Originally published in Cineaste Vol. 50 no. 2, Spring 2025
Films can be hard to watch because they are long and slow, challenging viewers to spend time with their distended temporalities and ponderous narratives. Strohl tackles this obstacle by weighing into the “debate” around whether Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai de commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) is boring or not. Citing Akerman herself as well as other scholars and critics writing about the film, he takes it upon himself to painstakingly explain why it isn’t boring. His conclusion, that the onus is on the viewer to look at the details, is hardly revelatory. His discussion of slow cinema and the distinctive form of engagement that
it demands tends to short-circuit the range of experiences that directors as diverse as James Benning and Claire Denis create with their slow movies. Comparing slow cinema watching to meditation may help as an analogy but does disservice to filmmakers who are not only unsettling our experience of time, but also offering us aesthetic experiences that are full, not empty.
