Delayed Reaction: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Premise: A widow goes through her daily life and becomes bored by her routine.

I remember when I first heard about this movie a few years ago. I thought it sounded fascinating. It's a movie about watching the repetition of a woman's life and searching for the small cracks as her sanity unravels. I can really get into a good slow-play. Schindler's List works because of the detail of Liam Nesson's performance slowly changing. Paris, Texas blew me away by how its slow pacing paid off huge by the end. When Jeanne Dielman surprisingly came in first on the latest Sight and Sound poll*, that pushed the movie even higher up my watchlist.

*The 100 Greatest Films of All-Time. Assembled once every decade.

Sadly, I hated this movie.

It's a problem I run into a lot with movies. There's a difference between doing something well and making something that's good. Jeanne Dielman is a fantastically executed experiment. At well over 3 hours, it really takes its time. Nothing rushes the film. Delphine Seyrig makes so many small choices in her performance. I applaud the execution of the film.

The audacity of time spent is not a feature I care for though. To me, it feels like the art is putting the onus on me much more than on itself. For example, if I watch 100 episodes of a bad TV show, by the end, I'll end up feeling something for the characters. The familiarity is inescapable. By the hundredth episode, if something happens to a character, I'll have a reaction. That's not a sign of great performance or great writing. That’s just the familiarity anything earns from time spent. Similarly, there isn't anything particularly interesting about the filmmaking or performances in Jeanne Dielman. It's a lot of static shots. There's little dialogue. There isn't anything particularly special about the ways in which Delphine Seyrig acts slightly more frazzled as the film continues. There are a lot of movies that could make me feel something after 3+ hours with it. That Jeanne Dielman does take that long to play out doesn't make it special. So yeah, this was a big waste of time.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend