Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) *

 

I know what you’re thinking: that sure is an elongated film title!  Well, the title matches the movie’s runtime, which clocks in at three hours and twenty minutes.  Oh, you think that sounds like an awfully long time to watch a story unfold?  Unless you’ve actually viewed this in one sitting, you have absolutely no idea just how long director Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) really is. 

The plot, if you can dare to even call it that, of Jeanne Dielman revolves around three days of tedious household activities by Belgian widow Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig).  Akerman, who also wrote the screenplay, tells Jeanne’s story in real time.  That means that you are forced to watch Jeanne peel potatoes, make coffee, shine shoes, wash dishes, and countless other activities for countless minutes on end.  And these activities are almost always captured in one long static shot with no dialogue whatsoever. The only time that dialogue creeps into the movie is either when Jeanne goes out shopping or her son, Sylvain (Jan Decorte), comes home from school. And, even then, there are very few words passed between the characters. 

For me, Jeanne Dielman is a study in boredom.  I get that this was some feminist attempt to depict the alienating effects of being a homemaker who only lives to please her son, but this was boredom overkill. I literally had to drink as much coffee as Jeanne made during the duration of the movie to stay awake.  I find it beyond exasperating that some people believe this is a masterpiece in minimalism.  How can a 200 minute movie be referred to as minimalistic? 

Nothing exciting happens in Jeanne Dielman—and she was a prostitute and, eventually, a murderer! Now, before anyone starts saying that I need to see it more than once to appreciate its “beauty” or “true meaning”, please be advised that I made the fateful decision to see this film before I started writing this blog. As such, I had to rewatch this today to ensure that it was as bad as I remembered before writing an unpleasant review. My ability to notice on my second viewing that Akerman does insert clues about Jeanne’s declining mental stability is the only reason that I didn’t award Jeanne Dielman my worst rating: :(((. 

Overall, watching Jeanne Dielman is like watching paint dry.  The best thing about finally writing this review is that I will never have to watch this hideous film again.

Blow-Up (1966) *

(There may be spoilers, if that’s possible, in this post.)

Somehow this 1966 film from famed Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni earned two Academy Award nominations: Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.  Obviously drug abuse was a huge problem for Academy voters in the mid-60s, because Blow-Up is a really bad art film gone horribly wrong.  I’m sure many a purist’s head is exploding as they read this, but I don’t care. For me, Blow-Up is painful to watch—sort of like another Antonioni movie, Zabriskie Point (1970), but only slightly better.

David Hemmings plays a famous London fashion photographer who spends his days surrounded by beautiful but vapid models and his nights taking vérité-esque pictures of men in flophouses (known as the doss house in England). The slight plot that there is comes about when the photographer happens upon a couple in a deserted park and starts taking photos of them.  When the woman sees (Vanessa Redgrave) him she demands he give her the undeveloped film.  Naturally he refuses—he thinks he wants to use the photos for the end of his upcoming book—and she shows up at his flat/studio and offers to sleep with him for the pictures.  We never learn if this actually happens (like so many other things we never learn in this movie), but we do know that after she leaves he develops the film and discovers that she was attempting to hide the fact that she was part of a murder.  Yes, I  know this sounds like an interesting plot turn, but believe me, it’s not. 

So, why didn’t I like this film? First, Blow-Up seems like a vanity project. Is the photographer a ‘complex’ and  ‘conflicted’ representation of Antonioni himself, who makes inane films about rich and beautiful people but longs to do bigger things? Maybe, but again, I don’t care. Watching Hemmings drive around in a Rolls Royce and roll around on the floor with two dimwitted groupies was not must-see cinema.  Rather, it seemed like a reflection of Antonioni himself and what he thought a successful artist should do to pass the time. 

And then there’s the acting. Oh, poor Vanessa Redgrave, why must you act like a jittery drug addict looking for your next fix in every scene?  Yes, she was complicit in a homicide, but her overactive eyes and fidgeting hands went way over the top.  Obviously Antonioni couldn’t coax a nuanced performance out of her and allowed her to play neurotic to the hilt.  And, then on the opposite extreme of Redgrave there is Hemmings—to be playing what one would assume was a charismatic and powerful man and yet be so boring must have been difficult. 

Finally, we must discuss the completely ridiculous ending (now is where ‘spoilers’ will appear).  Did I watch a film for nearly two hours about an assumed murder to find absolutely no resolution at the end? But wait…there’s more—did the movie truly end with a mime show and me asking WTF? I get ambiguity, but Antonioni’s version of it is beyond overboard. 

Overall, it was bad---really bad.  So many questions were left unanswered—and I’m not even talking about the film itself.  The biggest question I find myself pondering is how the hell did Antonioni and fellow screenwriter Tonino Guerra’s screenplay for this get nominated for an Oscar?  Was there really a script of insanely long periods of silence rewarded with such an honor?  Are we sure it wasn’t an outline?  Oh, the perils of “The Book”.

Attack the Gas Station (1999) *

I’d like to say that the meaning of this 1999 South Korean film was lost in translation, but due to it being dubbed in English I can’t.  At first I could only surmise that director Kim Sang-jin was attempting to make an anarchic comedy with Attack the Gas Station. After watching this I went in search of answers: what the hell was it about?  I read that Kim was making a statement about Korean carmakers laying off workers and criticizing American economic imperialism.  Okay, so some of the story made sense after that bit of context.  Still, that didn’t make me dislike the film any less.

The story (written by Park Jeong-woo) is about four young Korean men who rob a gas station because they are bored.  Having just robbed the station a few days prior, the thugs show the viewer very quickly that they are not what one would describe as master criminals.  As a matter of fact, three out of four of them are pretty damn stupid.  Mad Dog (Yu Oh-seong) carries a stick around and hits anyone who calls him stupid—a lot of people get hit.  Rockstar (Kang Seong-jin) is a failed musician (probably because he dresses like a bad big-hair 80s band singer) who makes hostages sing so he can hear music.  Paint (Yoo Ji-tae) is an artist who likes to paint lewd images and then throw red paint on them and shout, “Finished.”  Of the four men, there is only one that I found even remotely substantive: No Mark (Lee Sung-jae).  An orphan and a gifted baseball pitcher, No Mark is the leader of this traveling insane asylum, and the only one I could ever envision being a productive member of society.

Kim tries to tie the senseless violence these men inflict on others together by showing past events in each man’s life that might have turned them into psychopaths.  I was not convinced that these “incidents” were enough to warrant such depraved behavior, and that’s a big reason I really disliked the movie.  While I haven’t read this anywhere, I am convinced that Kim and Park saw Michael Haneke’s deranged Funny Games (1997) and decided they should do a film with similar themes.  I didn’t like the senseless violence of that film, and I most assuredly was not enamored with it here, either. 

What makes this movie even more disappointing to me is that the few Korean films I have seen have all been pretty entertaining.  For example, The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008) is a smart modern spaghetti western with a compelling storyline.  Oldboy (2003) is an inspired revenge tale. And, The Host (2006) is a strange but scary story that leaves you on the edge of your seat.  And, then there’s Attack the Gas Station, which has now diminished my appreciation of Korean cinema.  Oh, and there’s a sequel, too. Really?