I am back at Pearl's. She is getting over a cold that has left her with a really bad cough. I am taking all precautions to prevent myself getting sick, not only because we can't have the caregiver getting sick, but also because I just plain hate getting sick. Thus, even though I am already a major-league handwasher, tonight I am positively OCD about it. Haven't had a cold or flu since about Spring 2016, and before that sometime in 2014, and I aim to keep it that way. Stay home if you are sick, and if you are well, wash your hands a lot, and whatever you do - don't rub your eyes. In this way, you too will avoid a lot of colds, as they are transmitted more by touch than by air.
Alrighty then. Tonight's movie was "Certain Women" (2016), on Criterion and directed by Kelly Reichardt. You might recall that I went on a mini-binge of her movies (she only has nine) back in Spring 2016 (probably around the last time I got sick, lol), after The Professor showed us "Meek's Cutoff", Reichardt's take on the Western. We saw it as part of the "Tarkovsky Plus" retrospective at CSUN at that time. Professor Tim thought that Reichart's excellent use of natural scenery and slow, steady camera work showed a Tarkovskian influence, and that is quite possible. Having seen five of her nine movies by now, she is surely the cinematic master of the American Northwest. I don't know, really, that any other filmmaker has tackled the landscapes of states like Montana and Oregon over and over again, and made them so integral to their stories, so she may have that territory all to herself, but a.n.y - how.......
She is a very skilled filmmaker, but "Certain Women" is not one of her best films. First of all, to appreciate Kelly Reichardt, you have to be ready to Go Slow. Tarkovsky was the King Of Slow, and he was also the Slowest Poet. His films resonate with meaning, but at least with the Tarkmeister, things happen in his films.
It has become the case, however, with his proteges, that quite often Nothing Happens in their films. Sometimes this happens because the director can't write. Reichardt can write, though she chooses to write minimally. There is very little plot in her films. Mostly, there is observation. We the audience merely observe the characters of a Reichardt film, living their lives. There really isn't much story, and almost no plot at all.
What she is showing us, over and over in every film, is how hard it is for folks to live in places like Montana, where it is freezing cold, and where the small towns look nearly abandoned, and where the landscape of vast prairies and enormous mountain ranges absolutely overwhelms the human spirit.
The Nature of these places is too powerful to be lived in with any degree of success.....
For those who are Spiritual, that is.
The Down-To-Earth, the Pragmatic and the Hardy might find a place for themselves in the frozen and barren wastelands of Montana, but those with a longing of Spirit will not. They will only feel that longing amplified. It's not the small-townness, which can be found in any American state. It is rather the remoteness, and the relentless power of nature. It seems a very depressing place.
That's what her movies are about. I wouldn't live in Montana if you paid me a million bucks, but her protagonists are stuck there. In "Certain Women", the film is split into three stories, told in three vignettes that are supposed to overlap but really do not.
Laura Dern is a lawyer in a fairly big town. A client of hers goes postal after losing a worker's comp lawsuit. She becomes a hostage in his standoff with the police.
Michelle Phillips is a Type A woman, married to slacker James LeGros (who is great at playing slackers, haha). She really doesn't like living in the middle of nowhere, but is trying to build her dreamhouse there, out of local sandstone. Now really, there is much less happening than what I have written implies. I mean, the Sandstone Aspect is the biggest deal of the Michelle Williams part of the movie. Of all the Nothing Happens threads, this second part of the film is the Nothing Happeningest.
The best of the three stories is the last one, featuring Kristen Stewart as a lawyer from what passes for a city in Montana. As part of her job, she has to drive four hours across dangerous highways covered in black ice, to teach something called "School Law", so that local schoolteachers in the boondocks will know the protocols of things like expelling a student.
Who would make a movie with such a storyline?
Good Lord, you'all.
But because Kelly Reichardt is such a talented filmmaker, she can pull it off. She can present to you the most tedious things, but because she is so good with photography, color and pacing, and so adept with her actors, she can keep you engaged, when - with any lesser filmmaker - you'd be saying "get me outta here".
So anyhow, Kristen Stewart is driving for hours to teach a ridiculous night class to a handful of local schoolteachers in the boondocks. And a local girl happens to be driving down the the center of town one night, and she sees what is going on. And because a night class is a big deal in this town, she decides to sit in, though she is not part of the program.
She is a Native American girl who is isolated even beyond all the other characters in the movie. She works on a horse ranch, away from even the small town, and the horses and the snowy mountains are all she has for company. So when she sits in on this night class, and meets the lawyer Kristen Stewart, her life takes an exciting jump. She finally has a friend.
It is the performance of this actress, Lily Gladstone, that steals the movie and keeps it from falling into the Art House abyss. Her portrayal of a solitary yet hopeful young Indian woman, cheerful and humble yet right on the verge of a breakdown, is so close to what the reality must be for such a person in those circumstances that it is unnerving to watch. One lengthy scene is particularly heartbreaking, as she drives in her truck away from a meeting with Stewart. I will tell you no more than that. It is a display of restrained hopelessness that is as emotionally devastating as anything you will ever see. She should get an Oscar nomination for her portrayal, and she is by far the best thing about "Certain Women".
I give the movie a reluctant Thumbs Up. It's good, but only if you are a Kelly Rechardt fan, and even then she can do much better than this. But see it mainly for the Kristen Stewart/Lily Goldstone thread, and......
Don't move to Montana.
That seems to be the real message.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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