Chantal Akerman: Four Films

Masterful camera placement and timing. No heavy handed messages, just show life and let the viewer decide. Wish I could get all her work on DVD.

Four documentary films by Chantal Akerman, that range from some of her strongest work, to more mixed.Sud (1999) An odd mixing of old and new styles for Akerman. And while there are difficult, slow patches, the overall effect is shockingly powerful. For about 15 minutes the film resembles her earlier cinema photo montages that give a sense of time and place only through raw image and sound, the camera still, or slowly moving past often seemingly random images that somehow add up to a coherent whole (D'Est, Hotel Monterey). But, in Sud, suddenly there are head on interviews, a shockingly 'normal' style for this experimental film-maker, talking first about racism in the South and how it has (and hasn't ) changed, and then about the infamous James Byrd case, where, in 1998, an African American was dragged to his death for 3 miles behind a pick-up truck by a trio of young white supremacists. We realize that the town and place of that horrific murder, Jasper, is what we've been looking at. It changes our whole perspective. We follow the Byrd story through interviews with African-American friends and neighbors, white police and reporters, and by watching a memorial service for Byrd. As well as an interview about the white power movement and how it functions in the modern day world. Some of this feels rough, and almost shockingly amateurish, moving, but sometimes without focus. Yet when we get to the films last sequence, a wordless, seemingly endless drive looking backwards along the same stretch of road where Byrd was killed, black circles still painted on the road by investigators, showing where bits of Byrd's body were found, the whole piece takes on a deeply chilling and powerful resonance about racial hatred in America and the world. This only grew in my memory with reflection.From the Other Side (2002) - The issue of Mexicans trying to cross illegally into the US in search of work and hope is examined with a mix of styles by Akerman, something like her approach to racial issue in the US in 'Sud'. Long, wordless images, give us a poetic sense of time and place --sometimes still, sometimes tracking endlessly (one shot is nearly eight minutes). Intercut with these are affecting interviews with people on both 'sides' (literally and figuratively) of the issue. From those in Mexico who have lost loved ones forever as they wandered in the desert, to the US sheriff who provides a strikingly cogent sum up of the situation, and a powerful blast at current INS policies that have led to many deaths without stopping the problem, even as he also explains the emotional threat these 'intruders' represent to the rural Americans who live near the border. This doesn't have quite the power of 'Sud', perhaps because the issue is more complex and diffuse, but it's still a powerful call for human caring trumping political concerns, told in a unique, slow, meditative way. It will drive some people crazy with it's pace and refusal to act like a 'normal' documentary, instead of a tone poem. But, for me, Akerman's work rewards patience by leaving you with not just ideas or impotent anger of agreement or disagreement, but complex, haunted feelings that stay with you for days.From the East (1993) Like her early work, especially ‘Hotel Monterey’ (which this resembles in approach). This is a truly experimental, non-narrative film. Just a series of images from across Russia, often slow, amazingly long tracking shots (probably made from a car, but somehow rock steady), intercut with some long stationary wide angle shots, and shots of people in rooms, clearly staged. There’s no dialogue and almost no music, only the sounds of the place. A comment on how lost Russia was at that point – a lifetime of one ideology suddenly gone, and nothing new yet taking it’s place – seen in the faces and locations, every person looking like they’re waiting for something. The only problem for me was the length. At 110 minutes both images and ideas, terrific though they were, started to feel repetitive. On second viewing that length became more bothersome, not less.La-Bas (2006) This documentary is probably my least favorite of Akerman’s. In style it recalls ‘News From Home’. That film was images of New York City, overlaid with the sounds of Akerman reading letters from her mother. This film is all images of Israel, with Akerman occasionally, sparsely commenting on her feelings of alienation and loneliness in Israel (while avoiding ever being explicitly political about, say the Israeli/Palestinian conflict). For me, the images were just too limited. About 90% of the film are images takes out of the window of Akerman’s apartment, usually through blinds, of her neighbors going about their lives. I found a little of this went a long way, both literally and metaphorically. Akerman’s films are often slow, but this was one of the few times I felt myself bored, and didn’t feel rewarded in the end by a sense that the whole was bigger than the sum of it’s parts. Not an awful film, but just not as interesting to me as almost anything else Akerman has done.

I've only seen `Jeanne Dielman' and `Le Captive' but both films left me with a feeling of profound respect for what I consider to be a very talented film maker. I hope the rest of Ackerman's work displays the same credentials (although I'm not sure about `A Couch in New York'). This box set is very expensive but appears to contain Ackerman's hyper realist films like `Jeanne Dielman' which is, for me, and astounding examination of the mundane everyday activities of an urban woman living in late 1970s Brussels. And it is this "suburban" framework that provides the narrative progression in what appears on the surface to be a filmed succession of boring, repetitive, irritating domestic rituals. Then we have the end of the second day, an interval, then more of the same but with a difference. For Ackerman slowing and patiently starts to construct some subtle changes to Jeanne's routine (e.g. over cooking potatoes, not putting the lid on the pot), which has the cumulative effect of introducing a sense of foreboding, or put another way, an atmosphere tense with Jeanne's repressed emotion. For me Jeanne's emotional detachment from almost everything is symptomatic of a form of brainwashing created by a lifestyle seemingly devoid of fun and happiness. The mother appears as some form of automaton whose sole purpose is to satisfy the needs of others at the expense of the self. Interestingly Jeanne appears to have no need for a meaningful relationship with another person. I don't I think Jeanne's son (her only significant "relationship") can be classified as an empathetic, particularly loving individual. Their conversations are made up of small talk and maternal instructions. He is the geeky teenager, conditioned by his mother's routine and dependent on her financial support. Money that is earned within the confines of Jeanne's bedroom (the towel spread on top of the bed's counterpane sums up Jeanne Dielman's almost objective approach to her existence). An existence that is put to its severest test in the last five minutes of the film: a truly magnificent piece of cinema and an example of Delphine Seyrig's exceptional acting abilities. One of my highlights (and there are many) was watching Jeanne making veal schnitzel which would not have been out of place on a TV cookery show.

Some of the better films from the french director

The films are wonderful of course, but the box set has arrived broken