![]() ![]() If anything, it’s the male characters who reach finality-the female ones keep moving forward to the next client, project, and day on the farm. Every single character, even the minor ones, feel like they exist before they come into frame and keep going long after. These are normal people, like you and me, and it’s that relatability that makes Reichardt’s work here so powerful. Whether it’s a disgruntled client who sees no way out of his predicament, a man who closes a chapter in his life when he parts with his sandstone, or the daily grind of working on a farm. They go out to eat and strike up a friendship and Beth becomes the break from the norm that Jamie needs.Įvery one of these stories has a sense of inevitability, like that river moving through the heartland. And then she stumbles into a class on school law being taught by a woman named Beth ( Kristen Stewart). It’s just an existence in which not much changes to day to day. Her only friends seems to be the adorable dog who runs alongside her tractor, although Jamie’s life is not presented as a miserable one. Lily Gladstone stars as Jamie, a ranch hand living on her own on an isolated farm. ![]() The gender dynamics here are crucial to understanding the scene as Albert will only speak to Ryan, making Gina more aggravated.įinally, there’s the third story of “Certain Women,” which could stand alone as one of my favorite short films in years. Albert hesitates at first, melancholic over his original plans to use it for something that never happened. On the way home, they stop off at the house of an elderly man named Albert ( Rene Auberjonois), from whom they want to buy a pile of sandstone. ![]() Gina, Ryan and their daughter are camping on the site, next to a river, where their home will be built. So when we see them working on a house they’re building from the ground up, we know the foundation is a little weak. It looks like everything is relatively fine, but Ryan is cheating. The effect of that earlier scene is subtle but crucial because we bring baggage to this second story by virtue of the fact that we know that this isn’t a healthy marriage. Reichardt is subtly laying thematic foundations about the ways in which people interact with each other-female attorneys and male clients, husbands and wives, teachers and students.Īfter Fuller does something drastic that serves as the only real “action” of “Certain Women,” we transition to the story of Gina Lewis ( Michelle Williams), wife to Ryan, the man we met earlier getting dressed with Laura. She takes him to a male colleague in a neighboring city, who tells him the exact same thing, but he listens this time. It turned out to not be nearly enough money but it derailed any future legal action. She returns to her office to find her most annoying client, a man named Fuller ( Jared Harris), who won’t take her legal advice that he doesn’t have a disability case against his former employer because he took money from them after the accident. The first of three barely interlocking stories opens with a lawyer named Laura Wells ( Laura Dern) on her lunchtime affair with a married man named Ryan ( James Le Gros). ![]() Reichardt returns to images of life going past this mountain town-trains, freeways in the distance, a flowing river-to remind us of both the ordinary nature of these stories and to connect them to each other and even our lives. We will hear that train again, blaring its horn in the background of these characters’ lives, both connecting them in our subconscious and serving thematic purpose. “Certain Women” opens with a train moving slowly through the heartland of Montana, honking its horn occasionally along the way. ![]()
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