Ivone Margulies is the author of Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday. In this interview with the Tisch Film Review, she discusses Akerman’s aesthetic sensibility and importance for a new generation of filmmakers and critics alike.

Interview by Ricky D’Ambrose

It seems that younger filmmakers, or more recent filmmakers, lets say - Kelly Reichardt, Gus van Sant, and so on - are now making films inspired by the same kind of aesthetic that Akerman championed.

Yeah, it’s true. But I’m not sure if it was Akerman or if it was a more general sensibility towards the same people that Akerman herself likes, such as Bresson and Ozu. There is certainly an aesthetic there, and one of the things I tried to do in the book, and I’m still trying to work with, is this kind of anti-naturalist, more concentrated aesthetics of the long take. And I think that there are quite a few filmmakers working in this kind of non-Godardian line, such as Wim Wenders, who came before Akerman, and who were making the same choices, but who also had a very different sensibility. It’s a sensibility that’s non-collage-like, it’s not trying to mix materials, it’s trying to keep a certain homogeneity and texture of the film.

Which is interesting because one of the filmmakers she cites as being an important influence on her filmmaking is Godard. And when you watch her first film, Blow Up My Town, the French New Wave influence isn’t very difficult to detect.

She does mention Pierrot le fou as the film that kind of sparked her interest in making films. And it’s a very interesting thing. We have to grapple with that – what does it mean, Godard’s influence on her? The fact is that Akerman is not as clean a filmmaker as one would like to make her, and when you start comparing her to someone like Ozu, or Bresson – or to some of the more recent filmmakers, like Jim Jarmusch or Gus van Sant – you realize that they’re all different. So it’s actually more interesting when you start thinking about their differences than what’s similar. And this, to bring back to the issue of Godard, is to ask: What kind of mix is she bringing into this apparently homogeneous texture of her films? And that’s the issue. And I think when you see a film like Blow Up My Town, you realize that it’s a wild film. It really is a wild film. It’s all about order and disorder, it’s all about anarchy. So it’s her version of the Pierrot le fou explosion. It’s a dirty film, but it’s her dirty. It’s not Godard’s dirty, it’s not his mixes, but it’s proper to her.

When I think of films like Wendy and Lucy, or Ballast, or any of the films that have been coming out of Romania, it’s difficult for me to not think about Akerman; the way these films use the long take take, the amount of time and attention they give to on-screen activities, and so on. Is this something that people are still responding to and looking to?

Well, I don’t know if I can answer you empirically. There are some people that actually ascribe to Akerman (like Gus van Sant, who mentions her as an influence, although I don’t know at what point she came into his thinking about cinema). I think it’s more about what you look for, say, as a filmmaker. For instance, there is this photographer, Tina Barney, who stages hyperrealist photos. And I once met her and told her about my work, and she had just discovered Akerman. She was completely bowled over by her. It’s not as if she follows the cinema, but I think it shows that there are certain crosses of sensibility. What does that sensibility of the long take constitute? Why are people interested in that? I think Akerman brought something in that other people hadn’t quite seen, and I think it has to do with narrative. Because Warhol had already done this experimental side of the long take very, very strongly. But I think the fact that you could be telling a story and using the long take is interesting. The kinds of tensions you can create by having something that’s very long, and the suspense that’s created just by sheer length, is unique to her.

In your book, there’s a quote from an Akerman interview: “When she [Delphine Seyrig] bangs the glass on the table and you think the milk might spill, that’s as dramatic as the murder.” In a film as rigorous as Jeanne Dielman, I suppose there is this tendency to make all events – whether it’s something that goes on in the kitchen or in the bedroom - equivalent. The effect feels tremendous.

I think that she is incredibly rigorous. You mention someone like Kelly Reichardt, who is also playing with this de-dramatized mode, which is what we’re talking about, in a way. We’re talking about the long take, but we’re also talking about a kind of de-dramatized drama. And I think that Kelly Reichardt is doing that as well. But Reichardt has a more naturalist kind of notation. There is more of a flow that’s happening there. And it may have to do with Akerman’s framing rigor or maybe it has to do with claustrophobia and filming in rooms and in apartments. But, in any case, I think there is a tremendous rigor and intensity of looking at one single character, which Reichardt just did with Wendy and Lucy, too. I adored that film and I think it’s completely fantastic. I was just thinking of the Dardenne brothers, too. That’s another kind of incredibly focused filmmaking. They use a lot more camera movement, a much more expressive camera in the way they follow characters. 

We’re also more prone to empathize with Reichardt’s characters than we are with Akerman’s. 

Akerman is very, very anti-empathy. Just recently, I wrote an article called “La Chambre Akerman” which describes how, whenever she goes into a room (especially if she’s acting) there’s a performance moment there. I talk about her as an artist in her films. How does she problematize the issue of being an artist?

And you discuss this in your book, as well, particularly with regard to Yvonne Rainer. How can we think about Rainer’s filmmaking in relation to Akerman?

I think that Yvonne Rainer appeared at a time when a lot of filmmakers were incorporating theory, cultural studies, feminism, and multiculturalism into film. And I felt that Rainer approached cinema as a way to incorporate all the speaking and all of the thinking that was taking place. I think that, because she came from dance, she really saw cinema as a complementary medium for her to speak and incorporate all of these discourses in. So I always thought there was something slightly programmatic – like a program that she wanted to advance that she was using the films for – that was always very discernible. And I have a problem with being able to read this program so easily. I still think that her influence in the dance area is just tremendous. And I think that what’s comparable here with Akerman is the idea of what’s dramatic and what’s non-dramatic, in a very de-dramatized vocabulary. And that’s very interesting.

You could say that Akerman’s films resist being understood programmatically. One label that periodically appears in discussions of Akerman’s work is “feminist.”

She actually resists that quite a lot. In fact, there are very few labels that she assumes. But I think the one label that she takes on is Jewish, which is peculiar. Why Jewish and not lesbian, not feminist, etc.? I think it’s very interesting, and I think there’s a particular history there. It gets problematic in some films even.

Which films?

South, for instance. When she does a film like South, you recognize that she is displacing a preoccupation that’s not really with the Southern United States, but is much more Jewish, much more European.

As compared to a film like La-Bas.

La-Bas is direct, so that’s fine. In that film, she’s actually in Israel, it’s not a problem. It is the proper place to think about what it means to be Jewish. That is the film that would, in a way, be the most appropriate for that kind of thinking. In South, I immediately saw the emptiness, which is something that you experience in her shots.

Is there a personal element in Akerman’s work?

Well, I think that once you do a documentary – which ever way you’re doing it – you’re inviting a problem of respect for the reality you’re talking about. For instance, From the East is a silent film; it’s silent in the sense that people are not speaking. And this raises questions: What’s happening over there? Which country am I in? Is it Poland? Is it Eastern Germany? And she blurs these questions in an interesting way. I didn’t mean to say that she’s only seeing the Jewish material there. I think, in a way, there is a humanist side to Akerman, especially when she does documentaries. 

You mentioned speaking, which has a peculiar presence in Akerman’s films. In Jeanne Dielman, for instance, there’s a very lengthy discussion between Jeanne and a neighbor: Jeanne politely listens to the woman speak, says goodbye, shuts the front door and returns to the kitchen. And that’s it. Is Akerman doing something with language here that corresponds and contributes to her aesthetic? 

Lots of things, lots of things here. You’re right, that one has to think immediately about how she uses dialogue. Because, like Bresson, you have a sense that dialogue is an extra component. Both have this homogenous aesthetic, wherein everything seems to fit perfectly. It’s not extraneous. There is a concreteness to it, there is a kind of object-like quality. But I think that I struggled a little bit with saying that Akerman’s dialogue doesn’t matter (because it does matter). The example you gave is very rich, and I think that, to begin with - and it’s completely connected with her aesthetics – Akerman was going to do a much broader story, with many different sub-plots. What she did was she eliminated all the subsidiary characters: the Canada story, the neighbor, and so on. She cleaned it up. And she made these characters come into her story in the form of a letter, or in the form of this neighbor’s conversation. So she keeps it almost like little pockets of conversation and it’s very connected to the way in which she concentrates the aesthetic around these two characters. And I find it very interesting because, when you have someone speaking for so long, the whole issue of Freudian slips - of saying something you shouldn’t be saying - comes up. When you actually listen to each of these dialogues or monologues, you’ll see that a lot of things are happening there. First of all, there is the telegraphing of information, which is what they teach you in film school not to do: “Don’t tell everything, show.” She tells. And, of course, everyone knows – the son already knows how she married the father, there’s no need to have a monologue there. You have to ask: What is this repetition about? It’s almost like the Jewish joke, the structures of Jewish jokes, which have a lot of listing, enumerating, accumulation. So it’s her aesthetics there, even in the monologue about going to the butcher and buying a piece of meat. It’s completely typical.

In your book, you link the development of hyperrealist cinema to the work of 1970s minimalist artists - such as Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt – and, in effect, to a certain kind of theatricality. I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about this theatrical element in minimalism, and how that relates to Akerman’s filmmaking.

This is how I came to it, how I came to understand Akerman. What does it mean to be minimalist in cinema? Can I say Bresson is a minimalist? Can I say that Michael Snow is minimalist? And I think that one of the things that interested me in minimalism is this phenomenological engagement of the spectator – the way in which you’re drawn, precisely because you have these very simplified shapes in front of you. And I thought that there was a parallel there with the long take, but also with the fact that you have very few things going on. So I think it’s the combination of the few things going on and the length of time that you’re forced to share with that scene. It comes from the Michael Fried article, and I understood what he was saying, even though he was condemning minimalism. And “theatricality” here I could have substituted with the word “presence.” This sense that you have an equivalent presence there. And I think that’s what Akerman creates through her use of long takes. Other filmmakers do that, too, but very differently.

And viewing Akerman’s films also requires a great deal of effort. She asks that we pay certain kinds of attention to what’s going on. Maybe this can be attributed to the way her camera is so instant on watching the most banal, menial tasks play out until completion. A useful counterpoint here may be Tarkovsky, who uses long takes in a very different way.

It’s a very interesting question that you’re bringing up. What is it that you’re paying attention to once you’re in front of a long take like this? And I was just thinking of the last shot in Antonioni’s The Passenger. There’s a lot going on there; there’s a lot going on visually, and a lot going on narratively that you have to account for. Which is completely different from Akerman’s work. News From Home, for instance, is an essay film that grows on you, and you have that kind of parallel track with the mother’s letters. And one letter won’t do. One shot won’t do. There needs to be this sense of accumulation. There are so many different kinds of long takes. There’s the long take that Bazin talks about, which includes several different planes of action. And I think that Tarkovsky does this either with camera movement or by having the action just layer itself. That’s very different than what Akerman does, certainly. Not to mention the kind of deeper aesthetic sensibility, which is completely different. Because, for me, Tarkovsky likes mystery – she doesn’t like mystery. Akerman is not someone who will feed off mystery or religion. So it’s not flatness per se that she likes, but it’s certainly not that kind of depth that I associate with religion and with Tarkovsky.

What lead you to Akerman and, eventually, to this book?

Well, when I was in Brazil, a friend of mine said to me (because, at the time, I was making a film), “There’s this filmmaker that you really will like.” So when I came here, I spent a lot of time going to a cinema on 100^th St. and Broadway, doing double-bills. I saw all the Ozu, Mizoguchi, and so on. There was this incredible series of films. In fact, I think Jeanne Dielman showed with Celine and Julie Go Boating. And I remember going to both and thinking I know what my aesthetic sense is. So I went to Akerman’s film and, while I’m watching it, I think to myself, “I’m going to leave.” And then, when I said I’m going to leave, that’s when things starting shifting. And then I was doing a class with Bill Simon here at NYU, and I told him, “I’m writing on Jeanne Dielman.” Afterwards, when he asked how many times I saw the film, I said, “Once.” Later on, I discovered people who had worked on the film much more seriously than me. For instance, there was a guy who actually measured the film and noticed that it’s exactly halfway into the film that all of those things start happening in the plot. I doubt that Akerman was conscious of this, but these shifts take place in a film where symmetry is so important is pretty staggering. Originally, I wasn’t going to do my dissertation only Akerman. It was also going to be on Warhol, Wenders, and Godard. And it was going to be on representations of the everyday in these four filmmakers. Eventually, a friend of mine, who is a professor at the University of Sao Paolo, said, “Forget about Wenders. He’s gone. He’s done.” It’s funny because it was on the cusp, when Wenders was starting to do terrible films. And Warhol was not available at all at the time, so it would have been very hard. He said, “Just do Akerman.” I wrote my proposal and I couldn’t give up the other filmmakers. So my book is basically this not giving up on the others that I wanted to talk about. But they helped me think; what is particular to her? And the other thing about writing this book is that it took a long time. At some point, someone asked me, “How can you keep writing?” And Akerman is someone that you can keep writing about. In fact, I finished my dissertation by decision. I had not written the last chapter at the time. 

Were you in contact with Akerman after the book was published?

Well, I sent the book to Akerman, and didn’t hear from her at all. And then, maybe a few years after that, she came to a retrospective at the Museum of Moving Image, and I called her and she said that she liked the book. She said, “Oh, yes, I received it, my English is not so good,” but she said that she liked it a lot.

When did you first meet?

Around the time that I was writing the proposal, Annette Michelson had invited me to Middleburry College watch all of Akerman’s films. I didn’t stay very long, I just went to watch the films, and that’s where I met her. If I said, “Oh, I admire your work,” her response was, “Go make a film.” She can be very direct. But she’s not someone who likes academics and she didn’t know what I was going to write so she was very skeptical and averse to the whole idea. The whole approach she had to American scholars wasn’t very positive.

In what sense?

Well, at that point, I think there was a very strong discourse about form and ideology. My problem was to bring up the formal issues in a way that I felt were not subservient to this feminist discourse, which I didn’t think was the main one to discuss. And some accused me of being a formalist.

Most academic film writing suffers precisely because it doesn’t pay attention to form.

I think so, too. My weakest work is when I try to discuss an idea without paying attention to the form. I don’t see the two as separate. Formalism for me is someone like Bordwell, who really is describing a shot; he’s so good at what he does, and it’s helpful. I’m not putting it down at all, but formalism ends there. You can’t be halfway. If you’re fully a formalist, you’re not just a formalist. There’s a way in which you need to return to the filmmaker, to what she is doing, and to be particular.  I’m an auteurist in that sense; I think that people have their signature and that it cannot be forged. And that comes back to the idea of the long take, and questioning why are there people that are weaker at using it than others. And Akerman, too, is not always good. There are points where she seems almost Mannerist.

And that brings me to A Couch in New York. How do we reconcile that film with the rest of her work?

You know, I do think that Akerman has a tremendous desire to do comedy. And it’s not always successful (Night and Day was a successful attempt; A Couch in New York wasn’t). And, sometimes, I think that maybe there’s something in her films that isn’t pre-planned to be funny, like the monologue of the woman buying the meat in Jeanne Dielman. It goes back to this idea of seriality in her films. I think the model that she has in mind, for what she wants to do and cannot do, is Lubitsch. That’s what she’s thinking. It’s a kind of farce that I think it has to do with permutation, of shifting things around. She’s trying to do that and it’s not always successful. So I would say that the direction to think about A Couch in New York in is with regard to comedy and seriality. Her last film is also an attempt to do a comedy, although it’s tremendously bad. It’s much, much worse, and she herself thinks it doesn’t work. It was an attempt to do something zany, too. It’s packed with motifs – there’s a lot of recycling there: mother and daughter, Jewish themes, but a little too crudely done.

What are your future projects?

There are lots of pieces I wrote in that book that I thought needed more development, so that’s what I’ve been working on. One of the things is re-enactment. I was going to include a section on The Rise of Louis XIV and Italian Neorealism, on this whole idea about performance and theatricality in the cinema. So that’s my interest now, and I’ve been writing a lot on Jean Rouch lately. And also this issue of talking, of monologues.

Ms. Margulies, thank you for speaking with me.

Thank you.