Barbara Reichardt, Wendy and Lucy (2008); Old Joy (2006)

Kelly Reichardt is the textbook definition of an independent film auteur. Indie-film-cineastes will love her work while indie-film-haters will despise them. The two films, Wendy and Lucy (2008) and Old Joy (2006), share a common vibe- 20- or 30- something American protagonists battle life amidst the backdrop of the silent, awe-inspiring natural world of Oregon.

The plots are deceivingly simple on paper. In Old Joy, two best friends from college reunite for a weekend camping trip in the Oregon woods; in Wendy and Lucy, Wendy and her dog Lucy become stranded in a small Oregon town when her car breaks down. Both films plod along these plot lines with a slow, unaltered pace like a meandering walk in the Oregon woods.

The beauty of the film lies in the unspoken word- the silence and the expressions of the characters' faces tell their tales often without any accompanying dialogue. In the case of Old Joy, we see two main characters Mark and Kurt (played by the great musician Will Oldham), whose lives were in an earlier time, probably very similar, but who have chosen very different roads in life. Mark has chosen a more traditional path in life: in the beginning we see his pregnant wife, we see he drives a Volvo station wagon and lives in a nice middle-class house. This is juxtaposed against Kurt, a free-spirit dreamer, the type of person who you might look up to when you're in college for his rejection of authority, pursuit of principles and a naturalistic philosophy of the world. However, when viewed in the eyes of a 30-something, his outlook seems out-of-touch with reality and perhaps even irresponsible. In some ways, Old Joy mirrors the film and directorial style of classic films from the 70s: we know all these things about the characters without having been told it by the usual visual devices.

Wendy and Lucy is similarly beautiful - Michelle Williams. is probably best known as being Heath Ledger's fiance, but she shines in this role as Wendy as she never has before. Reichardt's deft camera movements captures the worried look on her face as she experiences a host of obstacles (starting with the collapse of her car, and continuing throughout the film). By far the best example of the unspoken directorial devices is the scene where she encounters a stranger in the woods where she is forced to sleep for the night. This scene coupled with the subsequent flight from the woods back to the safe zone of the neighborhood gas station, tell an entire film's worth of story with almost no dialogue.

These films, which were filmed on seemingly minuscule budgets, show that film is not dead in the 21st century, that you don't have to have hundreds of millions of dollars or telegraph every plot point to a dumbed-down audience in order to make a film that's engaging throughout.

Michael Cimino, The Deer Hunter (1978)

Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter is a classic film which seems to continue to improve in quality with age. During its long three-hour runtime, about two-thirds of the film utilize a slow pace to depict the interrelationships in the small mining town in Pennsylvania while the remaining third of the film is set in Vietnam and filled with a non-stop chaotic tension.

The town of Clairton, Pennsylvania represents a staid, gritty America with limited hope of the “good life” but which is still infinitesimally better than the horrors soldiers experienced fighting in Vietnam. The Clairton community is filled with love but everything is subtly tainted: Linda (played by Meryl Streep) is physically abused by her alcoholic father, John Cazale's character looks at his reflection in the broken window of a pristine car, Steven's (played by John Savage) wedding is tainted by an illegitimate daughter and at the climax of Steven's Russian-Orthodox wedding two drops of blood spill on his wife's wedding dress (a symbol of Nick and Steven's demise in Vietnam?). These details from the first hour of the film give the The Deer Hunter a richness and set the tone and context of the main characters progression through the rest of the film.

The flaws in these characters’ lives in the US, however, are both magnified and pales in comparison with the tragedy they experience during and after their experience in Vietnam. The Russian roulette contests which occur in the prison camp and in private gambling sessions come to symbolize the chaos of the war and the commodization of human life. People, both the Vietnamese and the American soldiers, become completely disposable, serving only to smoothly facilitate the commercial of wealthy individuals both in view and behind the scenes.

There are also a number of tremendous back-stories related to The Deer Hunter: John Cazale, a close colleague of both Deniro and Pacino, was dying of bone cancer during the filming of Deer Hunter. Michael Cimino, the director, never achieved anywhere close to the excellence of the Deer Hunter. And, The Deer Hunter’s place in history as one of the first films about the Vietnam War which highlighted both the horrors of war (a predecessor to Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, etc etc) as well as the effect on the families and friends of the soldiers back home.