her existence. Maybe she's enjoying herself, or maybe she has an active imagination that allows her to entertain herself).(3) Drying paint on walls has no choice in its banal existence. Humans do have choices. Anyone who doesn't understand that or doesn't know people who don't exercise their choices & live in ruts needs to volunteer to work with the public. Then Ackerman's film won't seem so much like a "masterpiece."(4) If this film is "brave" (whatever that is supposed to mean), here's an exercise in artistic courage: Take a blank sheet of paper to your local art gallery and insist that they display it (perhaps with a huge price tag) to demonstrate your minimalist talent. If they are the pretentious sort and comply, you'll be sure to be lauded by the same sort of snobbish viewers who love to chide others for calling out pretension.

After watching a house-wife three hours and twenty-one minutes, mostly without seeing anyone else on the screen, going through her daily routine three consecutive days, it is very easy to say "What a monotonous, tedious, unexciting, and boring film." Also, I should add, during the stages of this most interesting story-telling, the camera never moves. Whatever she might be doing in her small, claustrophobic apartment, we observe Jeanne Dielman (played by exquisitely by Delphine Seyrig) through the fixed eye of the camera. Oh, one more thing: There are hardly any spoken words. And, the film has no music either; we hear only the murmur of the traffic outside.Yet, a twenty-five-year-old, extremely talented Chantal Akerman, within the frame of this very unusual structure, managed to direct an exceptional film, a film that should be part of every movie collection.This movie can be seen as a psycho-drama or as a psychoanalytical (i.e. Freudian) study of a lonely woman who has been living with her teen-age son six years after her husband passed away. Whatever the reason(s) --or motive-- of a viewer could be, this film is a gem. A remarkable work-of-art!

The artistic merits of the dissection of mundane, everyday life are not an unworthy aspiration, but Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman takes the concept and runs it very thoroughly into the ground. Rather than establish mundane life on the normal cinematic scale and give the audience something manageable like a 20 or 30 minute setup to show just how boring and oppressive Jeanne Dielman's life is, Akerman opts to ignore any proper dramatic possibilities and just go straight for jugular (the boredom jugular). A 3 and 1/2 hour film about almost nothing. Jeanne Dielman is built mostly around themes and undertones of feminist oppression, but it lacks any kind of proper plot to give it a dramatic push. It cannot be discounted that plots as thin as "a housewife does mundane work and feels oppressed" generally can produce some proper dramatic structure and thrust. The main problem with Jeanne Dielman is that Akerman plays up the mundane as a feature of the film as if to shove it in the audience's face and say "Here! Look at this! Aren't you bored? See how oppressed she is!". It's one thing to make the audience uncomfortable by letting them sit and watch for a little too long. It's quite another to completely abandon them and not consider that your message is being totally lost among the seemingly endless slog of the narrative. What's worse is that the characters are almost so unrealistically sad that it's hard to take the film seriously. The horrid nature of Dielman's oppressive life is basically melodrama without any of the drama. The plight of the main character would mean more if she actually acted like a person every now and then. As far as the audience is informed, she's suffered some sort of brain damage that prevents her from showing any emotion except bored and disinterested. If we are meant to care about the oppression of a character (and heaven forbid sit through 3 and 1/2 hours of it) we need to at least have some idea of who she is. As far as we know, her oppression is a prison of her own making because she isn't even interested in breaking free of it. Does this character want to escape the oppression? What better life awaits her if she does? Is she happy? Is she sad? When are we supposed to figure this out? All of that said, the biggest problem isn't that Akerman leaves so many important and necessary character details out, but it's what she leaves in the film. Specifically about 2 hours of completely superfluous footage. The sense of oppression and boredom can easily be conveyed in about 10 minutes. Filmmakers have been doing it almost literally since the beginning of filmmaking. However, instead of trying to use filmmaking in any kind of artistic manner to simulate the necessary to serve the story, Akerman just forgets that she's making a film and tries to put on some sort of exercise in incomprehensible boredom. She tries to transfer the boredom of the character to the audience member in order to gain the proper effect. The problem with this is that she doesn't seem to trust the audience to get it after the first day of mundane nothingness and has to continue to beat the audience over the head with it.