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…

a movie that sounds challenging because it is quite literally 3 hours and 20 minutes of a woman doing house work but in actual practice is somehow one of the most enthralling watches i've had in awhile. akerman's impeccable composition & mise-en-scene trains you how to experience the duration and mundanity of her routine until the smallest gestures become incredibly dramatic ones (you start to learn the routine, anticipate it and the images of it in a way that's yes static and "boring" in the way that labor is but also weirdly comforting after awhile), and when that routine is eventually shattered by a seemingly insignificant inconvenience that shifts her usual day by an hour, the one thing she had complete…

to be a woman is to be invisible.

this movie demands that you reckon with the hot dinner put on the table and the dishes that are cleaned every night. it does not ask or concede: it is bold in showing you every tedious routine of the labor we have shoved into kitchens and the back of our minds. this is not a wife putting on make-up before her husband wakes up so that he won't have to see her unblemished. this is every piece we have historically devalued and ignored.

a woman is mysterious and unknowable, as decades of movies and other media has drilled into our heads. who knows what they get up to? do they even have…

"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,…

This is probably one of the most genius things I've ever seen committed to film. Jeanne, a single mother, has a tightly regimented schedule down to when she watches the neighbor's kids, when she prepares food, and when she turns tricks (which is depicted, like the other activities, as quotidian). Akerman is intent to have you sit there and watch these routines and the routines establish a baseline for her behavior. This baseline, in which she's unfulfilled by her daily work and unappreciated by her son, unravels over the course of the film leading to an unexpected and jarring conclusion. It's difficult to overemphasize how deliberately boring this movie can be at times as Akerman emphasizes the drudgery of Jeanne's…