{"id":6168,"date":"2016-11-03T08:05:11","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T12:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6168"},"modified":"2016-11-30T10:24:55","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T15:24:55","slug":"certain-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6168","title":{"rendered":"Certain Women"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"certain-women,

Lily Gladstone in Certain Women<\/p><\/div>\n

You know from the movie previews and the rumblings from the multiplex\u2019s adjacent theater that today\u2019s movies are heavily weighted toward \u201caction films.\u201d Writer-director-editor Kelly Reichardt could singlehandedly reverse that trend with Certain Women<\/em> (trailer<\/a>), which can most succinctly be described as an \u201cinaction film.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of hard to get used to Reichardt\u2019s pace, so you might watch this and think \u201cWha—?\u201d Here, the drama is at the deep inside the characters, hidden from all views except the closest. And that\u2019s what it gets from Reichardt\u2014\u201ca poet of silences and open spaces,\u201d says A.O. Scott<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em>. Based on short stories by Maile Meloy, the film is set in and around Livingston, Montana, and the views of the lonely snowswept plains are breathtaking.<\/p>\n

The story is presented in three separate vignettes that barely intersect. In the first, Laura Dern plays Laura Wells, a lawyer trying to convince her persistent client (Jared Harris) that he can\u2019t sue his former employer for on-the-job injuries because he already accepted a settlement. The client doesn\u2019t believe it until a male lawyer tells him the same thing. She\u2019s disappointed at many levels\u2014with her clients, her career, her love life.<\/p>\n

The middle vignette involves Gina (Michelle Williams), a married woman with a disaffected teenage daughter. She and her husband are building a new house, and she hopes to convince a slightly addled, elderly neighbor (Rene Auberjonois) to sell them a pile of unused sandstone blocks in his front yard. Behind Gina\u2019s bright smile, you can feel her irritation that the neighbor focuses his attention not on her request but on her husband, eliding the decision, and finally the husband sells her out. Even within the bosom of her family, it\u2019s clear, she\u2019s alone.<\/p>\n

The dreamiest and most poignant sequence follows the young woman Jamie\u2014beautifully underplayed by Lily Gladstone\u2014on her daily routine, feeding and caring for a group of horses on a remote ranch. The repetitiveness of her tasks in the snowy, mountains in the distance, is mesmerizing. Her routine and her equilibrium are disturbed by a chance acquaintance with Beth, a harried young lawyer played by Kristen Stewart, overwhelmed by her own, very different grind. The extent of Jamie\u2019s disturbance is painfully revealed in her quiet face, upon which \u201csilent passion surges like an underground stream,\u201d Scott says.<\/p>\n

The acting is subtle and true, and Reichardt closely follows the dictum, \u201cshow, don\u2019t tell.\u201d Her characters don\u2019t scream and rail and tell you what their issues are. You see it laid bare in front of you.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 91%; audiences 51%, a discrepancy that\u2019s no surprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know from the movie previews and the rumblings from the multiplex\u2019s adjacent theater that today\u2019s movies are heavily weighted toward \u201caction films.\u201d Writer-director-editor Kelly Reichardt could singlehandedly reverse that trend with Certain Women (trailer), which can most succinctly be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Certain Women - ready for some subtlety in a movie pick?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[366,57,104],"tags":[671,670,575,669,674,673,672,675],"class_list":["post-6168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-certain-women-film","tag-kelly-reichardt","tag-kristen-stewart","tag-laura-dern","tag-lily-gladstone","tag-maile-meloy","tag-michelle-williams-actress","tag-montana"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Bu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6170,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168\/revisions\/6170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}