Certain Women

CERTAIN WOMEN (Kelly Reichardt, 2016)

Although the vignettes in CERTAIN WOMEN are fleetingly connected on a narrative level, they are strongly unified in telling the stories of small town Montana characters who want to be seen, or seen in a particular way. Their personal and professional invisibility does not extend from a lack of trying. In fact, it’s because their efforts go unacknowledged or are rebuffed that their exasperation grows. In each story writer-director Kelly Reichardt provides the space to observe these women closely and empathize with what they are thinking and feeling regardless of if they express such things in a demonstrative way.

CERTAIN WOMEN is comprised of three stories, each about a woman with thwarted desires. In the first segment Laura Wells (Laura Dern) is a lawyer with an insistent client who refuses to accept that he has no further recourse in an injury claim against his employer. Fuller (Jared Harris) has been doggedly pursuing more compensation to no avail for eight months. He also can be volatile, leaving Laura struggling to get through to a man who doesn’t want to listen. In the second part Gina Lewis (Michelle Williams) is building a new home with her husband Ryan (James Le Gros) and wants to purchase the native sandstone that Albert (Rene Auberjonois), an old man they know, has piled up on his property. Gina gets frustrated that Albert doesn’t appear to be interested in talking to her and that Ryan undermines her in the conversation. The third story focuses on a rancher (Lily Gladstone) who randomly wanders into an adult education course on school law taught by Beth Travis (Kristen Stewart). The rancher has no interest in the subject but is curious in getting to know Beth, who makes a four-hour drive each way twice a week to lead the class.

Laura wants her professional expertise to be respected and heard. Gina wishes not to be thought of like a boss by her husband and daughter and needs Albert to recognize her presence. The rancher is lonely and wants Beth to understand the affection she feels. CERTAIN WOMEN benefits from being, top to bottom, surely one of the best acted films of the year. Notice the internal conflict in Dern as she reluctantly gives a ride to Fuller and wrestles with when and how to tell him off as he voices his anger about the situation he’s in. You can see her doing the calculations of how to deal with a client who values a man’s opinion much more. Williams’ excellence comes in having a full awareness of what is happening around Gina and adapting to what she thinks others want while not showing her cards. With Stewart and Gladstone there’s the tension between someone not self-conscious and one who is hyper-aware of her feelings and tamps them down so as not to be embarrassed. So much of CERTAIN WOMEN is transmitted by watching these actresses think and interact with their environments.

Beyond the broader concerns of the characters, Reichardt is interested in capturing the small details, gestures that speak to the humanity and quirks of the individuals. At a diner Beth wipes her mouth with the napkin still wrapped around the silverware. Laura leaves half of her blouse untucked after a rush to return to work after a midday affair. The dumb, self-involved questions in the night classes provide funny punctuation to the the end of those scenes. Reichardt is so good at building the characters through these subtle movements and silence that whole existences seem to be realized in just slices of life.

Grade: A

River of Grass

RIVER OF GRASS (Kelly Reichardt, 1994)

In depicting the Everglades as populated by dumb criminals and cloddish cops, writer-director Kelly Reichardt’s first feature, RIVER OF GRASS, resembles an arty, low budget Elmore Leonard adaptation. The deadpan comedy flows from the stark difference between the reality of the situation and the bumbling duo self-misperception that they are menaces to society with the fuzz hot on their trail of lawless behavior. They envision themselves as dangerous outlaws akin to Bonnie and Clyde when they’re really more like latch-key kids who freak out believing they broke mom’s favorite vase and decide the best course of action is to run away by going to the neighborhood park before anyone gets home. They don’t have a well-reasoned plan and don’t have the means to venture far from where they started.

If her policeman father Jimmy (Dick Russell) hadn’t lost his gun, Cozy (Lisa Bowman) would likely never meet the man who changes her life. Having misplaced his weapon, Jimmy is unable to detain Lee Ray Harold (Larry Fessenden), a petty thief with the Aristotelian ideal of a southern man’s name. Cozy is a bored housewife seeking relief from the mundane grind of raising three kids and maintaining her Broward County home. From the minimal effort she puts into her domestic duties, Cozy’s restlessness doesn’t appear to be rooted in being overwhelmed so much as being disinterested in what’s expected of her as a mother and spouse.

Lee, who is pushing thirty and has been booted out of his grandmother’s house one county over in Dade, isn’t exactly a model of ambition or success either. Still, when he meets Cozy at a bar and persuades her to sneak into someone’s backyard pool, he provides more excitement than she would get otherwise on a Friday night. Lee is carrying a gun a friend of his found--ironically, it’s her father’s missing piece--and hands it to Cozy shortly before they are interrupted by the homeowner whose property they’re trespassing on. She panics and accidentally pulls the trigger. Believing they are complicit in a crime, they go on the run and plan to flee the state.

Reichardt’s style in RIVER OF GRASS favors little camera movement and functional close-ups and medium shots. The boxy frame conveys a sense of being confined or stuck, that the marshy regional landscape doesn’t give sufficient footing to allow forward movement. Thematically, the film reinforces the frustration of not being able to progress. Whether trying to sell Lee’s grandmother’s record collection or exploring payphones’ coin returns, Cozy and Lee can’t scrounge up the money to keep the tank full to wherever they might want to go or even get on the toll road. The gleaming highway ramps stretching into the sky are so close yet inaccessible. Cozy’s newfound freedom on the lam keeps her hiding in a motel room or waiting in the car while Lee attends to matters. Her embrace of being a fugitive still comes with restricted motion.

The feeling of being trapped north of Miami allows RIVER OF GRASS to capture another side of Florida than what gets splashed across tourist brochures and billboards. The palm trees and blue sky are still there but stand in contrast to the seediness.  Reichardt establishes a firm sense of place, the one where people grind out their days than visit for a dose of sun.

Grade: B+

Night Moves

NIGHT MOVES (Kelly Reichardt, 2013)

Living in secrecy seems like a tall, if not impossible, task these days. One can take steps to reduce fear and suspicion of the National Security Agency monitoring web activity and phone calls, but the people one interacts with will always be potential loose ends regardless of how much trust is placed in them. The three environmentalists plotting to blow up the Green Peter Dam in NIGHT MOVES keep low profiles and cover their tracks, yet throughout the planning each remains leery that one among them will burn them.

Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) is a sensitive sort who will stop to pick up a fallen bird’s nest and move a deer struck by a car off the side of the road. He lives in a yurt on the co-op Oregon farm where he works. To passersby this quiet, slightly built young man looks about as unthreatening as possible, but his exterior belies a radical’s intensity and dangerousness. Dena (Dakota Fanning) comes from a wealthy Connecticut family whose lifestyle she’s disavowed to support the cause. She lights up with the passion of the newly converted. Dena gladly puts up her funds to gain greater participation in Josh’s eco-terrorist activities. In this case that means providing ten thousand dollars in cash to purchase the boat named Night Moves that they intend to load with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and detonate by the concrete dam. Josh’s friend Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) lives off the grid, more or less, in a trailer in the countryside, but his reliability is up for debate when it seems he’s not as unknown in the area as thought.

Director and co-writer Kelly Reichardt wrings tension from the rampant paranoia among the trio leading up to their political act and the ratcheting up of suspense as they respond to its aftermath. Innocent questions and unknown cars pulling up to the workplace become worrisome. Headlights in the rearview mirror gain accusatory significance. Even a job application leaves a trace. Josh becomes more withdrawn and skittish to the friends and colleagues who don’t know what he’s been involved in. Neither the physical world nor one’s mind provide totally safe hiding places. NIGHT MOVES gives the sense that communicating with others is ultimately undesirable. In the film’s rare humorous spots, these environmental true believers dismiss the foolishness of those they encounter while trying to go unnoticed.

Despite their unconscionable deed, we feel somehow complicit with Josh, Dena, and Harmon by virtue of watching and following them. Reichardt identifies that abetment in the heart-stopping moment after they’re trying to leave the scene and the first turn of the key fails to start their truck. The viewer’s reaction suggests a wish for them not to be caught regardless of how we judge their actions. By getting that response Reichardt and co-writer Jonathan Raymond peer into how one can be seduced into extremism through gradual exposure when otherwise such behavior would seem out of the question to most rational people.

Eisenberg is terrifying because of the mental energy he shows Josh must expend to hold it together while denying normal human emotions. He must always be on guard and wear a mask, although he permits a small smile to himself after hearing the bomb explode in the distance. The character’s beliefs are unsettling, but the manner in which he justifies and compartmentalizes what he does in opposition with an otherwise gentle nature reveals a monster let loose from its cage. Josh fixates on making a statement than achieving results. As NIGHT MOVES shows, once that decision is arrived at, that’s a frightening state of existence.

Grade: A-