Why Jeanne Dielman is Best Film of All Time ?
This genuinely outstanding event is both gratifying and unexpected : finally a contemplative film makes the top10 of a worldwide poll, not only that, but is crowned at the number one spot.
Is it because the director, Chantal Akerman, is a woman ? Is it because she passed away recently ? Is it because she's Belgian ? Is it because her masterpiece is more widely available to be seen and watched by many ? Is it because of the additional voters bringing new blood ? Is it because they fired up the vote to bring diversity in a dusty, old-regime canon ? Who knows ? Maybe it's just the greatest film ever made in film history... so far.
The prime achievement here is that a majority of voters actually watched it (albeit on a smaller screen unfortunately I assume), AND, the second achievement, is that they didn't dislike it... They didn't walk out on it, they didn't feel bored, they didn't feel like eating brocoli (see The Dan Kois Syndrome), they didn't feel left out, or feel like a philistine (see Slow Film, Easy Life), in fact they enjoyed it (or admired it) so much that it was worthy of a coveted slot on a Top10.
All this is new, and a welcome change in the cinephile community : the most consensual choice (the one film found on most ballots) was not Neorealismo (Bicycle Thieves), not an American epic biopic (Citizen Kane), not an American suspense thriller (Vertigo), but a niche artfilm, experimental, overlong, and contemplative at that (not much dialog, no dramatic arc, slow and alienating ; see Technical Minimum Profile). An elitist opus instead of a feel-good crowd pleaser. Which means, Contemplative Cinema is no longer snob, it is now part of the zeitgeist, a beacon of contemplative greatness (at least for this unique film) in an abyss of classical (and modernist) narration.
It has been a long time coming for this 1975 masterpiece... Wasn't it greater than Citizen Kane back then in 1982, or was it the panel of voters who was classicist minded? How come a film takes 50 years and 5 decennial polls to get recognized by critics, while this time around 5 or 3 years old films are welcome without any test of time ??? Again the reason is the voters mentality going in the voting booth. We could also blame the breath of title releases in the voters respective country, explaining why it took Ozu's Tokyo Story and Jeanne Dielman so long to feature in the top10 where they belonged since their premiere.
I am happy for Akerman's prodigy ultimately meets critical acclaim and embraces popularity to this extent. Not with one of her more entertaining comedies (Golden Eighties...), but with one of her most ascetic and demanding creation. (Her 1976 News From Home is also featured in the top100 canon, ranking 52 !) She deserves all the recognition, for these two films, for her œuvre. It is just very sad that this belated consecration only happens after her premature passing (October 5th 2015)...
The film criticism (or film academia) culture is ready for a change of taste. They allow a Contemplative film (one of its very prototypes in 1975) to brush off with the greats and trample the likes of Hitchcock, Welles, Kubrick... And "Slow Cinema" in general, with Tokyo Story at #4, In The Mood For Love at #5, 2001 a Space Odyssey at #6, Beau Travail at #7 (films not strictly Contemplative for an abuse of music, dialogue and drama), packs half of this perennial TOP10. And more globally, they welcome newer films, atypical and challenging, because the canon must reflect the raising level of cinema greatness beyond the classicist age.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, IS now (for the next decade at the very least) the gold standard of cinema. Film schools everywhere will teach the wonders of plotlessness, film syllabus will include slowness, more film crews will adopt wordlessness, and festivals will continue to admit alienation on screens and to engrave trophies. Last decade was the era of detractors, grumpy and bored. Maybe we'll enjoy a respite until 2032, as Contemplation has its foul-proof argument cut out if its legitimacy was to be questionned...
As much as this triumph serves the cause of Contemplative Cinema around the world, I doubt the shaken canon is any more representative now than before of the true masters of cinema history. At least, there is room for improvement still, in both directions. Towards more diversity sure (carefully selected panel of diverse and representative voters, less Anglo-American centric cohort, younger blood, TOP20 ballots...), but also towards more rigor (moratorium on decade-old entries, halt to personal favourites or diversity-sake mix-up, less voters, strictly cinephile voters, voters who have seen enough of cinema history, silent, classical and contemporary world cinema...).
If the canon isn't diverse or representative, it is because Cinema history, so far, hasn't been that (but dominated by older white males from the USA and France... both as filmmakers and critics/scholars). Thus the canon must reflect reality, because it is a mirror not a wishful thinking. We deserve a bad canon, and must take responsability for it, because Cinema History was biased and unilateral. This is exactly because we can witness a posteriori the publication of a narrow-minded canon, that the voters may choose in good conscience to be more representative on their next ballot, and more importantly to break the glass ceiling for women and minorities in the industry itself (where they will make history count for future canons).
Including lesser films under the pretext of quotas isn't serving the cause of a wider diversity, simply because they do not measure up, and are only "role-models" on paper, for the wrong reasons. There are however other ways to include more diversity in a "canon representative of a reactionary history". Because there are still blindspots from the first century of cinema (and the first deacade of the second century), overshadowed by an over-representation of Hollywood and France... so that the canon would look less like the Oscars and more like Cannes.
The first step is to feature lesser advertised nations of cinema like China (JIA Zhang-ke, WANG Bing...), Taiwan (Edward YANG, HOU Hsiao-hsien, TSAI Ming-liang, ANG Lee), South Korea (IM Kwon-taek, LEE Chang-dong, HONG Sang-soo...), Iran (KIAROSTAMI, FARHADI, PANAHI...), Romania (Romanian New Wave), Czech Republic (Prague Spring New Wave), Turkey (CEYLAN), India (RAY, GHATAK, BHANSALI, Mani KAUL...), Senegal (SEMBENE), Palestine (SULEIMAN), Mali (SISSAKO, CISSE), Chad (HAROUN), Belgium (DARDENNE), Argentina (MARTEL, ALONSO), Sweden (ANDERSSON), Greece (ANGELOPOULOS), Georgia (PARADJANOV), Poland (KIESLOWSKI, WAJDA, HAS), Portugal (OLIVEIRA, COSTA), Finland (KAURISMAKI), etc. Even if most are males (and if some of them already have one film in the TOP100 canon, which is not enough).
Sight&Sound voters consecrate American, French, Italian, Japanese and British films because that's all they've seen. Contributors must be more eclectic viewers before getting the chance to vote. Therefore a more careful selection of fewer representative voters, and not just a massive dump of newbies (which equates to an IMDb popular vote), is on order. Time allowing, the canon will evolve, at an imperceptible pace, decade after decade, if voters are knowledgeable and just. A canon is always offset and delayed compared to history, because it judges the past, not the present. And we'll have to live with a wayward canon as long as society in general, and the film industry in particular, are this obtuse. We need to take responsability for such state of cinema, which is a reflection of its reality, however unfair.
It's Cinema History itself that we must change in the future, not the ensuing canon.
Related on Unspoken Cinema :
Comments