Cinephiles often talk about the 1970s being the decade of Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, or even Hal Ashby. But Chantal Akerman deserves equal consideration—and this is based, at this point, on seeing only two of her movies from that period: Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and News from Home.
Both are audacious, brilliant reinventions of what a movie can be—the actual form it can take. With News from Home, Akerman frames her own story of leaving her family in Brussels to live in New York City not as a diary, exactly, or travelogue, precisely, but something all its own. Over a series of extended, mostly static shots of various New York street scenes circa 1976, Akerman reads the text of letters she received from her mother. These include bits of familial scuttlebutt, expressions of love and concern, and passive-aggressive hints that she would really appreciate it if Chantal would just come home. (“We’re not angry you left without a word,” one early letter claims.)
That may sound simple enough, but the execution and effects are startling, as long as you can sit still for them. The New York that Akerman chooses to present is a surprisingly quiet and unpopulated one, mostly defined by dark, empty streets and impassive rows of warehouses. There are a few crowded avenues and packed subway cars, but mostly we see lone figures presented in carefully composed portraits: a woman on a chair beneath a street lamp; a man crossing a parking lot; a pizza-maker, framed by the glow of his shop’s window, sliding a pie in the oven, the reflecting glow of a neon sign putting a red stamp on his head. There’s a contrast to this lonely imagery and the warmth of the letters we hear. If this is Akerman’s experience of the city, why wouldn’t she want to return home?
That’s one element of drama at play in the documentary, but there are others. When passersby notice the camera filming them and give it a suspicious glance, we wonder: How will they react? What will they do? Then there is the drama that arises purely from the patient formalism Akerman employs, the slow cinema in which the movie marinates. One fixed shot from inside a subway car focuses on the window in the door. As we pass through the dark tunnel, the faint reflection of a woman, standing somewhere in the car, can be seen in the window. But when we come into the bright station, her image gets washed out and she disappears. Who was she? Will she return? When the train starts up again and we plunge into darkness, it’s something of a relief to see she’s still there. As the sequence unfolds in real time, from one station to the next, the drama continues.
News from Home concludes with one of its longest held shots, another fixed vantage point, this time from a boat as it pulls away from the tip of Manhattan. No hints have been given in the letters we’ve heard, but you can’t help but read it as a gesture of departure. Perhaps it’s emblematic of Akerman returning to Brussels, perhaps not. But one thing’s for sure: the movie is headed home.
