“there is nothing so interesting on stage as a man trying to get a knot out of his shoelaces.” - Bertolt Brecht
Chantal Akerman's “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” is a three and a half hour masterpiece about the meticulous domestic routine of a respectable middle aged woman, who occasionally receives “gentleman callers” in order to earn a little bit of extra cash. The film is constructed around Delphine Seyrig's performance in the title role, who is in every scene of the film, and it's a performance which really embodies many of the qualities I have been trying to articulate in this blog over the last year, which I think are needed to give great performances. It's true some may find her performance a little bit extreme – it possesses an austerity so severe it would make even George Osborne wince - however, it may infact be one of the purest performances I have ever seen on screen just because it is so extreme.
In a film largely made up of quotidian moments: Seyrig making the bed, Seyrig polishing her son's shoes, Seyrig peeling potatoes, to name but a few, Seyrig's performance is disciplined to such a degree that she only includes those actions which are absolutely necessary. There is no narration on her part, no characterization, no explanation, none of contemporary acting's naturalistic waffle, infact, there are little or no facial expressions throughout her performance, she remains very still, she is Stoical, and the net effect is to render everything she does meaningful, and especially her daily routine, to the extent that any disruption to it becomes an immensely powerful moment, as when she is polishing her son's shoe, she loses grip of the brush, causing it suddenly to fly out of her hand and onto the floor – it becomes an almost supernatural moment. Of course, all of this austerity is to serve the director's vision and fulfill the intentions of the script. The film is primarily constructed using frontal, symmetrical compositions, the camera is static, and the scenes are played out in real time, there are no close-ups, reverse shots, or point-of-view shots. This unblinking camerawork is a relentless examination of Delphine Seyrig herself and all that she is, the actress is under the microscopic here, as is her technique – there is no place to hide – however, she gives us a near flawless performance of awesome attention to detail, self-control, and self-denial, and you can't just magic this stuff out of thin air, you can't fake it, this kind intensity and precision can only be delivered after years of arduous application of craft, it requires enormous mental strength and an intense imagination. In this sense, Seyrig's performance is a real tour de force, not to say utterly inspiring.
Jeanne Dielman is a great film for showing how powerful can be the handling of objects as a means of expression for the actor. Seyrig is inscrutable in this role, she is enigmatic, she reveals no emotion, we learn nothing about her this way. However, when we see her pick-up a broom intent on using it but only to replace it a moment later, we witness indecision. Or when Seyrig forgets to replace the lid on the dish where she stashes her money, we witness distraction – this is how Seyrig's interior life is revealed to us. The film has many such moments, and they are a joy for the actor because they are things he can actually do, and so help to render his performance truthful. They are also a joy for the audience because of the graphic and economic way they express the complex internal movements of the character.
Jeanne Dielmann really is one of the most distilled examples of a film which is simultaneously real and illusory. In her essay on the film, A Matter Of Time, Ivone Margulies writes that it crosses “the line between literal and acted scenes” - it is a product of Seyrig's performance of simple tasks and director Akerman's staging and design, or, put another way: a product of the filmmaker's fantasy and the truthful actions of the actor. It is not the actor's job to create the imaginary world of the film then, but the filmmaker's. It's the actor's job to be truthful within that world. The actor is a sort of Alice in the filmmaker's Wonderland. The actor represents the dreamer in a dream.
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