“I think you can do your article by thinking about the film for yourself. I’m not the writer. I have already done the film—so now it’s your work.” – Director Chantal Akerman

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The outpouring of loss in response to the death of Belgian experimental and influential (so influential that I think it will be a generation before we really can get a handle on it) has been intense and personal. People feel the loss personally. Akerman was only 65 years old. Her body of work is stunning, and she started at the age of 18. She shot out of the gate fully-formed. Someone on Twitter (I can’t remember who, sorry) said something along the lines of, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if Jeanne Dielman was eventually recognized as the greatest film of all time, and we looked back on the Citizen Kane decades with regrets?” It could happen. Give it time.

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“Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles”, directed by Chantal Akerman at the age of 24

I wrote my own small tribute but at the bottom of that post there are multiple links to other essays that delve far deeper into her work.

I wanted to also point your way to a phenomenal interview done by Daniel Kasman over at MUBI after he had seen her latest film No Home Movie at Locarno.

Chantal Akerman was part of the first generation of children born to Holocaust survivors. Her relationship with her mother (who survived Auschwitz) was quite stormy and difficult, and in No Home Movie she puts together an autobiographical video-essay, interviewing her mother about her life. (Her mother has since died.) I have not seen the film yet.

Kaman’s interview starts like this:

NOTEBOOK: This is not the first film we’ve seen of yours that is about your relationship with your mother. This has been a filmmaking motif for you. Can you say something about its importance, the relationship to your filmmaking practice?

CHANTAL AKERMAN: I cannot. I had the feeling for a long time—my mother went into the camps and never said a word about it—that I had to talk for her, which is crazy because you cannot talk for someone else. So I was obsessed by that, by her life. I was obsessed also by the way when she went out of the camps she made her house into a jail. That’s Jeanne Dielman. Now I can tell that, but I was not aware of that when I did it, you know?

First of all: “I cannot.” That is an artist speaking, an artist who does what she does because it feels right to her, and doesn’t overthink it or even KNOW what she’s doing at the time. It’s not an intellectual process. It’s instinct. The job of the critic is to analyze. The job of the director is to DO. Two very different things.

This reminds me of a great snippet from Scott Eyman’s John Wayne biography. In the 60s and 70s, thanks really to the French who loved the American movies that were considered our “trash” (crime noirs, Westerns), there was increased critical interest in John Wayne, the Westerns he had been involved in. Howard Hawks was one of the heroes of the French New Wave. Red River, starring John Wayne, is (of course) a masterpiece, but it came more than halfway through Wayne’s career. He had been working since the late 20s. So anyway, a critic came to interview Wayne. This was in the 70s. The critic started off with, “So your career really began with Red River …”
1. How rude.
2. How can you dismiss the 100+ films Wayne had already done? Is it because YOU want to “set the tone” for how we talk about Wayne? Who the hell are YOU? You’re a CRITIC. Know your place.

Anyway, the critic made that comment, and Wayne barked in response, “That’s a theory.” That critic got let off easy, in my opinion. Hopefully he learned a lesson.

Back to Akerman: Her responses to Kasman’s observations (all quite insightful) are fascinating, putting her in the same category as the great directors of the American past: Howard Hawks, John Ford – who, when asked such questions of analysis – tended to respond with: “Well, that was the story I was telling.” Or “I’m not an artist. I do my job and I do it well.” To sit around and pontificate about the post-modern existentialism of their films, or whatever, would be ridiculous (not to mention pompous.)

So Kasman asks Akerman if she could “say something” about her process. Her response is “I cannot.”

It’s not a rude or prickly interview, there’s so much great stuff there, but she refuses to analyze what she feels she cannot. She’s asked about her camera angles, how she chose them. The genius Akerman responds:

Well, you know, I have done that all my life, so it’s like a second nature!

There is speculation (including in the New York Times obit) that she committed suicide because No Home Movie was booed at Cannes. What a shameful speculation. There is zero evidence that it is true. A couple lone “Boo”s maybe. Dear speculators: this isn’t about you and the importance of your opinions to Akerman. She was tough as nails. She endured much. She was an artist. To assume that this ferociously independent woman would be crushed by a couple of Boos betrays such a complete misunderstanding – not only of the relationship between artist/art and audience – but of the multiple interconnected “reasons” that anyone might choose to take her own life. Ignore those comments. Or better yet, judge and shame those who indulge in such speculation.

Dennis Lim, who has written a lot about Akerman, had this to say on Facebook (and it has since gone viral on Twitter):

Amid the shock and sadness over Chantal Akerman’s passing, it’s hard not to also feel irate about the flagrantly irresponsible and ignorant obituaries – two of which, in prominent publications, connect her death to a few boos from a couple of idiots at a film festival press screening. I assure you, she did not give a shit about your fucking boos.

Yes.

And to bring the conversation back to where it belongs, here, again is a link to Daniel Kasman’s recent interview with Chantal Akerman.

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Chantal Akerman, as the lead in her first film, a 12-minute short called “Saute Ma Ville”. She was only 18. The entirety of it is on Youtube. See it.

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