Amazingly, the 1975 film “Jeanne Dielman” (or, by its full title, “Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles”), which I discuss in this clip, is the work of a twenty-four-year-old director. Chantal Akerman had started making films at age eighteen. (Happily, she is still working, and still making exceptionally beautiful and original films—her most recent one, “Almayer’s Folly,” was recently screened several times in New York). “Jeanne Dielman” is her second dramatic feature; and it’s a signal act of modernism that fuses—or, rather, deconstructs—the classical melodrama with feminist ideology, personal history, documentary curiosity, video-art-like installations, and an extraordinarily straightforward, Gordian-knot-cutting way with character-based empathy. It’s the kind of radical artistic simplification that embodies and conveys an amazingly complex web of ideas. As such, it’s one of the most influential—and one of the most surprisingly beautiful—films of the post-‘68 era.
Goings On
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week, online, in N.Y.C., and beyond. Paid subscribers also receive book picks.
Dept. of Medicine
How to Die in Good Health
The average American celebrates just one healthy birthday after the age of sixty-five. Peter Attia argues that it doesn’t have to be this way.
By Dhruv Khullar
Infinite Scroll
The Internet’s New Favorite Philosopher
Byung-Chul Han, in treatises such as “The Burnout Society” and his latest, “The Crisis of Narration,” diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age.
By Kyle Chayka
Daily Comment
The Supreme Court Asks What Enron Has to Do with January 6th—and Trump
The former President notwithstanding, the government’s position in Fischer v. United States is unsettling.
By Amy Davidson Sorkin
Elements
The Highest Tree House in the Amazon
In 2023, conservationists and carpenters converged on Peru to build luxury accommodations in the rain-forest canopy.
By Allison Keeley