Like is usually the case with these sorts of things, the day-to-day maintenance operations of and for the patriarchal state are performed almost entirely by women. As the subjugated, enslaved class, they engaged in the preprogrammed routinized, menial labor without which the patriarchy could not be. The entire physical and psycho-emotional substrate of the apparatus of their oppression is entirely dependent upon their daily activities. Women are responsible for all custodial, caretaking tasks in support of male supremacy: cooking, cleaning, education, rearing, procreation, sexual gratification, etc. What is more, the evacuation of autonomy, of personal time, of personal thought, with the burden of near-constant routine action, is a (the?) primary modality of patriarchal oppression. 'Jeanne Dielman' is not about revolution…

I don't know why the routine that is depicted on the first day is taken as routine. I watched it and assumed that this rigid human being would adhere to this routine, even though each subsequent day is slightly (or drastically) different. The film succeeds in making it feel like a routine so thoroughly that the changes that come in the next two days are sharply distinct. Those static camera angles and the eerie flickering neon lights that pervade the house at night make the film seem harsh and predestined to some sort of apocalypse, and they reinforce the tight control Jeanne seems to cling to.

Jeanne seems to be in a state of self-denial, constantly moving, working to keep…

"Your hair's a mess."
"I cooked the potatoes too long."

When this was introduced, we (the audience) were told that if we feel bored, that's entirely by design. I see what he (the presenter) was getting at, and I'm sure he's completely correct, but I can't say that I ever felt bored while watching this. Certainly not bored in the way that doing the very activities depicted onscreen (cleaning dishes, making beds, having liaisons with strange and unappealing men) make me feel. A character like this, played with as much subtlety as Delphine Seyrig gives her, presented in this way could not be boring.

There's repetition, monotony, tedium, yes, but there's so much to take in. There is purpose and,…

With the many magnificent films that I have been able to experience within the short amount of time that I have spent living, there are some that evoke too powerful of a response on the spot on the first go it is hard enough to piece together what they leave upon oneself. When I first watched Chantal Akerman's second feature, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, I knew on the spot that it was just something that I would never forget in the slightest. And to think, there was a point to which I had been putting it off in fear I would find myself bored by the way it sounded, and when I leave Jeanne Dielman to…

This is the most challenging film I've watched all year.

Simple in its conceit yet staggering in its concept, JEANNE DIELMAN is a rebellious piece of cinema that does so in the silence of the social confines it's meant to critique. In a medium that has been commandeered by the masculine, from everything in terms of the actions and lives given precedence on-screen, this film subverts our cinematic expectations by putting the trivial, menial, everyday actions at the forefront -- those which, according to the binary, are traditionally coded feminine, and thus women -- in particular, Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) -- are the primary lives that occupy the screen. To see her life, one that is in service, as many…