Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

chaos-rampant We are torn in life by emotions, desires, grievances, thoughts that surge through us and back to create self. We suffer from the pull of events outside of us; but we also suffer more acutely it seems from a life that has no pull anymore, from being every day in the same room without air.This is the essence of modern film for me, indeed what sets modern man apart, it's the baring of this self who, having sated apparent needs, finds himself no closer to fulfillment, the walls closing in, the air being sucked out from life. Neorealist characters could at least point around them to a life of squalor and ruin as explanation. But Antonioni's characters?So I'm after filmmakers who abet stillness and the wisdom that comes from it, looking for a cinema of awareness (never aesthetics). Because most movies can splash a bit of passion and noise about our predicaments. But how to achieve cessation? How to inhabit the world and our self in a way that we come finally to a measure of realization about process?Here is one of the simplest suggestions to the question, all about creating emptiness. It's my first acquaintance with this filmmaker and I'm bowled over that she made this at 24. She must have been a brilliant mind, a woman worth knowing.A woman simply goes about her daily life. She's a lonely widowed housewife, doing chores, preparing food, washing the dishes. She's also a prostitute, Akerman makes a point to reveal this at the very beginning. Her son comes back in the afternoon, she prepares dinner. She has to wake up again at dawn to make breakfast and see him off.We have no plot, no drama, and only the interminable life in between. Small rituals like trying to get her coffee right because she has nothing else to do. There's only her son in her life. Talk between them is little and the boy's habit to not pay her much mind exists on a razor-sharp edge between neglect and ease. It's heartbreaking to see how she spends her whole day tending to menial chores and he just comes in and sits to eat with barely a word. Mothers will able to relate.But this is the whole thing, how we register these moments. It's sparse, simple, minimal pundits say; better yet, it's like a modernist mantra where by repetition we come to acuity and focus about the fabric of emptiness from which sound comes. In our case, life itself, yours and mine.Is it a horrible ordeal? Can we bear it nonetheless, even if less than ideal and not what was hoped for? Is there an exit?Akerman and the regal-looking Seyrig have conspired between them; Delphine will move gracefully and with complete purpose, the film is a series of tasks carried out without complaint or hesitation, Chantal will film simply the room, allowing us emptiness to receive it. It has some of the most exhilarating atmosphere of any film I've seen.Then a pot of overcooked potatoes or a piece of cutlery that slips from her hand can ring far and wide with the vexation building up inside. When she tries to make the same small-talk she finds inane. When she picks up the baby, unsure if even out of affection anymore.The whole film is inverse Cassavetes, including the snuffing of courage at the end (he never does it). Oh it's a great ending that will brand your insides. But she had already done this for me and to leave her crushed like this, are we now more awakened or less?

davikubrick There can be no doubt that Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is a masterpiece, but above that it's one of the greatest and most powerful films ever made. Akerman introduces us into Jeanne's boring life-routine that by little details starts crumbling apart, the film is divided into two parts (Jeanne's second and third day), the movie starts with Jeanne already in the middle of her first day, in the first minutes of the film we discover that she is a prostitute, after we see her son, Sylvain, a teenager who spends most of his day in his school, their relationship as mother-and-son is not very good, they almost don't talk or show any kind of feelings for each other, especially Sylvain. After dinner she reads quickly a later from Canada from her sister Fernande, she reads quickly without showing any kind of emotion. After she seam and listen to classic music at the same time, they go out to a place (which is never told or shown)and come back to home, she combs her hair and briefly talks with her son before they go to sleep. Then the second day comes, and almost everything is repeated, so we can get into Jeanne's life, but, it is on the second day that things starts to become difficult, she forgets to buy potatoes and goes quickly to buy them before the night and her son comes, we see her for the first time worried, she cuts the potatoes with no apron and with her hair all unkempt, and then her son comes without she have cut all potatoes, which during the dinner gives them some minutes to talk, a big tension is build up in that scene, Jeanne briefly talks with her son about his school and after, the potatoes are read. Another signal that things are going wrong is when she forgets to the turn the radio on, after, reminded by her son to turn the radio on, she tries to answer the letter from her sister Fernande who now lives in Canada, but for some unknown reasons she can't and tries to seam, and Jeanne and her son go out again, and the same thing that happened in the first day happens again, almost like a ritual which Jeanne can't or won't escape, at least, not in that day. In the third and final day is when things really starts to go wrong, Jeanne forgets to button up one of the buttons of her dress, which serves as a premonition for the day she will have. Her alarm wake up her one hour earlier, during this time, where she has no work to do, she tries to play with the baby that her neighbour left there for sometime after go get it back, but the baby starts to cry louder and louder, so she stops playing with him. Later she goes to the city to try to find the button of one of her son's coats but she can't. Later she receives a present for her sister Fernande, she goes open it in her bedroom with the help of a scissors, one of her clients touch her bell, she left her scissors in her bedroom and go open the door. For the first time in the film the sexual act is shown (both are wearing shirts) and possibly in the first time in Jeanne's life she has an orgasm, she seems traumatized while button up her shirt, then she looks to her scissors and then the tragedy happens. Akerman manages to make small and ordinary little details like forgetting to buy potatoes, drop a spoon, later a mop fall to be as impactful as the death of an important character in another film, the film builds her routine so well that those little details become powerful. This is a must-see for anyone who considers himself a cinephile, it's a movie that requires patience, much patience of the viewer, but as a reward it gives you one of the most powerful experiences you could have with not just a film but with a work of art.

tuzlak007 After watching a house-wife three hours and twenty-one minutes, mostly without seeing anyone else on the screen, going through her daily routine three consecutive days, it is very easy to say "What a monotonous, tedious, unexciting, and boring film." Also, I should add, during the stages of this most interesting story-telling, the camera never moves. Whatever she might be doing in her small, claustrophobic apartment, we observe Jeanne Dielman (played by exquisitely by Delphine Seyrig) through the fixed eye of the camera. Oh, one more thing: There are hardly any spoken words. And, the film has no music either; we hear only the murmur of the traffic outside.Yet, a twenty-five-year-old, extremely talented Chantal Akerman, within the frame of this very unusual structure, managed to direct an exceptional film, a film that should be part of every movie collection.This movie can be seen as a psycho-drama or as a psychoanalytical (i.e. Freudian) study of a lonely woman who has been living with her teen-age son six years after her husband passed away. Whatever the reason(s) --or motive-- of a viewer could be, this film is a gem. A remarkable work-of-art!

WNYer Vivid, uncompromising portrait of three days in the lonely life of a middle aged widow who manages her apartment, takes care of her young son and turns tricks for support.Experimental film consists of stationary, single take camera shots - some lasting several minutes - giving you a glimpse of the main character's repetitive, mundane existence. Whether its stopping at a café to drink coffee, peeling a batch of potatoes in the kitchen or cleaning each porcelain piece in her living room, viewers sit through each arduous task all the way through. It reminded me of some modern day reality shows where a camera is just parked in a room and viewers watch whatever goes on - only in this case Jeanne is usually the only one there.Delphine Seyrig performance as Jeanne really shines. She is in every scene of the film and really carries it well. It is even more impressive considering that there is very little dialog and that any other characters that appear are peripheral. Seyrig convincingly conveys Jeanne's character and emotional state by simple actions and subtle expressions. This really comes into play on the third day when things start to go wrong and you feel the character is starting to become unhinged.The camera work and framing of the scenes are exceptionally well done and sound is used very effectively to convey Jeanne's suffocating world. The constant tapping of her shoes as she walks across a wooden floor, the repeated clicking from turning lights on and off, or the mechanical sounds of the elevator each time she goes in or out of her apartment building, they all emphasize the obsessive orderliness and emotional detachment in her life.The biggest negative about the film is that it is nearly 4 hours long. Sitting that long watching a person doing menial tasks is a bit taxing. I viewed the film piecemeal over three successive evenings (1 for each day represented) which worked for me. On the positive side, the film does grow on you as you watch it and you feel like a bit of a voyeur peering into someone's life. You feel Jeanne's monotony and growing frustration which lets loose in the final shocking act. It's worth checking out.