"tracker" <arrowplusbow@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:62960b1e.0402251204.3d4e2434@posting.google.com...
If these guys think Ackerman is boring (their bitching has gone on for
days), they should be locked in a projection room and be made to watch a
Marguerite Duras triple feature. That would surely break their spirit.

only if my testasterone level was as low as yours and if i were
disposed toward masochism. but, most of us guys are grateful for the
UN charter against use of torture.

How about this for a scenerio. Show you just one Duras film: "Le Camion."
Ten minute takes of a semi trailer driving down a highway alternating with
ten minute takes of Duras talking to Gerard Depardieu about a semi trailer
driving down a highway. Outfit you with eyelid seperators like the ones
used in "A Clockwork Orange." so you'd have to watch. And play it over and
over and over and over and....

Fondest regards,
Randall

In a way, the ending doesn't seem to jive with the rest of the film. It
introduces tawdry sensationalism in a narrative which, up to that point, had
operated on the opposite end of the spectrum. It just doesn't feel right.

On an intellectual level, though, it might make some sense. It is said - I
don't know how the film supports this (and I haven't seen it for years) -
that in the last scene with her john, she experiences her first orgasm.

So,
we see intense sensation unexpectedly interjected into the numbing tedium of
her routine, an opposition she can't deal with. Why it follows that she
must stab the john I don't know. It certainly cuts out the possibility of a
sequel.

Anyhow, I find the long take of her rocking that ends the film very
satisfying. I think Ackerman's work is very uneven, but "Jeanne Dielman" is
one of a small handful of outstanding films from the 1970s.

If these guys think Ackerman is boring (their bitching has gone on for
days), they should be locked in a projection room and be made to watch a
Marguerite Duras triple feature. That would surely break their spirit.

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 09:52:58 GMT, "Randall Coleman"
randall.coleman@verizon.net> wrote:

In a way, the ending doesn't seem to jive with the rest of the film. It
introduces tawdry sensationalism in a narrative which, up to that point, had
operated on the opposite end of the spectrum. It just doesn't feel right.

Yeah, I didn't like the ending either. It seems like a concession to
sudience expectations or conventional narrative demands (which is kind
of pointless after the whole movie has been spent flouting those
concepts). It does seem to provide the most division and debate among
viewers and theorists, though.

Akerman herself has spoken about it. I can't find the direct quote,
but she said something like, "It was either him or her. I'm glad it
was him" (ahh, the days of radical feminism), a message that I
probably find more patently offensive than Gaza does.

On an intellectual level, though, it might make some sense. It is said - I
don't know how the film supports this (and I haven't seen it for years) -
that in the last scene with her john, she experiences her first orgasm.

This is one of the problems with not showing us the previous sexual
encounters. We don't know if this client or Jeanne herself did
anything different this time that might have provoked her action.
Plus, we know when we *do* begin to see the sex with the last client
that something is bound to happen this time. Maybe Akerman was wary
of giving into voyeurism or providing unwanted tittilation for the
audience, but she should have shown us the other sex scenes.

So,
we see intense sensation unexpectedly interjected into the numbing tedium of
her routine, an opposition she can't deal with. Why it follows that she
must stab the john I don't know. It certainly cuts out the possibility of a
sequel.

Jeanne Dielman 2: The Prison Years

Anyhow, I find the long take of her rocking that ends the film very
satisfying. I think Ackerman's work is very uneven, but "Jeanne Dielman" is
one of a small handful of outstanding films from the 1970s.

If these guys think Ackerman is boring (their bitching has gone on for
days), they should be locked in a projection room and be made to watch a
Marguerite Duras triple feature. That would surely break their spirit.

Even better, we force Tony to read Dinah Brooke's novel 'Death Games',
which has it all over Dielman when it comes to allegorical resolutions
in feminist fiction. In the book, the heroine crawls into bed with
her father after he's suffered a heart attack, and fellates him until
he dies. A literal "blow" to partiarchal culture. Perfect for Tony.

monsieurblob@hotmail.com (monsieurblob) wrote in message

and amelie you said was what you thought the nouvelle vague was at its
best! amelie just caters to public sugar yum yum. jeunet is just a
calculator, a spielberg, calculating how much of what the public
wants, how much newness and how much already-there-ness!

nothing remains 'new' forever but the spirit. amelie has that fresh
spirit, yum yum or not. spielberg at his best is NEW in the best
sense. it remains fresh for all time.

many 'new' wave films look very dated and passe. amelie will delight
audiences 20 yrs from now. i'll take fresh wave over new wave.

larry legallo <llegallo@usa.net> wrote in message news:<g5on301stiletmjokh4lp0u7iqs053bjna@4ax.com>...

No, what seems to matter to you *is* the message. Because it's not
just Akerman you bash. It's Jane Campion, it's Thelma & Louise, it's
Naomi Wolf- anything or anyone with even a mildly feminist perspective
or message. Name one piece of feminism that you doesn't disgust you.

for different reasons. i can disagree with the message and still
admire the work: anything by eisenstein, triumph of the will, platoon,
battle of algiers, etc.
i just don't like campion as a filmmaker. of course, her spinsterish
feminist dweebery is plenty irritating too, so in her case i abhor
both her art and her message. portrait of a lady was BAD filmmaking.

wertmuller is one of my great heroes.

But it's not affectless. The seeming lack of affectation is itself a
conscious statement.

see, here we go again. this is what i call intellectual
chasing-the-tail, something we should leave to our canine friends.
it's like having a movie with a blank screen. if someone complains
nothing is happening...'ah, but the lack of something happening is a
conscious statement!'

The boredom is part of it. You're supposed to feel the boredom, the
monotony, the daily cycle of non-stop drudgery.

as if life isn't boring already. how would you like to see me do
nothing for 4 hrs? this is like showing a movie of some guy baking
under a hot sun to a bunch of arabs. they know the sun is a bitch.

If you commit
yourself to the film, instead of scoffing at it, you might find
yourself drawn into Jeanne's grueling rhythm.

most of us LIVE it. house chores, all the knickknacky things we have
to do to cook, sweeping the floor, shopping, getting in and out of
the car, running errands, etc. etc. why do i have to be drawn into
some grueling rhythm we all go thru everyday!!??

i cook my own food. am i oppressing myself?

if anything, dielmann's daily routine just reminded me of how much of
full-time job it is to maintain the house and do seemingly simple
chores, the stuff all of us have done all our lives... like mowing
the grass, fixing the plumbing, raking the leaves, throwing out the
garbage, cleaning your room. what dielmann does is crucial to healthy
living though i just don't wanna see it because i live it. because
unless we maintain efficiency and order around the house, it all goes
to pot; ozzy can be crazy on stage but good thing there's order at
home. how nice if we didn't have to wash our clothes but we have to.
who wants to wash everday but i do it because who wants to be grubby?

Because that's not what defines those characters. Their gunfighting,
robbing, boozing, and whoring are what they are. Whareas Jeanne's
life is about grinding the coffee, scrubbing the toilet, prostituting
herself for money while she boils potatoes, walking around the block
with her son, etc. That The Wild Bunch's characters- with their
freedom and excitement and danger and maleness- is more exciting than
Jeanne's life is precisely the point.

gimme a break. there's no way anyone can be peeling potatoes and
grinding coffee all day long. it's akerman who says dielmann is
defined by those chores, not dielmann. you ask most housewives if
their life amounts to housechores and they'll whup your ass on jerry
springfield.
also, you know nothing about criminals. except for full time organized
criminals, there's nothing more boring than being a outlaws like in
the wild bunch. yeah, once in awhile they make off with a big loot but
on most days, they just laze around doing dreary stuff like fixing
horseshoes, cleaning their guns, etc. heck, the daily grind of outlaws
is more boring than that of jeanne dielmann.

as for old man sykes,
he's jeanne dielmann of the bunch. he has to watch the horses, serve
the coffee, fetch the wagon, etc. but do you see him complaining about
oppression? did peckinpah feel the need to make jean sykeman, a 3 1/2
movie about an old western coot doing such chores to make some dull
point about life? peckinpah did make a movie about a westerner who
led a mostly humdrum existence, ballad of cable hogue, but peckinpah
cared about hogue as a character, not as a construct. if doing dreary
chores is to be oppressed, akerman must be the most oppressed woman in
the world. making that movie must have been a chore. i think most
women would rather grind coffee than make movies like that.

Once again, that's the point. There is nothing riveting or
suspenseful in the life of a housewife. Why does this truth rankle
you so much?

because no one is JUST a housewife. many of ozu's characters are not
exciting people doing thrilling things. ozu still finds poetry behind
the daily rituals.
it's not much fun being a janitor or an auto mechanic. so what would
be the point of a 4 hr movie showing some guy change tires and engine
oil all day? also, isn't the point of art to look beyond the social
roles and unearth the individual?

I've seen Jeanne Dielman twice, and admittedly, I'm in no rush to see
it again. But the scenes that you find so putrid- the housekeeping
scenes- have stayed with me for a long time. The "shocking" ending,
which apparently you left before seeing, is what left me cold. And
though it's significantly flawed in my opinion, it's unquestionably a
landmark piece of feminist cinema, and still one of the most important
films of the past three decades. So there.

landmark piece in feminist cinema... it's like saying texas chainsaw
massacre is a landmark slasher movie. who cares about giants among
midgets?
and trust me, i will never forget dielman either. torture victims have
nightmares that never go away.
and what is the shocking ending? maybe i should have gone to see the
last hour instead. do tell me.

wertmuller is one of my great heroes.

So then tell me how the woman in Swept Away is real "complex", and not
mainly an ideological construct. The difference is that Wertmuller's
ideology is closer to your own.

You're an idiot. If you're too thick to realize that keeping the
camera static and letting the action take place in 'real time' is a
conscious and affected device, then maybe you should just stick to
your Adam Sandler movies.

Plus, Akerman uses several clever
transitions: cutting between a door closing and opening, or light
switches being turned off and on, in different rooms, to make the
action appear seamless. Oh, but I forgot, you weren't even paying
attention.

I think most people like to see movies that depict something they're
familiar with. I bet most air traffic controllers lined up to see
that silly John Cusack-Billy Bob Thornton movie. I know poker players
love Rounders. In Boiler Room, all the young stock brokers sit around
quoting lines from Wall Street. My sister is a doctor, and says when
she worked in a hospital, all the residents and interns would watch
E.R. every week. Even if it's just to spot the inaccuracies, people
like to see movies (and T.V. shows) about their line of work.

So the fact that you think even housewives wouldn't be interested in a
movie about what they do all day is evidence of the ultimate
undesirability of the work, as compared to other jobs. You might have
just negated your own point. Nice.

i cook my own food. am i oppressing myself?

Depends on your cooking.

Funny, I always pegged you as the "grubby" type, Tony.

And once again, you've stumbled upon the point. Jeanne Dielman shows
us things that most movies ignore. It breaks down the narrative
conventions, and gets us closer to reality.

Okay, I never said I enjoy watching Jeanne Dielman. I'd much rather
watch, say Benoit Jacquot's A Single Girl, a movie with certain shared
elements, in that it follows the day of a hotel maid with lots of
'real time' humdrum activity, and a very loose structure. The main
reason is probably that it stars an 18-year old Virginie Ledoyen as a
French beauty (who I would gladly watch scrub bathtubs for hours)
rather than 44-year old Daphne Seyrig as a widowed Belgian housewife.

But at least I recognize my predilection for what it is, and I can be
respectful of how how it may make some other women feel and react.
You, on the other hand, are an ignorant slave to your base desires,
with no regard for their consequences or effect on others around you
and society in general.

And some films simply aren't meant to entertain.

Yes, and she is unearthed, which you would have seen if you had
bothered to watch the rest of the movie.

As you've since learned, she stabs her last client with a pair of
scissors. A silly ending. But what Akerman had achieved up to that
point is larger than the resolution, and she was young and probably
thought she had to make some kind of big "statement" (not realizing
that she already had). But the ending is a problem.

But just because I appreciate the film more than you doesn't mean I
don't have limits to my endurance. If you think the movie was
difficult and boring, try getting through feminist critic Claire
Johnston's essay about it. I bet you can't even get through this
sample passage:

(in discussing Akerman's decision to not show the viewer the sex)

"What dominates is the 'thetic', the symbolic cutting out of the field
of vision, posing both absence and the fact of heterogeneity by the
over-inscription of rigidity- the very representation of the
repression of sexuality...a repressed sexuality erupting as
jouissance, setting up a series of parapaxes, creating both the
disorganisation of physical space and temporal gaps. This eruption of
the semiotic, the drives, closed off from our view and unnarated, in a
moment of jouissance, constitutes an expenditure without exchange
within the economy set up by the film text."

Parse that, you semioticians. I got *pages* of that.

But just because I appreciate the film more than you doesn't mean I
don't have limits to my endurance. If you think the movie was
difficult and boring, try getting through feminist critic Claire
Johnston's essay about it. I bet you can't even get through this
sample passage:

(in discussing Akerman's decision to not show the viewer the sex)

"What dominates is the 'thetic', the symbolic cutting out of the field
of vision, posing both absence and the fact of heterogeneity by the
over-inscription of rigidity- the very representation of the
repression of sexuality...a repressed sexuality erupting as
jouissance, setting up a series of parapaxes, creating both the
disorganisation of physical space and temporal gaps. This eruption of
the semiotic, the drives, closed off from our view and unnarated, in a
moment of jouissance, constitutes an expenditure without exchange
within the economy set up by the film text."

Parse that, you semioticians. I got *pages* of that.

larry legallo <llegallo@usa.net> wrote in message


i would argue that we can have something better than
sensationalization or dielmanization. something that is really true to
reality but also dramatizes it as to make it interesting. 'death of a
salesman' is powerful because it sums up a man's wasted life, not
because we see willy loman sit in the kitchen for 3 1/2 hrs. even,

Yes, and she is unearthed, which you would have seen if you had
bothered to watch the rest of the movie.

you mean i gotta see 3 1/2 hrs of boring crap to see her have an
orgasm and stab somebody? for chrissakes. and why 3 1/2 hrs? why not 5
hrs? or 7 hrs? i got the point of dielman's boring life after the
first 30 min. why the damn length?

to drive home the point, right?
then would you defend a 10 hrs jeanne dielmann?

maybe there is such a director's cut.

do enjoy, but i'll stick to legally blonde and lizzie mcguire story.

larry legallo <llegallo@usa.net> wrote in message news:<l8gr30958fffho2n8nf8q8n8s6llh254h0@4ax.com>...

Akerman herself has spoken about it. I can't find the direct quote,
but she said something like, "It was either him or her. I'm glad it
was him" (ahh, the days of radical feminism), a message that I
probably find more patently offensive than Gaza does.

she should have stabbed akerman. by the way, dielmann's ending, for
all its radical posturing, is just a variation of dodeskaden by
kurosawa. akerman wants to show us that an oppressed woman embraces
oppression as a value system to rationalize her station in life. so we
have muslim women who actually defend fundamentalist islam. we have
christian fundamentalist women who defend archconservatism. some of
these women are stupid, uneducated, and good for nothing but marrying
someone who could provide. for them, a modern liberated woman is a
threat to their sense of being because the liberated woman shows how
far they've fallen from what's possible. it's like in china today.
when everyone was equally poor under maoism, it was okay. but when
your next door neighbor proves that you can get ahead and buy a bigger
house, you feel like shit. so a poor farmer left behind in china
might espouse maoism to rationalize his poverty(that he chose it out
of principle instead of being proven a talentless lazyass). or, a
republican housewife might repress her jealousy of the rich
independent CEO woman by saying her role as a housewife is just as, if
not more, rewarding than making alot of moolah. so dielman felt
threatened by her orgasm because it made her aware of the imprisoned
state of her life. someone locked in a prison would rather not be
reminded of all the freedom out there. it will just make him feel like
shit more.

in dodeskaden, a shy girl is exploited and abused by her uncle. she is
befriended by some friendly kid whom she stabs. she does this because
he reminds her of how life should be, how people should be, and it
challenges what she has already accepted as her fate in life. so if
akerman is just doing what old man kurosawa already did in his 60s, i
mean that's some pisspoor b.s.

Even better, we force Tony to read Dinah Brooke's novel 'Death Games',
which has it all over Dielman when it comes to allegorical resolutions
in feminist fiction. In the book, the heroine crawls into bed with
her father after he's suffered a heart attack, and fellates him until
he dies. A literal "blow" to partiarchal culture. Perfect for Tony.

you actually read that? WHY? is this like a longterm plan in case you
have a daughter one of these days?

That's almost an interesting reading Tony, but it goes against
Akerman's own words about it. She has said that she sees the murder
as an act of liberation, and a good thing because it will change
Jeanne's life. Like I said, she sees it as "him or her".

I haven't seen that film, but I doubt Akerman was stealing from
Kurosawa. Not that her ending was particularly original, though.
Murder as a symbolic act of liberation, by the oppressed against the
oppressors, has been used way too often, especially around that time.
Even your boy Peckinpah would probably explain Dustin Hoffman's
rampage at the end of Straw Dogs in similar terms as Akerman did
Jeanne Dielman's. And they're both irresponsible and facile endings.

No, I didn't read it. But I used to move, and kind of still do, in
the same circles as the some of the old radical feminist guard, and so
they feed me this stuff sometimes. They know I find it amusing.

Yes, and she is unearthed, which you would have seen if you had
bothered to watch the rest of the movie.

you mean i gotta see 3 1/2 hrs of boring crap to see her have an
orgasm and stab somebody? for chrissakes. and why 3 1/2 hrs? why not 5
hrs? or 7 hrs? i got the point of dielman's boring life after the
first 30 min. why the damn length?

The length is important to embed the rythmn into our consciousness.
The first day we see how efficiently Jeanne performs each task. There
is a obviously a certain rigor to the way she shedules her day.
During the second day, that efficiency begins to break down and the
rigidity of her schedule starts to unravel, almost imperceptibly at
first, but then more and more noticeably (again, paying attention
helps). There is a nice moment when her son tells her that her hair
is messed up, and she says, "I burned the potatoes". Her son
recognizes how a single misstep affects everything else.

But with out the length, it would be harder to perceive this, without
the kind of overt exposition (which most movies rely on) that Akerman
is trying to avoid. Look how housework is portrayed in most movies,
if it's seen at all. It's either portrayed as comically frustrating-
everything going wrong- or shown very quickly in a montage of
activity: 3 seconds of scrubbing the bathtub, followed by a few frames
of vacuuming, etc.

to drive home the point, right?
then would you defend a 10 hrs jeanne dielmann?

I'm sure Akerman probably thought about making it longer. After all,
she does condense three days into 3 and half hours of film. So just
think, it could have been worse.

maybe there is such a director's cut.

Yeah, the DVD has the deleted scenes, which include 'defrosting the
fridge' (45 minutes), 'bleaching the curtains' (27 minutes), and my
personal favorite, 'repotting the philodendron" (14 minutes). That
last one's a hoot.

do enjoy, but i'll stick to legally blonde and lizzie mcguire story.

What, has Natalie Portman become too old for you?

I haven't seen that film, but I doubt Akerman was stealing from
Kurosawa. Not that her ending was particularly original, though.
Murder as a symbolic act of liberation, by the oppressed against the
oppressors, has been used way too often, especially around that time.
Even your boy Peckinpah would probably explain Dustin Hoffman's
rampage at the end of Straw Dogs in similar terms as Akerman did
Jeanne Dielman's. And they're both irresponsible and facile endings.