In this context it is misleading to talk merely about Akerman’s mise en scène in spite of her close attention to framing, because from that vantage point, many of her movies look rather anemic. It’s her découpage that matters — that is, not only what happens in her shots but what happens between them, among them, across them, and through them. (The same thing applies to practically all of the most important filmmakers in the history of movies: Carl Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein, Alfred Hitchcock, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, Jean Renoir, and Orson Welles may be known to us as master directors, but their art is ultimately the art of découpage rather than simply mise en scène.) Consequently, comparing Akerman to someone like Woody Allen, Susan Seidelman, Paul Mazursky, or Steven Soderbergh on the level of “mise en scène” is about as meaningless as comparing a microscope to a microwave, or a minimalist artist to an entertainer.
JonathanRosenbaum.com » Blog Archive » Romance of the Ordinary [on Chantal Akerman]
Posted 1 year ago
