Greatest Movie Ever
Is Killing Me
Have we all spent the weekend trying to recover from having watched Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles on HBO Max or Criterion Channel because it has been voted, all of a sudden, boom, the greatest movie of all time? Three hours and twelve minutes worth?
That's where I'm coming from.
Here are some takes: (Don't read number SIX if you haven't watched the movie.)
ONE:
Every shred of guilt I have ever felt toward my poor mother or any other woman I have ever known has been stirred. Guilt and despair -- for where is there any room anymore for an old white straight liberal male to talk? It’s all over, fellas. Step back, Vertigo. Suck it up, Citizen Kane.
TWO:
In the time I spent watching Jeanne Dielman (a terrible title for a movie, by the way, even without the address) I could have watched Singin' in the Rain (now, according to the critics poll, the tenth greatest movie of all time) twice, almost. And would have been left feeling much more chipper. Of course the villain of that is a woman and the good guys are 75-percent male.
THREE:
Can somebody explain to me why Ms. Dielman and sleep some but not all nights of the week in a different apartment? Did I just completely miss the point of this?
FOUR:
I identify, unhappily, with the teen-age son. But in his place I would have been even far less forthcoming. At on e point he tells his mother (in translation), "Your hair is a mess." Does any son say that to any mother? Even in Belgium? Not to mention the explicit Oedipal stuff — how does he think that makes her feel?
No comfort, he, to her, at any rate. Nor was I. And when he gets home . . . poor kid, I would say, except -- I identify with him? What's wrong with me?
I would like to say how much I appreciated the poignancy of Jeanne’s messed-up new blouse. Did you notice that when she was unwrapping that blouse, and slipping into it, she actually smiled?
FIVE:
About forty-five minutes in, my Mrs. was asleep. The next morning, I told her how bad I felt, and she sympathized. Which I appreciated. That night, we watched, on TCM, It Happened One Night. Which we both enjoyed, although it is sexist, all right. Gable, temporarily at the end of his rope: "What makes dames like you so dizzy?"
SIX (SPOILER ALERT!!):
At least two online commentors have suggested that Jeanne may have been aroused, however conflictedly, by her last trick. I didn't get that at all.
SEVEN
No! Don't fling the baby!
Whew.
No! Don't peel another potato!
Oh my God.
Oh no! I don’t have access to this movie. And I read SIX. argh.
"Movie Critic" defined: a job given to over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise unemployables in hopes one can forget their existence.
I have never run across a collection of dumber, more pleased with themselves, pseudo-intellectual semiliterate morons in my life than the average movie critic. When one of them went ga-ga over the "implied pro-choice sentiment" in my screenplay for the movie "The Terror Within" I literally laughed out loud in his face. Then I said, "All I was doing was finding a way to get the monster inside the haunted house, the same way Dan O'Bannon did in 'Alien'."