A
ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW
By
Darin Skaggs
There
are many different films I will watch that other people have no interest
in. Some people don’t want to watch
black and white films, which is something I do not understand. Others don’t want to watch silent or foreign
films. That one is more understandable,
at times I do not feel like taking the time to read subtitles in a film. Chantal Akerman’ Jeanne Dielman… is probably one of the most qualified for what most
people would not like to watch. An almost three and a half hour film with where
we watch a single women go through her daily errands around the house and then
watch her do it again the next day.
The
film seems boring and a pain to watch but when I put the DVD in my player the
film kept my interest the entire time.
The film while doing so little says so much. One aspect is a character study for an
unemployed unmarried people. Some people
can be lonely and not notice it for a long time. This woman lives alone, sometimes her son
comes over. She gets her money from men just as lonely as she is, they are just
aware of the problem. She doesn’t have
much to do. She does the normal daily
activities like make lunch and dinner, clean up a mess she left behind and
bathe. It does these parts for the
majority of the film.
Her life for the
most part is dull. She doesn’t say much
to her son, mainly because he seems to not want to have anything to do with
her. She is not one to talk to her self so
the dialogue in the film is very minor. It
seems she has been doing the escorting for a while because it looks like it
does not affect her in anyway shape or form.
Another point to the film is that how isolation and loneliness can make
you insane or make you do something insane.
This is all told by the end of the film.
The final scene is after she has pleased a male counterpart; the setting
is in her bedroom which we have not been let in there before. She is combing her hair. The man is still in the bedroom. Out of nowhere she takes the scissors and
stabs the man. Then the film ends. This is so shocking and at first seems
unpredictable, but the more I think about it I realize she has been living this
way for a while and she has been holding it in for that whole time and has
finally snapped and blows up.
The film can sometimes seem like a waste of
time and incredibly boring. I understand
if someone would think that way, but for me I would not give up this experience
for anything. This film is a great
character study about loneliness and doing the same things every day. One of the most unique films I’ve ever seen
and cannot wait to see it again.
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