Keeping It Real: The Films of Kelly Reichardt
I can get a bit skeptical about the Criterion Collection (for one thing, it includes Armageddon), but it led me to Kelly Reichardt. I spotted Certain Women in the library and picked it up to see familiar names: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, and Michelle Williams. So I checked it out, in both senses of that term, and really liked it.
Since Old Joy (which cost $300,000), Reichardt has made four features for about $2 million each, and each one has grossed about $1.2 million. This would be an unsustainable pace, but each movie has been well received, and her reputation has grown. I don’t want to get too much into the cruel economics of independent film, but Raising Arizona (released in 1987) cost about $5.5 million and made $29.2 million. (All these figures are from Wikipedia.)
First Cow does look a bit better than Old Joy, but not six times better. It opens with a ship going down a river, but it’s shot as a person on the shore would see it, not with a crane or a swooping helicopter. I love this shot; it reminds me of visiting Peaks Island in Maine and watching the enormous cruise ships come and go.
The story is quite simple: two guys strike up a friendship and begin selling baked goods. Their breakthrough comes when they decide to milk the local cow, the “first cow in the territory,” and their products improve dramatically. Their efforts attract the interest of the richest guy around, but he also owns the cow and never gave them permission to take the milk, so things get complicated.
This movie and Meek’s Cutoff are Reichardt’s “westerns.” They are hardly traditional westerns, but First Cow has a line that might have come from a Sam Peckinpah movie. “Men like us, Cookie, we have to make our own way.” It’s an unusually thematic statement in her work. The story is usually to be found on people’s faces. (Meek’s Cutoff didn’t work as well for me as Reichardt’s other films, but I may need to give it another chance.)
In Wendy and Lucy, Michelle Williams is traveling, and her sole companion is a dog. She gets arrested for stealing from a little grocery store, and we get a great scene where the manager wants to let her go, but some dope trainee wants her punished and justice done. While she’s in jail for the night, Lucy (who had been tied outside the store) is taken. So she get stuck in town looking for her dog, and then she has car trouble.
Most movies of this type would turn into something like The 400 Blows, where the protagonist just suffers more and more. Wendy certainly encounters danger, but there is also unexpected kindness. Wally Dalton, who’s been acting in films since 1974, plays a kindly security guard. Near the end he gives her some money for her trip; my guess is that it’s less than $50, but it’s enough that he says, “Don’t let her see,” referring to his girlfriend waiting in the car. Meanwhile the girlfriend obviously knows, and the dynamic is a nice look at their relationship.
Reichardt’s movies have a consistent tone. First Cow could be told as a dark story, but it has funny moments. River of Grass, her feature debut, is a twist on dozens of “Man and woman on the run” tales. I really want to spoil its ending, but I won’t. Instead I’ll linger on the scene when Cozy, who’s about 30, comes home and lays down next to her father on the grass. It’s such a natural father-daughter moment. In another scene, Lee, shirtless, describes the tattoo he wants. It sounds hideous, but it’s somehow more effective that the tattoo is not there.
Same-sex relationships are a recurring topic. I say relationships because they aren’t romantic connections, but they are more intense than friendships. The most prominent examples are Mark and Kurt in Old Joy, and “the Rancher” and Elizabeth in Certain Women. In Old Joy, Mark and Kurt are college friends. Mark has a wife and family, and Kurt has no one. They go camping together, and Kurt is clearly struggling with something. It might simply be that he wants Mark to admit he isn’t really happy, but Mark never comes close to doing so. When they part, we briefly stay with Kurt, and you just hope things improve for him.
In Certain Women, the Rancher (Lily Gladstone, the first time I saw her) develops an interest in Elizabeth (Kristen Stewart). Elizabeth is teaching an education law class, and the Rancher sits in and then eats dinner with her afterward. Imagine you’re a writer and that’s your premise; how do you end that story? With some sort of confrontation, or at least an awkward attempt at a kiss? Reichardt does something different.
There are a lot of reasons why movies tend to go big. People who teach writing push for “strong” endings. One line I’ve heard that feels true to me is that producers want a strong opening, and audiences want a strong ending. But how many times have you seen a movie go off its rails because it was trying too hard at the end?
Sometimes, we just want things to feel real. That’s what Reichardt does, and I hope she keeps doing it.
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