Films:
Wendy And Lucy
River Of Grass
Old Joy
Meek's Cutoff
Distributor:
Soda Pictures
Rating:15
Release Date:
25th August 2014 (UK)
Director:
Kelly Reichardt
Buy:Kelly Reichardt Box Set [Blu-ray]
When Night Moves is released this weekend it will be to little fanfare. There will be no comic con star appearances, no posters adorning the sides of double-decker buses and no shrieking crowds jostling for places next to the red carpet in a glitzy Leicester Square premiere. It will, in other words, hold true to the quiet, toned down nature of director Kelly Reichardt’s films to date, films that shun the bombastic in favour of understated, naturalistic stories told in hushed tones and played out in the Oregon landscape she calls home.
The Jesse Eisenberg starring eco-thriller has won plaudits on the festival circuit for its Hitchcockian suspense and looks set to nudge the 50 year old director towards the limelight she has so comfortably been working outside of ever since her 1994 debut River of Grass. In light of what is looking likely to become her ‘breakout’ film, Soda pictures are releasing a collection of three previous films for fans to reacquaint themselves with or discover for the first time.
It’s a retrospective that displays Reichardt’s ability to shine a light on the silent, telling stories about those who are marginalised or overlooked and forcing the focus upon life’s underwhelming majority. These are films which celebrate the everyday characters, often isolated, whose lives not might have neat dramatic arcs but whose experiences are real, and no less worthwhile for being so.
2006’s Old Joy goes some way in establishing the Reichardt template. It was the directors first work with fellow Oregonite, author Jonathan Raymond and the pair have since collaborated on 3 works, 2 of which feature as part of this packaged overview. Old Joy can be viewed in part as a buddy movie where neither buddy feels as close to the other as they once did.
Daniel London and musician Will (Bonnie Prince Billy) Oldham star as estranged friends seeking a reunion of sorts out in the Oregon countryside. That the plot could be successfully scribbled on the back of a fag packet is something of a misnomer with the films astute focus carved around atmospherics and often what isn’t said as oppose to what is. Thy meet as the pair are at other opposite ends of life’s spectrum – Kurt a drifting, almost hippy-like man of the world and Mark settled with a wife on the verge of having a first child. Their weekend in the wilderness serves as a reminder of how far they have drifted apart jarring against the shared knowledge of how close they once were. The character dynamics share traits with the two protagonists in Joe Swanberg’s Humpday, another independent American filmmaker carving out his own niche, but where that is all mumblecore laughs Old Joy is a quieter beast. The awkwardness between the Kurt and Mark leads to much of the tension and keeps the film above navel gazing for its compact 76 minute running time. The two being different breeds of the modern man but equally suffering when it comes to emotional awareness make it that bit more affecting when one dares to confess how much he misses the other.
The life off the beaten track is replaced for one on the road in 2008’s Wendy and Lucy, yet the sense of the solitary remains firmly up front. Again it’s a work with Raymond as the pair conjure up a tale of our times with lives affected by economic woes and a cautionary tale of those who can easily ‘slip through the cracks’.
Michelle Williams turns in a wonderfully pared down performance as Wendy, a woman on the hunt and on the road for a lucrative job with only her dog, Lucy, as companion. Before long events conspire against her and leave her scrapping around in search of food and firmly in survival mode. There are characters she encounters along the way that offer a glimpse of a life she could well end up facing. A group of homeless people provide us with an insight into how those who were previously functioning members of society can become destitute, dependent on and derided by a society more eager to ignore than engage with them. It’s a film that feels not only timely but important. Reichardt eschews the story at the top of the financial world to focus on the effect their decisions and failures have on everyday lives. Wendy becomes our eyes into a world we hope we never have to face but is often right on our doorstep regardless of circumstance. It’s a typically personal take on a wider issue that she excels in telling.
Meek’s Cutoff reunited director with star Williams to bring us her unique take on the well worn western genre. It’s also an early opportunity to witness Reichardt’s ability to harness the impressive levels of suspense on show in Night Moves.
Set in the early days of the Oregon Trail in 1845 most of the action is in the wagon crossings of the great desolate plains of mid America. Three travelling families are in search of the promised golden land of the west led by a supposed expert of the terrain, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), who promised them a short cut and a safe journey. It soon transpires that his expertise has landed them in no man’s land and at the mercy of the cruel elements.
When they meet a Native American familiar with the land offering to lead them their loyalties are tested and suspicions arise. It’s here where Reichardt slowly and expertly cranks up the tension. The families are forced into double guessing the moves of their appointed guide and his rival expert, a person of whom they have an inbuilt mistrust. At 104 minutes it’s comfortably the longest of the three films in the collection and arguably her most conventional, offering a familiar, if skewed, setting and following the closest she comes to a narrative arc.
Viewed individually the films are impressive, as a whole they mark out a director of true vision. Her austere stories and characters are gripping American works that should sit comfortably alongside more celebrated independent filmmakers of her generation. Above all they are stories about people, those we might recognise, those we may misunderstand and the motivations that lead them to act in the way they do. It’s a collection worthy of discovery, whose merits lie in the quietness and deserve to be shouted about.
★★★★
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