Down There

"Nope, I just didn’t get the point of this. Imagine we are the camera. For the most part, we are sitting on a chair in a darkened apartment somewhere where a woman’s voice takes some phone calls, reminisces about her past and ponders something of her future. Occasionally, for good behaviour, we are allowed to move around but usually only to go to the blinded windows so we can look, somewhat pruriently, at the neighbours in adjacent blocks. Once or twice, we even venture out to the seaside to see the people playing, but never for long and then it’s back indoors for the remainder of a month’s holiday that felt every hour of it to watch. Now the woman is acclaimed director Chantal Akerman and the venue of the building is Tel Aviv, but for most of this paceless diatribe we could be on the Falls Road in Belfast, or in Beirut, or indeed any place where troubles are or were present. This is a work of sheer, and largely uninteresting, introspection from a person we rarely see and whose dialogue is often quite difficult to comprehend as she talks about bread making and then terrorist attacks with much the same attitude. Now of course things in this part of the world have changed drastically in the intervening couple of decades since this was filmed, so you ought not to let more recent events cloud any judgements of what we are listening to, or occasionally seeing, here. This needs to be evaluated with 2006 eyes, but even then it’s tedious. With the possible exception of the late Sir Peter Ustinov, I’m not sure I’d want to sit and watch or listen to anyone indulge themselves like this, ostensibly, for the benefit of an audience and though I will admit that there is an almost claustrophobic intensity to it at times, I regret that my enthusiasm for her tolerance of carrots or Israeli salad soon evaporated. Perhaps, if you are having trouble sleeping, but otherwise, sorry - not for me."