Director Kelly Reichardt specializes in slow-moving movies that encourage viewers to linger. Put another way, you don't just watch Reichardt's movies (First Cow, Wendy and Lucy, and Meek's Cutoff), you live in and with them.
Employing minimal editing, no manipulative music, or startling plot twists, Reichardt allows viewers to inhabit the worlds she creates.
In Showing up, Reichardt introduces us to a ceramicist (Michelle Williams) who makes miniature female figures, often in contorted poses that invite interpretation.
Williams's Lizzy might be the mopiest figure to appear in a movie this year. She’s alternately depressed or annoyed about being part of a dysfunctional artistic family while dealing with the pressures of preparing for a show.
Separated from Mom, Dad (Judd Hirsch) makes functional pottery. Mom (Maryann Plunkett) runs the art school where Lizzy works, and Lizzy’s mentally ill brother (John Magaro) is tolerated by a family that considers him a genius.
The family members all live in close proximity to one another.
Reichardt effectively takes us inside this loose-knit community. But her approach raises an inevitable question: What’s to be gained from being there?
Sans emotional peaks, Showing Up can feel as mopey as Lizzy, a non-celebration of art-making in which a commendable lack of manipulation sometimes results in a kind of aesthetic inertia.
While bringing Lizzy's family dynamics to light, the movie makes room for another artist, a sculptor played by Hong Chau, recently seen in The Menu and The Whale.
Chau’s Jo also happens to be Lizzy’s landlord. Jo drags her feet about fixing Lizzy's broken hot-water heater, creating a source of constant aggravation for Lizzy. Jo’s also busy getting ready for her own art opening.
As a retired potter, Hirsch's Bill can't resist ingratiating himself with a gallery owner who attends Lizzy’s opening at the behest of its reigning artist in residence (Heather Lawless).
Amid the flow of daily life, a metaphor seems to arise. Early on, Lizzy’s cat maims a pigeon that has flown into Lizzy's home. Lizzy removes the bird from the house. It's later recovered by Jo, who assumes responsibility for the bird -- sort of.
Jo often leaves the recuperating pigeon with Lizzy who carries it around in a cardboard box, another burden. The point? Artists suffer the same small torments as the rest of us while simultaneously trying to persevere in their work.
Wounds. Healing. Recovery. These, I suppose, are the metaphoric implications suggested by the bird.
No one talks much about art or anything else for that matter. A sense of the ordinary pervades almost every scene and Reichardt dwells on Lizzy's statuettes as if they were creations of art historical importance. They were made for the film by ceramicist Cynthia Lahti.
We get to know Lizzy at a specific moment in her life, an achievement to be sure. But for me, Showing Up is hampered by an unrelenting insularity that can make its characters seem limited and even uninteresting.
A narrow-gauge effort can be piercing. Sometimes, though, it's just narrow.
1 comment:
I found your review more interesting than the film. You did leave out the aspect of Lizzy's initial response to the injured bird - sweeping it out the window to "go die someplace else." I felt that her sense of guilt played a large role in her actions later. Thanks for your review, although I felt you were a bit too kind to the director.
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