PREVIOUSLY AT FILM FORUM

(1975) A simply dressed Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad, Stolen Kisses) puts something on the stove in her modest apartment, then answers the doorbell to admit an older man. Wordlessly taking his hat and coat, they go to the bedroom; after a time shift represented by a light change, they reemerge, she gives him his hat and coat, he gives her money and leaves. Then she checks what’s cooking on the stove, airs out the bedroom, takes a bath, puts on her clothes, wipes out the tub. The next day, shopping, lunching out, and caring for a baby are added to the routines, plus the afternoon visitor. But on the third day, the routines are interrupted, things go slightly awry, and the shell of habit starts to crack; and when the ultimate change occurs, mortal consequences ensue. Akerman’s breakthrough feature (made when she was 25, in five weeks, for $125,000) achieves a microscopic examination of one woman’s life, and by its intensity, with mostly head-on, long take, real time visuals, and music-less and mostly dialogue-less track, forces us to see those little things in life, in a totally new way. “A Forties story shot by a Seventies camera.” – cinematographer Babette Mangolte. Color; Approx. 201 minutes
1:00, 4:40, 8:20
A JANUS FILMS RELEASE

“To put it baldly- a great movie. The operative word in the description is details: Ackerman makes a spectacle unique in film history out of Seyrig’s daily chores. Dielman is a lethal travesty of melodrama—a deadpan resurrection of the ultimate weepie plot—using a situation that was a chestnut when Mizoguchi discovered it. In affect, it resembles late Hitchcock, but what Hitch used to set the table, Akerman turns into virtually the entire film. As in Psycho or The Birds, Akerman reveals the sinister in the commonplace, but does so to a far more astute social purpose. ” – J. Hoberman, The Village Voice “NOT QUITE LIKE ANY OTHER FILM YOU’VE SEEN! It is not hard to understand the extraordinary underground reputation of this very beautiful film. Delphine Seyrig is a screen presence comparable, perhaps, only to Garbo.” – Vincent Canby, The New York Times

"******" [6 stars]
[six stars - highest rating]
“A SLOW-MOTION THRILLER!
WHO WANTS TO SEE AN AVANT-GARDE FEMINIST MASTERPIECE, OTHER THAN FEMINISTS AND THE AVANT-GARDE? YOU SHOULD. AKERMAN’S 1975 MOVIE IS STILL MASSIVELY IMPORTANT. Don’t be spooked by the daunting length or the formalist mise-en-scène... Dielman is immersion cinema, a brilliant example of maximal minimalism that fuses viewer with subject so profoundly, the marathon experience transcends simple spectatorship. Its statements about the human condition are as universal and timeless as Greek tragedy; Dielman’s quiet desperation will speak volumes to every new generation. ”
– Stephen Garrett, Time Out New York
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“A LANDMARK! A MAJESTIC MOVIE! Akerman fills her movies with patterns and textures of ordinary life, the stuff other films never even notice. Today the film’s observational strategies — its long takes and scrupulous framing — practically amount to a lingua franca of international art film, discernible in the works of artists from Todd Haynes to Gus Van Sant. Adapting to the pace of Dielman can seem like a matter of recalibrating one’s biorhythms. Nothing can quite prepare the first-time viewer for the force of Akerman’s concentration, for the film’s overwhelming concreteness or the horrifying logic of its ending.”
– Dennis Lim, The New York Times
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“FEEL THE URGENCY OF GETTING YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR NETFLIX QUEUE AND RUNNING TO THE THEATER!
Like Citizen Kane, not merely a masterpiece but also a landmark work.
A PRISTINELY RESTORED PRINT!”
– Amy Taubin, Artforum
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“EXTRAORDINARY! PUTS TIME ON SCREEN AS IT NEVER WAS BEFORE!
Akerman's shot across the bow of modernism... a chillingly sardonic feminist fable built on a sublime paradox.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker
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“A landmark film of any stripe! At 24, [Akerman] had written and directed
a mature work that seemed to contain a lifetime of experience."
– Nicolas Rapold, Nextbook
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“NOT QUITE LIKE ANY OTHER FILM YOU’VE SEEN! It is not hard to understand the extraordinary underground reputation of this very beautiful film. Delphine Seyrig is a screen presence comparable, perhaps, only to Garbo.” – Vincent Canby, The New York Times “A FEMINIST MASTERWORK of minimalist restraint; a cinematic powerhouse of narrative innuendo: Chantal Akerman's pièce de résistance.” – Todd Haynes “ONE OF THE SEMINAL FILMS OF THE 1970s! AN ASTONISHING WORK! Because Akerman's scenario and her realization of it are so provocatively heterogeneous, and because her editing rhythms and pacing are as methodical and unhurried as Stanley Kubrick's, some have called it the ‘domestic 2001’.” – SLANT Magazine “A MASTERPIECE! An account of domestic habitats and the people and objects that move through them. That it was all told from a woman’s point of view, at a historical moment that was not particularly robust for women either as subject or makers of films, sealed the movie’s status as a classic.” – Scott Foundas, LA Weekly “ONE OF THE FINEST FILMMAKERS WORKING! AKERMAN'S GREATEST FILM! One of those lucid puzzlers that will keep you thinking for days or weeks. By placing so much emphasis on aspects of life and work that other films routinely omit, mystify, or skirt over, Akerman forges a major statement, not only in a feminist context but also in a way that tells us something about the lives we all live.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader “What might have been a film as tedious as the life it depicts is a TIGHT, ENGROSSING, AND EXHILARATING experiment with a new kind of ‘melodrama,’ and a masterful integration of the commercial feature with the avant-garde film.” – Pacific Film Archive

 

LINKS:

Read George Robinson's interview with director Chantal Akerman at The Jewish Week

Read Dan Callahan's interview with director Chantal Akerman at The House Next Door

Listen to film critic Nathan Lee discuss Jeanne Dielman on WNYC