Share

Every ten years, Sight and Sound, published by the British Film Institute (BFI), conducts a poll of hundreds of film critics, scholars, and others to produce a list of the Greatest Films of All Time. In the first such poll, in 1952, the top film was Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, a.k.a The Bicycle Thief). In 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992, and 2002, the winner was Orson Welles’s 1941 Citizen Kane. In the 2012 poll, Kane dropped to the #2 slot, behind Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 Vertigo. Finally, participants in the 2022 poll startled the world by designating Marv Newland’s 1969 animated short, Bambi Meets Godzilla as the Greatest Film of All Time.

Actually, Bambi Meets Godzilla was not the winner of the 2022 poll, though it should have been. The actual 2022 winner was Chantal Akerman’s 1975 Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles—a 3 hour, 21 minute-long cinematic lobotomy. The Sight and Sound panel should have chosen Bambi Meets Godzilla because it has precisely the same plot and lasts only a minute-and-a-half. The plot that these two films share is hysterical when confined to 90 seconds, but becomes soul-crushing when stretched to 134 times that length.

My wife and I are film aficianados and love foreign films. When I wrote last week’s essay on Vertigo, I discovered that the latest Sight and Sound poll had ranked Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles as the Great Film of All Time. Alanna and I said, “Wow—some 48-year-old Belgian film that we’ve never heard of beat out Vertigo AND Citizen Kane. We need to see something that good.” We figured from a little reading that it would be slow-paced, but we’re not averse to minimalism, as I’ll discuss below. Once we began watching, it took us three nights to see the film in its entirety, as we feared that much more than an hour of viewing per night would result in permanent neurological damage.

Below, I’ll offer a COMPLETE LIST OF SPOILERS on Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. By telling you everything there is to know about the film, you will be able to speak knowledgeably with your cinephile friends about the Sight and Sound poll without allowing the late Ms. Akerman to tamper with your frontal lobes as she did with ours.

To begin our journey, click here to watch the very brief animated parody, Bambi Meets Godzilla. It’s just 90 seconds long, and you’ll be glad you watched.

Let’s review what you just viewed. For the first minute, endless credits scroll by while absolutely nothing of consequence happens. A crudely drawn Bambi, standing amid some flowers, nibbles on grass and occasionally looks up and moves one leg. Then, at the one-minute mark, an enormous reptilian foot plunges downward, instantly squashing Bambi, whose flattened legs splay outward from beneath Godzilla. Then, the closing credits appear.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles follows precisely the same contours: (1) credits roll, (2) nothing happens, (3) instantaneous violent death toward the end, (4) credits roll. Just so you’ll have some idea of what I’m talking about, just watch the following 4-minute segment in its totality—fast-forwarding, if necessary. If you own a defibrillator, keep it handy to revive yourself as necessary.

Again, Alanna and I are quite fond of minimalist films. Tedium and pointless conversation are front-and-center in the films of Bill Forsyth, David Lynch, and Jim Jarmusch, but these directors tell great and entertaining stories, and the “dull” parts are sort of jokes that both you and the directors are in on. With Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, director Akerman straps you to a chair, props your eyes open with mechanical contrivances, and feeds you emetics—as British authorities did to Alex in A Clockwork Orange.

Spoilers a’comin’!!

Roughly 3 hours and 20 minutes of the film’s 3 hours and 21 minutes consists of scenes exactly like the one above. Jeanne is a bored and boring widow in Brussels. She lives in a drab apartment with her bored and boring teenage son. They seem to care for one another, but barely interact. Jeanne follows rigid daily routines that border on obsessive-compulsive disorder. She turns lights on whenever she enters a room and turns them off when she leaves the room. In the clip above, she makes meatloaf. We also see her make veal cutlets, soup, and other dull-looking dishes. Potatoes are pivotal: We see her peel potatoes, eat potatoes, and serve potatoes to her son. In one scene, she overcooks potatoes and faces a choice of (1) using them for mashed potatoes instead of roasted potatoes, or (2) throwing them away, going out to a store, buying more potatoes, and starting all over again; she chooses option (2) because she had already planned to have mashed potatoes the following night and is incapable of altering her weekly menu. She washes dishes, cleans countertops, sort-of baby-sits a neighbor’s screaming infant, listens to the baby’s mother (who is never seen) ramble on about nothing, reads letters, dusts trinkets, shines shoes, buys groceries, brushes her hair, knits, cleans the kitchen, sets the table, walks down the street, shops for buttons, folds up a sleeper sofa, gets in and out of and rides a painfully slow cage-style elevator. For long periods, she just sits and stares into space. Some of these things are done over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

In one excruciatingly long scene, she tries to make a cup of coffee, but isn’t happy with the taste, so we watch her add milk, then add sugar, then pour it out, then grind new beans, then boil water, and then pour it s-l-o-w-l-y through a filter into a striped thermos—but she never drinks it. While her son is at school, she is a part-time, free-lance prostitute, serving bored, awkward-looking men. This enterprise doesn’t seem to occupy much of her time—maybe one client each day, with seemingly brief encounters. Later in the film, she slips slightly from some of her routines (e.g., forgetting to turn off a light), hinting that she is somhow deteriorating.

☛ ☛ ☛ BIG SPOILER AHEAD!!! (if you care)

As noted above, these long, slow, real-time, mind-numbing scenes take up roughly 3 hours and 20 minutes of the film’s 3 hours and 21 minutes. In the remaining 1 minute, eight minutes from the end, for no apparent reason, she becomes annoyed with her client-of-the-day, who is lying sleepily on her bed. She picks up a pair of scissors and repeatedly, brutally stabs him in the neck, killing him. Then, she goes to another room, spattered with blood, seats herself at a table, and stares blankly into space, barely moving, for seven minutes. It’s getting dark, you imagine her son will soon walk in on the murder scene. She sits, sits, sits, sits, sits. No one walks in. And then closing credits silently scroll by.

So how, dear readers, did Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles become Sight and Sound’s Greatest Film of All Time? Sight and Sound itself offered the following:

“Interest in gender in cinema and the objectification of women has gathered momentum, especially as awareness of the misogyny inherent in the industrial mode of production—what we call ‘Hollywood’—has become widespread. Perhaps as the oppression of women in the film industry has attracted attention, fuelled by the #MeToo hashtag, so has the oppression of women on the screen itself, in its fictions and inscribed into film language. It would be gratifying to think that the triumph of Jeanne Dielman in the poll gives an affirmation to these shifts in consciousness.”

You’ll get no argument from me about Hollywood’s misogyny—and it long predated Harvey Weinstein. In the 1930s, child star Judy Garland was damaged for life by the abuse she suffered at the hands of film executives and celebrities. In 1920, Olive Thomas died by accidentally ingesting the mercury-based syphilis medicine of her husband, Jack Pickford. But it’s a non sequitur to argue that this sordid history qualifies Jeanne Dielman is the greatest film of all time, or even the greatest film on misogyny.

Jeanne’s daily routines are mostly tedious, but so are mine and so are yours. To Akerman’s credit, I now can’t help but think of her film each morning when I arise from bed, walk down the hall, turn on the lights, brush my teeth, take my pills, change into clothes, open the blinds, squeegee two dew-covered windows, empty the dishwasher, stack the dishes, make my coffee, sit down at my computer, and drink my coffee. My routine is as boring as Jeanne’s, and I’m not a victim of misogyny. (I’m not complaining. I find these rituals sort of zen-like and pleasant.) Jeanne’s listless son’s life seems just as dull, if not more so, than hers, and he’s not the victim of misogyny. Jeanne clearly finds her intermittent prostitution degrading, but the film offers no indication that she has been forced into this or that she couldn’t be doing something else to earn money. She’s bright, articulate, organized, incredibly focused, and capable. Throughout the film, she interacts with female storekeepers and clerks who give the impression of being well-adjusted and professional. Something is badly askew with Jeanne, but it’s not clear that misogyny is to blame.

Much is made among fans about the fact that the director, Akerman, is female, but there have been quite a few female directors since Ida Lupino broke the glass ceiling with The Hitch-Hiker in 1953.

Minimalism holds a respectable place in today’s cinema, but 201 straight minutes of relentless monotony earns a rightful place on the syllabus of a graduate seminar in film studies—not a list of the greatest films of all time. Jeanne Dielman’s #1 ranking is emblematic of the elitism, ideology, and self-absorption that characterize 21st century intellectualism.

A YouTube reviewer who goes by “Moviewise” does a terrific (and hilarious) job of explaining what is wrong with what he calls “The Worst ‘Best’ Film of All Time.” (Caveat: He faithfully shows or repeats a couple of mildly lewd scenes.) By way of contrast, he shows snippets from a Hungarian film—2011’s The Turin Horse, that features similarly slow and dull scenes of everyday life. But that film, he argues—and shows—does so much more effectively by its use of of sound effects, music, and camerawork. (He does add that The Turin Horse “is another film you should recommend to just about nobody—but this one is great.”)

Paul Schrader, director of The Master Gardener and screenwriter for Taxi Driver, has been one of the most visible critics of the film’s designation as history’s #1. He readily acknowledges that the film has its virtues—and I really don’t disagree at all. Schrader says:

Akerman’s film is a favorite of mine, a great film, a landmark film but its unexpected number one rating does it no favors. ‘Jeanne Dielman’ will from this time forward be remembered not only as an important film in cinema history but also as a landmark of distorted woke reappraisal.”

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, is clearly an experimental film by a provocative young director, and, like Schrader, I’m happy to give kudos where kudos are deserved. For example, to play Jeanne, actress Delphine Seyrig had to suppress any outward sign of emotion to an almost unimaginable degree—just as Peter Sellers did in Being There four years later. (Sellers regarded that painfully restrained part as “the most difficult role I ever played.”) It is a proper tribute to Akerman that she enabled and allowed Seyrig to give that performance.

Schrader argues not against Jeanne Dielman itself, but solely against its out-of-nowhere #1 designation, saying:

It feels off, as if someone had put their thumb on the scale. Which I suspect they did.

He notes that Sight and Sound vastly expanded its survey panel in 2022 and that:

“As Tom Stoppard pointed out in Jumpers, in democracy it doesn't matter who gets the votes, it matters who counts the votes.”

And with that, forgive me, dear reader, but I’ll need to take leave of our conversation. I have to go mow the lawn, pull some weeds, rake some leaves, straighten the garage, file some papers, send some emails, organize some drawers, fold some laundry, dust some furniture, vacuum the rug, charge some batteries, change a bulb, empty the garbage, … … …

“The Critical Drinker” reviews Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Since I spent this installment of Bastiat’s Window criticizing one film, let me now praise a truly worthwhile one, which I learned about from “The Critical Drinker.” The Drinker is a YouTube film-and-television critic who is fantastic at telling you everything that is wrong with Hollywood AND everything that is right. His online persona is that of a heavy-drinking, comedically foul-mouthed, uber-stereotypical Scotsman. But he is also an incisive observer of cinema and of cultural affairs. Recently he gave an astonishingly positive review of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, emphasizing that it is much more a film for adults than for children. As he said, in full character mode:

“If you’d told me that a sequel to a ten-year-old animated spin-off from the Shrek franchise would turn out to be a smart, funny, charming, poignant meditation on life, loyalty, friendship, self-sacrifice, aging, and the inevitability of death, and one of the best movies that I’ve seen so far this year, I’d have asked what brand of turpentine you’ve been drinking—because I want some.”

Here’s his review, which offers a fine example of his reviewing style, as well:

Give the film a try, and if you think The Critical Drinker was on-the-mark, have a look at his YouTube channel for more recommendations—thumbs-up and thumbs-down, along with his ever-lengthening series, “Why Modern Movies Suck.”

Share

Robert F. Graboyes is president of RFG Counterpoint, LLC in Alexandria, Virginia. An economist, journalist, and musician, he holds five degrees, including a PhD in economics from Columbia University. An award-winning professor, in 2014, he received the Reason Foundation’s Bastiat Prize for Journalism. He publishes Bastiat’s Window, a Substack-based journal of economics, science, and culture. His music compositions are at YouTube.com/@RFGraboyes/videos.