I can understand how the Sight & Sound Poll might have ranked this film on the Top of their list. Given the rules, I can see how many critics would have this film in their Top Ten. After all, every list needs an outlier, a film to cleanse the palette amongst the many genre films synonymous with this list, and JD may rise to the top in that category. When the votes are counted, this film may well be included in the majority of the ballots.

It's interesting in that JD is only one of two or three film on the list not categorized as ENTERTAINMENT, in its broadest sense. It is a philosophical piece, an art piece through and through, and it is presented very well, focusing on the external life of a woman, a mother, a widow, a prostitute, through a series of vignettes and makes no attempt to capture the internal life of the main character . In the age of social media, this film is an antidote to the INSTAGRAM/TIKTOK/FACEBOOK mindset of today. After viewing JD, I felt not so bad, in comparison, about my own life, even optimistic. In fact, I felt a sort of kinship with her watching her complete the most mundane tasks of daily living without a need for heightened emotion or personal drama. JD, of course, is not the greatest film ever made, but it may certainly be the best example of why films, like people, should not be ranked as if they were always in competition. This film, and many others like it, stands alone. (if that makes any sense).

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.

Every ten years, Sight & Sound announces the list of the greatest films ever made, and this little-known film just usurped "Citizen Kane" and "Vertigo" in the #1 position. The Criterion Channel is showing it, so naturally I felt a desire to see this purported masterpiece. Directed by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, it runs a marathon 3 hours and 21 minutes and focuses on the mundane existence of a middle-aged single mother's daily routine over the course of three days. The wrinkle is that she is a prostitute in the afternoons while her teenaged son is at school. Delphine Seyrig plays the disaffected woman in a minimalist fashion until she starts to unravel in very subtle moments during the second half of the film. Yes, I watched the whole movie, and perhaps because I'm not an arthouse cineaste, I found it excruciating to watch the minutiae of this woman's carefully coordinated life and probably couldn't appreciate the quiet desperation she is undergoing. How this film came out of nowhere to top the S&S list will be fodder for debate among pretentious cinema snobs for the next decade. Personally I don't get it.