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.
