extremelongshot

 Jeanne Dielman, 3 days in a life of a hausfrau/prostitute

At the age of 25, Akerman came up with a masterpiece of her own. A film full of lengthy symmetrical shots which patiently guide us through everyday life of a widow named Jeanne Dielman. Jeanne is Belgian housewife, who is living with her immature adolescent son Sylvain. The character, played by brilliant Delphine Seyrig  from Last year at Marienbad, The discreet charm of bourgeoisie, India Song and etc. She passes her days by performing a series of routine chores which are more like a ritual. Additionally, every evening around a certain time, she receives a customer. The film walks us through 3 days in life of Jeanne.

It’s all about time!

There are not too many dialogues in film, only about 20 %. With Akerman’s mastery on composition and with several lengthy and stationary shots, viewer gets the chance or in other words finds the “time” to explore the location. For example let’s take a look at the shot, where Jeanne is washing the dishes in her kitchen. Akerman uses a medium shot taken from behind, during this 4 minutes long shot, the viewer has enough time to explore the surroundings/the kitchen, where indeed Jeanne spends a lot of time in it. A “4 minutes shot” without a dialogue, what is Jeanne thinking about? There is the weight of silence and time in this apartment, which is emphasised through such lengthy takes. There are several shots in the film which are taken from protagonist’s behind. These kind of shots were actually kind of popular among the european filmmakers during 60s and 70s for being unconventional and being against Hollywood norms and star system. A system in which superstar would eventually sign a contract only by dictating his conditions for including a number of close ups from his preferred angel in the film. In contradiction with these superstar satisfying shots, there were kind of shots which were initially approached by french nouvelle vague masters like Trufaut and Godard (Vivre sa Vie (1962)). The shots which were taken with unconventional angels or even from behind. Like the above mentioned shot, where we see Seyrig washing the dishes from behind in a continuous shot for more than 4 minutes.

There is no camera movement or close ups in the whole film. Several cuts with fixed and familiar angels but not a single camera movement. This indeed implies the static and heavy air inside the apartment.  There is no music either, which makes the silence more effective. The position of the camera, fixed on the middle height is the favourite position for Akerman as she mentioned in an interview in venice film festival on 2011. She also mentioned how she tried so hard to get away from this comfortable and safe camera angel after filming Jeanne Dielman to avoid repeating herself.

Physiology of Murder

Sylvain, son of Jeanne, acts like a puppet, he is an immature young boy with Oedipal complex. “Father” figure is not there, but still the mother’s unavailable to him. Strong mother figure builds up this highly controlled atmosphere at home. A place overloaded by silence, time, routines and sexual repression. The other men in Jeanne’s life are the customers who pay her visit every evening. In the living room and more exactly across the dinning table, there is always this persistent flickering blue light reflected on the cupboard, implying the sense of danger and agitated restlessness from “outside”. The same technique was masterly accomplished by Fassbinder in his epic TV series “Berlin Alexander Platz”, where we see an insisting pulsating red light in Franz Bieberkopf’s tiny apartment, which indicated the unsettling air of Berlin in the 20’s and implying the sense of danger and stress from which the protagonist could not runaway. The kind of inevitable tragedy which overshadows each individual and there is no escape from it. Back to the film, every moment has the potential of giving birth to a catastrophic event. The film chronologically tells the story of three days in Jeanne’s life, the first day is to introduce the main characters and theirs routines. The second day starts and continues the same but with some precise and deciding differences. In the evening, something important happens,  after the second customer left the apartment, Jeanne forgets to put the lid back on the china bowl where she always keeps her money. It’s interesting that at this exact scene, where Jeanne is putting the money in the bowl, the above mentioned flickering blue light is pulsating at its maximum intensity. Later at night, suddenly Sylvain starts this intense conversation about his perception of making love between his parents and how disgusted and hateful of his father he felt because of that. He confessed that secretly he wished his father to die for sleeping with his mother (Oedipus Complex). At the end, he adds that if he were a woman he could never sleep with another man without having a feeling for him. This is a key sentence to the story, Why suddenly such an intense statement? Did Sylvain looked in the bowl and saw the money? There is this excessive amount of money there in the bowl, in addition, his mother’s hair was messy as he arrived home. Did he reach the conclusion? Messy hair and money in the bowl. But the more important question is, why her mother’s hair was messy? Is she getting careless? Did she enjoyed the sex this time?

Final Day, Climax 

Third day is different from beginning, Jeanne is obviously stressed. Different way of waking up and less motivation on performing the rituals. In the final scene, the scissor is a fine example of Checkov’s Gun: “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off” (Anton Chekhov From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.). Intentional positioning of the scissor on the nightstand in bedroom alerts us: this gun will be fired! Why did she kill the third customer? Did she again had an orgasm? or maybe she could not bear the thought of his son knowing her business. How deep the last nights conversation affected her?

Familiar Structure

The film consists of some slow pace actions which lead eventually to a disaster or climax of the story at the end. This structure reminds me of “Dellinger is dead” (Marco Ferreri), on which I wrote an essay a couple of years ago. In both films, the story happens in a closed location, the place where the protagonist lives. There are few dialogues in both and there is an emphasis on daily chores and everyday routines which are engineered to result in a tragedy. The new modern example of this structure is “29 palms” by Bruno Dummont.

 There is one question that remained unanswered for me, where did Jeanne and Sylvain go every late evening together? The camera followed them out on the street but then there was cut to when they come back. Another daily routine!

February 2014, Hamed Karkan

 imdb