following Kelly Reichardt

I saw a great movie the other night.  It’s called WENDY AND LUCY, and I can’t get it out of my head.  I wish I could.  Wendy, the girl, and Lucy, her dog, are en route to Alaska from Indiana, and encounter some difficulties when they stop to sleep in their car in a Walgreen’s parking lot in Oregon.  We hang with them for the few days they’re in town, and then, eighty minutes after the movie starts, Wendy and Lucy are family.  My family.  For life.

I am very, very ambivalent about this.

So what does this have to do with place?  Well, first, because when it comes to portraying place, film should have a boost over other art forms by its very nature.  Am I right?  I mean, what other medium can visually represent an actual place and allow a story to unfold there over time?  The camera eye narrates, unmediated by language, and the result is a visual immediacy that can create the illusion of being smack in the middle of a place.

But, in my experience, this rarely happens.  In most movies, place is window dressing.

In Kelly Reichardt’s films, place is critical.  Both this film and the one that preceded it, OLD JOY, are set in Oregon.  OLD JOY takes place mostly in the deep green of an old forest; WENDY AND LUCY in an Oregon lumber town, down on its heels now that the mill has closed down.  But don’t confuse these with nature films.  They are neither didactic nor celebratory.  They are – clear-eyed, I’d have to say.  Deeply unsentimental.  Deeply odd.  Deeply compassionate.

Devastatingly beautiful.

I won’t argue that what happens in these films (and, I’ll be honest, very little does) couldn’t happen anywhere else.  What I suggest is that the director makes you feel that it is happening here, and now, and every element and every detail pertains to that.  There’s an odd combination of inevitability and wide-open freedom in Reichardt’s writing and directing that makes both movies feel unscripted, unforced, and absolutely real.  The cinematography is gorgeous, deliberate, and rarely heavy-handed, creating a lexicon of images that accrue meaning throughout each film.  The camera lingers equally on visage and backdrop, until the separation between the two seems to fall away.

The pace of these movies will offend plenty of people.  The characters aren’t conventionally appealing (although God knows and the rest of the world is coming to find out that Michelle Williams, as Wendy, is absolutely incandescent).  The limited dialogue and use of natural light may deter some viewers.

When people say something is “good for your soul”, they usually mean it’s uplifting; causes you to take heart.  These movies aren’t that.

Go see them anyway.  They’re good for your soul in a way that’s even better, maybe.

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