Wendy and Lucy

My next post was going to be my top twenty of 2008, but then I discovered that Kelly Reichardt's new minimalist film Wendy and Lucy opened in Boston for one week, and I decided that I should try to see as many of last year's highly acclaimed films as possible before I made any list. This film can, at least in terms of plot, be compared to Sean Penn's Into The Wild. Unlike that film, Wendy and Lucy does not seek to create a martyr for our times out of it's lead. Into The Wild did succeed, but that was because of the supporting characters and the performance of Emile Hirsch. Wendy and Lucy succeeds because we're not asked to bow to it's main character and because of the performance of Michelle Williams. Williams plays Wendy Carroll, a young woman driving from Indiana to Alaska with her beloved dog Lucy in search of work and a new start. We never learn much about her life before we see her, just a quick conversation with her brother-in-law. As the film picks up, Wendy and Lucy walk through the woods, taking a break from their long journey, only to meet a group of similar lost souls. Later that night, she stops her car in a Walgreen's parking lot and in the morning, after being woken up by a kind security guard, she finds that it won't start. The mechanic is closed, so she decides to go pick up some food for Lucy. Running low on cash, she has to steal and is caught by a self-righteous grocery store employee. It becomes clear that he is an evangelical Christian, and with his warped, evil view of religion, he convinces his manager that he must call the cops. When she is released, she runs back to the store where she'd tied up Lucy and discovers that the dog is gone. Despite help from the pound, she can't seem to find her, and she discovers that her car repairs will cost much more than expected. One night, while sleeping in the woods, a man comes to her and talks about the people he's killed. He doesn't do anything, and in all likelihood, he may be lying, but it helps clarify her situation. As her economic situation falls deeper into despair, Wendy realizes that she has lost control, and no longer has any idea what she must do, before coming to an extraordinarily difficult decision regarding her future.

Many reviews have discussed the film's political message about the plight of the marginalized people in today's society, but it's moral message is far more important. Outside of Wendy, there are only two good characters in this film, the woman at the dog pound (who is really just doing her job) and the security guard who helps her when he can, and even his flaws appear at the end. The religious grocery store worker, the cops, the mechanic and the insane man who speaks to Wendy may occasionally do her or someone else a favor, but they are not good people. The real question of this film is what do we owe each other as human beings? The film's answer is that we should give what we can. Even the difficult decision that Wendy must make at the end fits into this answer.

The film's strongest point is Michelle Williams' inexplicably snubbed performance as Wendy. She appears in nearly every frame of this eighty minute film, and her performance is the dominant feature of all of them. Wendy is not street smart, and she does not completely understand the world around her, and Williams perfectly captures that idea. A film portraying the outsiders in our modern world just works better if shot in a more natural minimalist style, which made Reichardt, who also directed the critically acclaimed Old Joy a perfect director for this piece. Instead of the sweeping vista's we'd normally expect from this sort of film, we get smaller shots of the real west, of the people who inhabit it and the emptiness around them. If the film has one flaw, it's that the story itself really isn't that great. The film gets by on style and character, but it has a rather standard story that we've all seen before. This alone could leave some people feeling underwhelmed, but they should not feel that way. Wendy and Lucy may not be the classic that some are calling it, but it is one of the better films of 2008.

Rating (out of ****): ***1/2