Directed by Kelly Reichardt Vision. Laura Dern, Michelle Williams and Kristen Stewart are beautifully attuned to Meek’s Cutoff director Kelly. A review of Kelly Reichardt's 'Certain Women,' starring Michelle Williams, Laura Dern and Kristen Stewart.Superficially empty soundscapes are layered so intricately with the rustle of nature, the brooding of weather and the breathing of preoccupied people that her films come to seem positively noisy to a sympathetic ear. So it is in the marvelous “Certain Women,” where the storytelling has a similarly latent impact. Separating the spare narratives of several disparate Montana women . Crafted with Reichardt’s customary calico- textured beauty and expertly performed by such hand- picked ensemble players as Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams and Laura Dern, this unapologetically open- ended slow burn probably won’t convert many viewers to Reichardt’s softly- softly sensibility, but it’s among her richest, most refined works. Like a number of Reichardt’s previous films, “Certain Women” has its roots in the short- story format . Her literary inspiration this time is Montana- based author Maile Meloy, with Reichardt’s elegantly apportioned script drawn from her stories “Tome,” “Native Sandstone” and “Travis B.” The director’s chosen title, however, is at once calculatedly vague and mournfully ironic. Read one way, “Certain Women” implies a kind of unnamed randomness to Reichardt’s chosen female subjects, as if any number of adjacent women’s lives might have been equally worthy of the film’s attention. Read another, it’s perhaps a gentle joke at the expense of characters for whom certainty is in achingly short supply: It’s hardly a spoiler to say that none of the pic’s delicate strands hinges on anything like a drastic dramatic decision. Viewers accustomed to the knotty “Short Cuts” school of multiple short- story adaptation may take a while to acclimatize to the film’s patient, clean- edged structure, which opts neither for explicit chaptering nor for intricate braiding of the three stories in question. Revelation- concerned narrative splicing has become such a familiar feature of the U. S. If Paul Haggis’s “Crash” literalized the idea of storytelling as automotive collision, “Certain Women” prefers to let its vehicles pass each other with an acknowledging wave . The first story centers on small- town lawyer Laura (Dern), introduced in the postcoital stages of an afternoon tryst with a married man . Focus shifts to a legal case that has become something of a thorn in her side, as construction laborer Fuller (Jared Harris, devastatingly ragged) obstinately pursues an injury claim that a legal technicality prevents him from winning. Taking little heed of her counsel . Fatigued by tetchy family life, she pours her efforts into constructing a symbol of idealized domestic unity: a. Yet this ostensibly noble goal entails a degree of selfish manipulation, as she and Ryan press on doddery family friend (Albert) to sell them the reserve of vintage sandstone on his property. Drily satirizing the opportunistic exploitation of tradition in the American heartland, Gina’s story is the most coolly oblique of the three. What follows is the most bittersweetly open- hearted, as a nameless Native American horse rancher (the revelatory Lily Gladstone) aimlessly seeks a personal connection at an adult education center. Stumbling by chance into a class on educational law for teachers, she develops an intense but innocent fascination with its young tutor, Beth (Stewart), a socially awkward law graduate who lives many towns over. The two develop a mutually bemused rapport over post- class diner meals, though when Beth abruptly quits the job, the terms of their new, ambiguously platonic romance become harder to parse. There are no tidily concrete thematic ties to be found between these slender, piquant slices of life, though all touch on the generalities of human alienation and solitude for which E. M. Forster issued the poetic prescription to “only connect.” As with Reichardt’s more streamlined miniatures, regional detail accounts for much of the film’s lingering resonance, as her characters are molded by (and, in some cases, rail against) the landscape they inhabit. All the women here, however put- upon, are independent in ways that defy their staid surroundings. Though this is arguably the most illustrious ensemble Reichardt has ever had to hand, the pic’s performance style is as casually. There’s complete onscreen parity, for example, between a relative newcomer like Gladstone and a megawatt star like Stewart . Playing most recognizably to a star persona is Dern, if only because said persona has been built on the kind of creased, empathetic decency that makes her a Reichardt natural. Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (Premieres), Jan. Executive producers, Todd Haynes, Larry Fessenden, Christopher Carroll, Nathan Kelly. Crew. Directed, written, edited by Kelly Reichardt, adapted from the short stories . Camera (color, 1. Christopher Blauvelt; music, Jeff Grace; production designer, Anthony Gasparro; art director, Kat Uhlmansiek; set decorator, Pamela Day; costume designer, April Napier; sound, Paul H. Maritsas; sound editors, Casey Langfelder, Doug Winningham; sound designer/re- recording mixer, Kent Sparling; visual effects supervisor, Chris Connolly; stunt coordinator, Cooper Taylor; assistant director, Christopher Carroll; casting, Mark Bennett, Gayle Keller. With. Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Lily Gladstone, Kristen Stewart, James Le Gros, Jared Harris, Rene Auberjonois, Sara Rodier. Certain Women Movie Review & Film Summary (2. A drama teacher once told me that great drama is about the most important day in the life of the protagonist. Even if it was a generalization designed to teach a student how to bring gravity to a performance, it. Great storytellers can make great drama from seemingly average days in their character. Working with the most high- profile cast she has to date, Reichardt delivers a multi- faceted character study, a sketch of intersecting lives in a small Montana town. It is purposefully slow, a film meant to be lived in and considered carefully when it.
Almost none of it feels as . We will hear that train again, blaring its horn in the background of these characters. Reichardt returns to images of life going past this mountain town. She returns to her office to find her most annoying client, a man named Fuller (Jared Harris), who won. It turned out to not be nearly enough money but it derailed any future legal action. She takes him to a male colleague in a neighboring city, who tells him the exact same thing, but he listens this time. Reichardt is subtly laying thematic foundations about the ways in which people interact with each other. After Fuller does something drastic that serves as the only real . 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. It looks like everything is relatively fine, but Ryan is cheating. So when we see them working on a house they. 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. Albert hesitates at first, melancholic over his original plans to use it for something that never happened. The gender dynamics here are crucial to understanding the scene as Albert will only speak to Ryan, making Gina more aggravated. Lily Gladstone stars as Jamie, a ranch hand living on her own on an isolated farm. Her only friends seems to be the adorable dog who runs alongside her tractor, although Jamie. And then she stumbles into a class on school law being taught by a woman named Beth (Kristen Stewart). They go out to eat and strike up a friendship and Beth becomes the break from the norm that Jamie needs. Every one of these stories has a sense of inevitability, like that river moving through the heartland. These are normal people, like you and me, and it. Every single character, even the minor ones, feel like they exist before they come into frame and keep going long after. Williams, a regular Reichardt collaborator, gets the least satisfying of the three narratives, but the final 4. Stewart, more than makes up for it. We see so many films in which characters are constantly expressing exactly what they think and feel in ways that no one does in the real world. Kelly Reichardt knows that so much can be said with silence. It can even be the subject of great drama.
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