JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES

A singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow—whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son, and turning the occasional trick. In its enormous spareness, Akerman’s film seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. Whether seen as an exacting character study or one of cinema’s most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time, JEANNE DIELMAN is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment, one that has been analyzed and argued over for decades.

“While some movies have no greater aim than to make the time fly, JEANNE DIELMAN means to convey the full weight of duration. The audience is required to experience just how long it takes to make the bed, do the dishes, set the table, scrub the tub, brew a pot of coffee, prepare a meatloaf, eat a bowl of soup and so on. Ms. Akerman’s extended takes go so far as to alter the viewer’s physical relationship with the movie. Adapting to the pace of JEANNE DIELMAN can seem like a matter of recalibrating one’s biorhythms.” – Dennis Lim