The case FOR Jeanne Dielman being the greatest film of all time

The greatest film ever made? Laurels like these come with their own anxiety of influence. Taking pole position in 2022’s decade-awaited Sight & Sound top 100 films list, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman – a 3-hour ‘structural’ film centered on the habitual rituals of everyday, gendered labour – was an unexpected ‘winner’ (whatever that means). Between sex work and schnitzel, the boys unpack precisely how Akerman felt her way through the formal problems and potentials of an avant-garde cinema that was still – resolutely – a cinema of narrative; even as she found daring ways to undermine it. Essential viewing.