The Quiet Menace of Kelly Reichardt’s Feminist Westerns

I think the eco-terrorist film "Night Moves" captured the spirit of fervent yet fatuous young people, as well as the ambiance of the Pacific Northwest.

Highly recommended. With a couple of tweaks, and passes through the word processor it would have been a classic.

Reichardt is an outstanding director. Yet she like many of her contemporaries could benefit from a benevolent studio system flush with capital, artisans, and executives with taste. Hence, indie productions often fail to make an indelible impression in memory.

I am always amazed by the degree of commitment and sacrifice required of an artist.

Congratulations to Kelly Reichardt for persisting and surviving as a true independent in our hyper-commercialized movie industry.

Thanks to Ms. Gregory for articulating so skillfully what I like so much about this very unusual filmmaker's work. I've watched everything but "Certain Women," and now I'll make sure to see that, too!

"Reichardt, who is 52, has made a career of silence and suggestion — of casting an attentive but unobtrusive gaze on people who can never quite seem to win." Fascinating article, full of brilliant insights. I had seen "Meek's Cutoff" and "Wendy and Lucy" but couldn't really pin them down until this excellent article explained some philosophical and cinematic perspectives, particularly the role Reichardt assigns the camera, as performing an "unobtrusive gaze," as if it did not create the world it is filming but somehow came upon it and is passively waiting for something to happen. This makes the silences and empty spaces and missed lines part of the process, rather then felt as a miscalculation by a spectator used to action films that unfold relentlessly without self-reflection. I have to see all her films now. I'm not going to Google it.

A few quotes from Bresson's Notes on Cinematography seem appropriate:

1) The faculty of using my resources well diminishes when their number grows.
2) (on models) The thing that matters is not what they show me but what they
hide from me, and above all, what they do not suspect is in them.
3) Cinematography is a writing with images in movement and with sounds.
4) Respect man's nature without wishing it more palpable than it is.
5) To set up a film is to bind persons to each other and to objects by looks.
6) The mixture of true and false yields falsity (photographed theater or cinema). The false when it is homogeneous can yield truth (theater).
7) The noises must become music.
8) A sigh, a silence, a word... a hand, the whole of your
model, his face, in repose, in movement ... an immense view, a restricted space...Each thing exactly in its place: your only resources.
9) Rhythmic value of a noise.
Noise of a door opening and shutting, a noise of footsteps, etc., for the
sake of rhythm.
10) Reorganize the unorganized noises (what you think you hear is not what you hear) ....Play them back one by one in silence and adjust the blend.
11) When a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it. The ear goes more towards the within, the eye towards the outer.
12) The future of cinematography belongs to a new race of young solitaries who will shoot films by putting their last cent into it and not let themselves be taken in by the .. routines of the trade.

Oh, such sweet words. I can hardly contain my pleasure. Thank you.

Kelly does fantastic work. It really does resonate with me as a born Westerner--there's a pervasive melancholy out here that is nonetheless elusive, and she captures it gracefully. Another like-minded filmmaker I hope to see produce more features is Braden King. He has a similar interest in the land as character, and music/sound as well.

I loved, loved loved reading this! As much as seeing one of Reichardt's, I also love to read another work of Alice Gregory's! More, more, more! Thanks.

I've seen every one of her films. Old Joy is my favorite. Sound and music are key elements of every film. We just are not always conscious of their effects. I appreciate her attention to that.

I admire Reichardt's films. The precision of her soundscapes brings to mind Bela Tarr, Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, and Bruno Dumont. The DVD of the latter's film, Hors Satan, contains an instructive documentary, "The Spider's Footsteps," about sound mixing. Through the minutiae of image and sound, Reichardt shows what we usually brush past in life -- its interstices, its feeling.

maybe "menace", in the title of this fine piece, isn't quite the right word. Ms. Reichardt's intense care for her films and their characters leads the viewer to care for them too. If there's menace, it is that you can feel yourself coming to care far more than is comfortable. But isn't that the human condition?

"It’s the low-grade but unrelenting sense of hazard that is a woman’s experience of merely moving through the world, an anxiety so quiet and constant it can be confused for nothing more than atmosphere."

That pretty much sums it up. It is why I don't walk alone at night even though I would love late exercise outside, why I don't go into a bar by myself, why I am hyper-vigilant going to the parking garage by myself at night, for a few examples. I always envied the freedom men have to move about without constantly calculating risk.

What an absolute joy to read. Thank you, Ms. Gregory.

I really like this.

All of it.

What a beautifully written profile of a worthy subject.

There is an authentic quality here. She is so busy and stressed that she can't take the time to unwrap her napkin. Now I have to find out what brought her here and where she is going. I look forward to seeing the whole film.

I have read in several reviews now that there are three stories in this film: Laura Dern's attorney; Michelle Williams' wife/mother/house builder and in this essay “a recent law-school graduate (Kristen Stewart) who becomes the object of fixation for a reclusive female ranch hand". I must have missed something. I thought the third story was about Lily Gladstone’s Jamie, a young, beautiful American Indian woman who is heartbreakingly courageous, romantic, and wide-eyed moral in her actions. The layers of lonely and vulnerable Ms. Gladstone presents are breath stopping in their beauty. I know Ms. Stewart is a star, and may represent someone like Jamie who made it out of a pre-ordained existence; but to me, it is Ms. Gladstone’s character and performance that provided me the context for the entire piece. Is a woman’s loneliness different than a man’s – dunno. But what I took from this wonderful collection of stories is a deeper appreciation of the specific loneliness women might confront in community. I have not been able to get this out of my mind and heart for several days. It is a quiet explosion of a film; wonderfully satisfying.

She wipes her mouth without unwrapping the napkin.This woman is under stress.

Am I naive... but do all things based on women and women's perspectives have to be labeled "feminist"?
Why can't they just be judged on their merit and not be put in a labeled box?
And can I help it if men's stories just aren't interesting to me?
If the work is strong and speaks to me, who cares who makes it,

Love her work. Old Joy was so precisely true, life distilled. Meek's Cutoff was quietly breathtaking. I'm too anxious and cowardly to watch Wendy and Lucy... Very much looking forward to Certain Women. Please continue Ms. Reichardt, with your amazing works of art.