The news of the death of pioneering Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, came as a shock this morning. Even worse, it is being reported as a suicide (although I’ve read different reports), which, if true, is just heart-breaking and awful. Akerman has a new film called No Home Movie (an autobiographical video-essay film about her Holocaust survivor mother), and it’s about to open at the New York Film Festival. (See Glenn Kenny’s take on that film, No Home Movie, below.) But the impact of Akerman’s 1975 film (Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles) was such that when word of No Home Movie reached me I felt a bolt of excitement. When Chantal Akerman spoke, it was important. She had plans coming up, film festivals, symposiums, etc. She was only 65 years old. If it was suicide, this is even more tragic.
Here she is in 1975 talking about Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Akerman was only 24 years old when she made it. Astonishing, really. Many film-makers have to work decades before they make a film that confident, that knowing, that stylistically sophisticated. Look at how young she is.
In the film Delphine Seyrig plays the widowed Jeanne, who lives in a flat with her son, filling her day with housewifely tasks (shown in excruciating real time: cleaning the sink, making veal cutlets, etc.), and from 5 to 5:30 every day she “entertains” men in her bedroom. It’s a compartmentalized part of her day, a part that seemingly does not touch all of the other parts. The film is (not surprisingly) a feminist classic (although Akerman didn’t like being referred to as a “feminist” film-maker). The majority of the action is unbelievably banal and may try your patience at times (“Do we really have to watch every step of her making breakfast? With NO CUTS?”). Dennis Lim wrote a short essay about the film in the book Defining Events in Movies and his words capture what Ackerman was up to with her style of storytelling in Jeanne Dielman:
Covering 48 hours over three days, the film immerses itself in the ritualized minutiae of Jeanne’s household chores. These mundane events are captured with a static camera, often in real time. The viewer is compelled to experience the full monotony of each task …
Akerman so firmly establishes Jeanne’s routine that when the tiniest cracks start to emerge – overcooked potatoes, a dropped spoon – they play like major events.
The film’s portrayal of deadening ritualistic housework is a critique of the very concept of “woman’s work.” Alongside of that is Jeanne’s matter-of-fact compartmentalized prostitution, also seen as “woman’s work,” right? This topic has been covered before in many films, from Belle de Jour to the more recent Concussion. Happy homemaker by day, whore by night. But Jeanne Dielman breaks that mold, shatters it, forces us to endure the “homemaker” stuff, endlessly: each day the same, so that we watch the routine, we understand how it should go, we see her meticulous nature … and then, slowly, also mundanely, it unravels. How can a spoon dropped on the floor open up a crack revealing an abyss? Watch how Akerman does it. With no language. Sometimes it is not just the story one wants to tell that provides fascination or interest. It is the APPROACH that breaks new ground, and that’s the case with Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. You watch, there are moments of extreme boredom. But then the rhythm of the film, its own insistent and ruthless commitment to itself, cracks you open. You can’t stop watching because something is going on. And that “something” is not visible, but you can feel it. A story is being told, an event unfolding, a woman revealed. We see her through what she does. When things start to go awry, no matter how small, we know she doesn’t have much time left. The routine will be shattered for good.
Chantal Akerman has made many more films since that masterpiece in 1975. Some I have seen, more I have not. While she has spoken eloquently about how Godard inspired her to get into film-making (she and the rest of her generation), she was that very rare thing in cinema, a unique visionary with a unique voice. An original.
Her first film, made when she was 18, financed herself, where she played the lead, is a 12-minute short called Saute ma ville, and it’s on Youtube. She shot right out of the gate, confident, bold, personal, and believed in her own perspective, her own voice and vision. She’s 18 years old. Look at this film.
Here’s a Chantal Akerman Primer from Sight & Sound.
Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a terrific essay about Akerman entitled “Chantal Akerman: The Integrity of Exile and the Everyday.” Rosenbaum writes:
This desire for normalcy accounts for much of the difficulty of assimilating Akerman’s work to any political program, feminist or otherwise. As an account of domestic oppression and repression, Jeanne Dielman largely escapes these strictures, and Akerman herself has admitted that this film can be regarded as feminist. But she also once refused to allow je tu il elle to be shown in a gay and lesbian film festival and, more generally, has often denied that she considers herself a feminist filmmaker, despite the efforts of certain feminist film critics to claim her as one.
On one hand, her films are extremely varied. Some are in 16 millimetre and some are in 35; some are narrative and some are nonnarrative; the running times range from about 11 minutes to 201 and the genres range from autobiography to personal psychodrama to domestic drama to romantic comedy to musical to documentary – a span that still fails to include a silent, not-exactly-documentary study of a run-down New York hotel (Hotel Monterey, 1972), a vast collection of miniplots covering a single night in a city (Toute une nuit, 1982), and a feature-length string of Jewish jokes recited by immigrants in a vacant lot in Brooklyn at night (Food, Family and Philosophy aka Histoires d’Amérique, 1989), among other oddities.
On the other hand, paradoxically, there are few important contemporary filmmakers whose range is as ruthlessly narrow as Akerman’s, formally and emotionally. Most of her films, regardless of genre, come across as melancholy, narcissistic meditations charged with feelings of loneliness and anxiety; and nearly all of them have the same hard-edged painterly presence and monumentality, the same precise sense of framing, locations and empty space.
More generally, if I had to try to summarise the cinema of Chantal Akerman, thematically and formally, in a single phrase, ‘the discomfort of bodies in rooms’ would probably be my first choice. And ‘the discomfort of bodies inside shots’ might be the second.
Catherine Grant has put together such an impressive list of content about Chantal Akerman. I will be delving through.
My friend Dan Callahan interviewed Akerman for Slant Magazine via email and some of the answers were wonderful. The orgasm bit, for example. I also loved Dan sharing the anecdote about seeing Jeanne Dielman in a crowded theatre and the audience gasped when she dropped the spoon. That’s it exactly.
Was waiting, on some level, for Glenn Kenny to speak, and he has, and it’s beautiful and sad.
And finally from Richard Brody at The New Yorker. The following bit about Jeanne Dielman is so important to keep in mind, especially when you think about how often women’s accomplishments are sidelined, ignored, diminished. It’s the first sentence that one really needs to remember, for context, take note.
Akerman was younger than Orson Welles was when he made “Citizen Kane,” younger than Jean-Luc Godard was when he made “Breathless.” The three films deserve to be mentioned together. “Jeanne Dielman” is as influential and as important for generations of young filmmakers as Welles’s and Godard’s first films have been.
If you see any extensive list of Great Films of the 20th Century and Jeanne Dielman isn’t on it, or Great Directors of the 20th Century and Chantal Akerman isn’t on it, toss that list, it’s no good.
This is very sad news.
Sheila
I’m still reading through all your tributes for Chantal Akerman.
I’m so sad and shocked.
I saw Jeanne Dielman as a very young actress and was at once feeling, this is so weird and so long but at the same time riveted like hell and it burned into my mind and I went to see it again. A couple of years after that I scored an audition with her. I don’t know how the hell I got into that room with no representation, I only sent my skimpy resume in the mail from Backstage. I don’t remember for what film it was. I remember acutely everything else. I arrived and no other actors were there, that was already different. Even auditioning for lousy LES theatre shows there was always a long wait. I got called into the room by the only other person there, an assistant. I had my monologues ready, she didn’t want that. For some reason she sat me on a desk and pulled up a chair next to me and asked me about myself. I can even remember the skirt I wore, it was a wool black and white houndstooth number, I can remember it because I was probably staring at it a lot. I could feel my legs dangling and told myself to not swing them like an idiot. I got nervous and started babbling on and on. I don’t remember what I said. I only remember her face sort of close to mine. She was very nice and always had a little smile, but her gaze was intense and it felt like it never left my face. I was there for about a half-hour. I remember telling myself to shut up, I’m blowing it, but I couldn’t stop acting like a cheery moron. Anyway, she thanked me and I left. I knew even then not to think about auditions, but I wanted that one, bad. I waited for about two weeks for a call-back that never came and then I finally let it go. I can’t remember the auditions that I went on in the past that I didn’t get that broke my heart then, but I remembered that one and would flash on it once in a while to this day.
I didn’t realize how young she was!
Her death made me think great art comes at a great price, pain, neurosis, deep psychic wounds revealed and gone deep into, it’s no walk in the park. Now I want to go back and see all of her films.
Thank you for your wonderful tributes to her.
Regina – and thank YOU for sharing that incredible story!! What a glimpse of who she was, her process – I love that she just wanted to know about you, she was focused on you. Incredible – thank you so much.
// his is so weird and so long but at the same time riveted like hell and it burned into my mind and I went to see it again. //
I know, right? One of the most unforgettable movie-going experiences I’ve ever had. That first section – where we see her “routine” – I started feeling like … “wait … what? … is this … all that’s going to happen …” (and etc.) And slowly that feeling left me totally and I was riveted. And somehow really scared too. It was a vision of a kind of life, a kind of world, that is so so personally revolting to me.
In the interview I linked to above – she said something amazing. That her mother who came out of Auschwitz – then turned her own home into the camps. And that, for Akerman, was Jeanne Dielman. (But also, that Akerman was not at all aware of it at the time she made JD.)
Goosebumps.
Sheila
Yes! That comment about her mother making her home into a jail after the camps gave me great pause! And the fact it was in her subconscious! How many artists dare to work that way? There’s a willingness to not be perfect, to not play it safe, to dare to fail really, you are going way deep.
I saw JD over 30 years ago now, I don’t remember all the scenes, but I remember vividly the crazy, confused, intense feelings I got from it.
I watched Saute Ma Ville. I was thinking, oh here is a goofy little first film but oh, already filmed well, okay. And then she puts that tape on the door and goes back to doing all that stuff. Oh No! That riveted feeling set in me again. There it all is, the seeds for her later work already there. Her later work, she made JD at 25?!
I really want to see No Home Movie.
I was out last night with a bunch of young artists, the average age was about 30 and who happened to be women and gay. They were all very bright and talented. I brought up Akerman. Not only had they not seen her films, they had no clue to who she was.
I didn’t feel that surprised.
I’m still going through all your posts.
// Not only had they not seen her films, they had no clue to who she was. //
Regina, that is devastating. I’ve seen a similar thing happen, mostly on FB. A genius sidelined. Like – a legitimate genius, as out-of-nowhere unbelievable as Orson Welles. She changed film language. At 24.
and so glad you saw Saute Ma Ville!
I had the same experience you did. The duct tape. I felt: Oh no. But still: that manic child-like singing. When she starts to shine her shoes and then starts scrubbing at her leg. The total mess on the kitchen floor and how she just tosses soapy water on it. The MIRROR MOMENTS.
// There it all is, the seeds for her later work already there. //
YES. I have goosebumps just thinking about it.
Here’s another wonderful piece, written by Scout Tafoya for Rogerebert.com. He went to see Chantal read from her memoir in NYC, and it’s quite a moving tribute.
http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/chantal-akerman-1950-2015
One of the interesting things though is the first comment on that post. While it is complimentary of Ackerman’s work, this gentleman chose to say “So sad she didn’t find her path.”
What the fuck is he talking about?
This is the condescension men show women. They are unable to perceive that women’s journeys are just the same as men’s, that artists are artists no matter the gender. How can he look at her body of work and miss that she ALWAYS had her path.
Would anyone say such a thing about Robin Williams, also a suicide?
Just because Akerman was sad and intense (from the start – Saute Ma Ville) – didn’t mean she “didn’t find her path.” Her path tormented her, and it made her sad, and it isolated her (she was so much more of a genius than so many of her contemporaries) – but it WAS “her path.”
I don’t mean to be angry about this – Scout’s piece is really good in and of itself – but that type of concern-troll comment is insidious – especially when it comes to men commenting on women’s art. They perceive it ALL WRONG.
Not “all men” (bah, I hate that I have to say it) – but A LOT.
// And the fact it was in her subconscious! How many artists dare to work that way? There’s a willingness to not be perfect, to not play it safe, to dare to fail really, you are going way deep. //
I think that’s exactly right.
Akerman, without even knowing it at times, was saying Here is what it is like for me. And because she’s a woman, all of that is also seen as Here is what it is like for women (although she never made that claim. She was not an activist.)
To work at something because you HAVE to, without even really knowing WHY you have to, is … you know. It’s Van Gogh territory. Completely conscious, but also completely unconscious. The vision is unique. It has the stamp of personality. But because it is so personal it then transcends into the universal.
Honestly, you can’t “set out” to have a career like that. It would look too self-conscious. It has to come from within.
But I still believe, as sad as it is, that Akerman’s stature will grow – and become more appropriate to her extraordinary body of work.
It’s terrible, a tragedy.
But I do believe that Jeanne Dielman – which already put her on the map for all time – is long overdue for a serious re-assessment – and a much MUCH higher place in the canon-list of Great Films.
Sheila The more tributes I read the more I feel how heavy this loss is.
That’s a beautiful, moving and intelligent review by Scout Tafoya. I love his simple “she did” in response.
I was reading another one by Kent Jones the director of the NY film festival. How she refused to be pinned down to anything, feminist, leftist, even if it would have helped her.
He was recently in contact with her, waiting for her to come to NYC for the festival. His feelings and descriptions of her face and in particular her intense eyes are similar to my experience. It’s just devastating.
Though a little separate, I love too how you put John Wayne and her into the same post! I don’t know why, but I can imagine her getting a kick out of that!
I think in time too she will be recognized as one of the greats. At one point Kent Jones compares her to Melville. Enough said.
You probably know this, I don’t have it, but I read Hulu’s Criterion is streaming her films for free.
I need to read that Kent Jones piece Regina – I keep meaning to, but just haven’t yet.
// How she refused to be pinned down to anything, feminist, leftist, even if it would have helped her. //
I know – in today’s world of increasingly strident identity politics (yes, STRIDENT) – it looks incredibly courageous to not want to be pinned down. (I am thinking of Jeanette Winterson, who really does not want her books to be labeled as “gay fiction” even though there’s usually some love affair with women. She doesn’t want to be either marginalized – or celebrated by just a narrow group. A very tough stance to take – and people get really really pissed.)
// I love too how you put John Wayne and her into the same post! I don’t know why, but I can imagine her getting a kick out of that! //
Ha!! I hope so.
Her answers to questions she finds silly really remind me of that Wayne crack.
Sheila
And one other little thing about Saute Ma Ville.
When she was eating the spaghetti so fast and ravenously.
First I thought, oh I do that, when I wait too late to eat and I’m starving. Not in public though, there’s something embarrassing in it, eating like a starved wolf, there’s a kind of shame in it. Then I flashed on an uncle of mine growing up in foster homes during the depression. My Aunt was always yelling at him “Slow down Frank!” And everyone would always laugh. Sitting next to him as a kid one day after he got yelled at again he told me (laughing) the home where he he spent his whole childhood was terrible, straight out of Oliver Twist and you had to eat fast or you got nothing. There he was now as an adult with plenty of money, and he still ate fast he said, as if someone was going to take it away again. Later I thought of Akerman’s mother in the camps and wondered if it came from that. All that flashed through so fast. But it made me realize none of Akerman’s choices were random, or easy, or without meaning.
And this was one little thought about one little action. And again, she was 18 when she made this.
// and he still ate fast he said, as if someone was going to take it away again. //
Wow. :(
There has GOT to be some connection (unconscious on her part probably) with the camps. The gas oven, etc. But I hadn’t thought about the spaghetti at all. Very very good catch. And yes: a private moment.
I am so interested to see her new film. The NYFF has become an impromptu celebration/wake for her work. So sad.
I think that even if she hadn’t died – her latest film would have generated a lot of talk – she is so beloved by critics – but certainly nothing along these lines. It’s bittersweet.