Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

I watched this film forty years after it was made, in a theater in downtown New York City that plays only art films. Still, I was impressed by the audience's rapt attention over the 3 and 1/2 hours of the film. I too was sitting fascinated the entire time. We seemed to understand that a part of the experience of watching it was familiarizing ourselves with the details of the dignified Jeanne's existence. Every piece of furniture in her apartment is viewed over and over, and her daily routine is so minutely reviewed that it is imprinted in the mind; so, any tiny deviation jumps out as a sinister departure portending -- what? You wait worriedly to find out what it could mean. Mostly you feel a great sadness for someone who is clearly desperate to make ends meet financially, so she and her child will be okay. You see a perfectionist at work as she proceeds through the day, as though the great care she is taking shining and folding and washing will somehow result in safety for her and the child. There is a spirituality in this, and it begins to take hold of you, and you fervently hope for her survival.

This movie is deliberately different, all in the service of telling us something we didn't know.

Movies are about movies. The borrow plot, character, lighting, sound editing and camera angles from what went before. Since "Birth of a Nation" introduced close-ups, cross cutting and cutaways in 1915 everyone has adopted that vocabulary for story telling. This movie throws all that out: The camera is fixed and stares at a scene for a very long time. Scenes had to be performed all the way through when they were filmed, because each was done in a single shot.

Movies use telescoping of time to compress the happenings of a long period into two hours. This movie tries to avoid that, depicting mundane tasks in their entirety. We watch Jeanne Dielman prepare a meatloaf, step by step, wash the dishes (her back is to us!), smooth the bed, or go shopping.

Movie use facial expressions to express feelings. Spoiler alert: When we get strong facial expressions from Jeanne Dielman there is a very good reason. And that only happens once in a three-hour, 21 minute film.

Movies use broad strokes to carry the audience along. Spiderman supplements explosions with 3D to keep me occupied. By contrast, this film uses subtle changes. You must watch closely to see what happens.

Most movies come to you. This movie requires you go to it. If there is dullness it is among those viewers who think that because they don't get something it's not there to get. There is plenty here but instead of being served to you it has to be harvested. And it is very fresh.

The director was only 24 years old when this film was released and that's cool but obviously she lacked the skills of making a really good film. She made it easy for herself. The camera should not move, just stand there. This does not demand a skilled cinematographer. The actors should not talk, just do stuff like cooking food and reading. This does not demand good actors. It is not demanding to write the script either.

But we don't understand the film, right? If we understood it, we would acknowledge its greatness, right? No. We fully understand that the message the director wants to convey is that many women's lives suck and that they are fed up with society, life and being housewives and that men are to blame. They become depressed and crazy because of this. We do understand this. However, that political message in itself is not enough for a great movie.

How could this be ranked as number one on the Sight & Sound poll? It is sad. She was so young when she directed this film and you can tell by watching it! It is absolutely not the greatest film in the world. It is more like a typical film one would do if you lacked the resources to do something greater.

There are some clichés in the movie as well.

I give the film a 2-rating because I acknowledge some qualities. For example, the movie became pretty creepy in the end.

Art house at its most annoying. This could be a novel idea, but at 200 minutes it becomes an endurance more than cinematic nourishment. Despite topping the recent Sight and Sound list, I am puzzled by its sudden jump to the #1 spot overlapping several films, Jeanne Dielman has nothing educational about it. You don't even learn that much about Jeanne herself. This will teach you nothing about cinema as an art form besides your personal tolerance for boredom. For me, and I imagine the majority of watchers, that was at the end of the first day.

It's tough to express my feelings without feeling like an anti-snob, because I do think the opinion of critics is losing harmony with the moviegoing public and that is an indictment, people who've dedicated their lives to films being disregarded because they didn't like the corpo nostalgia slunk like Mario or FNAF, is more annoying than people who swear by Rotten Tomatoes like it's the bible. I think what experts in the film world see to be the paramount examples of the medium is an important voice and should be maintained. But I'm not a zombie, I have a mind on its wavelength and I know my synapses well enough by this point to know when something isn't clicking. There was no point during this watchalong that all the pieces fit together, no eureka moment, because once you pick up on the rudimentary structure, you've caught onto Ackerman's gambit, even as quickly as ten minutes. You know what the point is, and even if that means the ultimate climax is still a swerve narratively, there had to be more compelling or at least cinematically-inspired methods to get there. If this has to be 200 minutes then fine - but does the camera have to be perfectly static all the time? Does every line reading from the characters have to sound like they've been awake sixty hours and have strepsils stuck in their throat? I do admire in parts how committed this whole project was to opposing convention, being so anti-movie that even when you get your lickety-split 70s nude shot, it means nothing because it's just as plain and realist as everything else. Boring films exist in abundance, and it's no crime if you make one incidentally and audience members can't feel too duped if it seems like the filmmakers accidentally made a cure to insomnia. But when you're as driven as Jeanne Dielman is in being dull, purpose be damned, it's hard to come with a pragmatic attitude besides that the film hates you. If I paid money or had traveled outside my bedroom comfort to see this, I may have just hated it back.

Fascinating, powerful, hyper-controlled, super-subtle study of woman slowly coming unglued. Uses its 3 hour+ running time to put you inside the stultifying boredom and ennui of her life, and lets you see the tiny changes in her repetitive days that are powerful and meaningful barometers of the titanic emotions going on behind her blank masque. Not easy or 'fun' to watch. By definition (and intention?) it gets slow to the point of boredom at times. (Indeed NY Times critic Vincent Canby, who loved the film, jokingly warned that watching it 'could be fatal' if one was in the wrong mood.) But everything interconnects in an amazingly thought-out way. Every bit of dialogue (of which there's almost none) leaves a clue, or at least a trace. Fascinating camera-work; almost always static images. with every cut at 90 degree angles. And again, when that rule is broken there are specific thematic and storytelling reasons. A challenging, 'difficult' film, but one not to be missed.