It's as if the filmmaker wanted to spit in our face by making it 3 1/2 hours long. "Not only am I going to torture you, but I'll do it for an eternity! Not just 90 minutes, or 2 hours, but no, I'll make you watch the most monotonous film of all time for 3 1/2 hours!"
Cue the pretentious pseudo intellectuals.
I'm afraid that honor would have to go to Dark Knight.
shareAlright, Mr. Darko, take care!
share"It's as if the filmmaker wanted to spit in our face by making it 3 1/2 hours long. 'Not only am I going to torture you, but I'll do it for an eternity!'"
Precisely, though not for the sadistic reasons you suggest. The idea is to put us inside this woman's tense and claustrophobic life, sharing that tension and claustrophobia, and boredom. This is Empathy raised to an epic level.
Maybe the ending is mildly anticlimactic, but at least it makes psychological and narrative sense.
There, daddy, do I get a gold star?
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whatever...
share"Whatever"?
There, daddy, do I get a gold star?
..that was for the OP...
I think she's the saddest girl ever to hold a martini.
What the OP could have said is that this film USES boredom as an expressive device. That is something quite different from BEING boring.
There, daddy, do I get a gold star?
...exactly!
I think she's the saddest girl ever to hold a martini.
So true!
I found this film absolutely mesmerizing. Akerman's use of repetition created in me a heightened sensory response. Her attention to detail and focus on the mundane made me hyper-aware of every element in every shot. If the first day wasn't depicted in such detail, then Jeanne's gradual unraveling would not have had the same impact. When she left the lid off the soup tureen, it was as potent a moment as can be found in the best of horror and suspense films.
And kudos, gnolti, for your choice of quote! ;-)
No. It’s not.
shareOh, no no no. That would be Marguerite Duras' India Song, made the same year. Far and away the worst movie I've ever seen, worse than Plan 9 or Battlefield Earth or any other famously bad movie you could name. All kitschy style and pretention with zero substance. It's only two hours long and yet it seems like two hundred. Jeanne Dielman flies by like a Roadrunner cartoon in comparison, plus it has an actual plot with an actual payoff at the end.
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That's why you were killed off here, Emunah. The closed mind.
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