Showing Up - Review Thread

Honestly I’m not exactly sure what I want from Kelly Reichardt. Her films often seem small and modest in their ambitions almost to the point of frustration, and yet that’s also kind of the point and complaining about them for their nature feels foolish. Her last film, First Cow in many ways felt like the closest one of her films has come to being more of a breakout effort what with its period setting and the rather heightened stakes involved in its characters’ plights, but compared to any other western that story of two dudes stealing milk from a cow would seem downright restrained. But First Cow feels like There Will Be Blood when compared to her latest film Showing Up, which feels like a conscious return to her really low key indie roots making things like Old Joy, which are just these really small scale slices of modern life. The film revolves around an Oregonian sculpter played by Michelle Williams who I think is some sort of subtle mental illness (Depression? Autism spectrum?) trying to balance her day job as an administrator at an art school with here own art projects while contending with her even more disturbed brother and some issues with maintenance on the house she’s renting and this comes to a head as she needs to rather symbolically nurse an injured bird to health. In addition to Williams there are some other fairly prominent actors here in small parts including Hong Chau, Judd Hirsch, and André “3000” Benjamin who all do good work but almost feel out of place in what otherwise seems like something that would normally be made by a much less prominent filmmaker. The film also doesn’t exactly ramp up the drama as it goes. Our heroes has problems to contend with, but the timespan of the film is only going to really allow her to do so much about any of them and less patient audiences are going to wonder what the point of all this is. In some ways the goal seems to be to use this story to give a snapshot of this localized arts scene, which is pretty distinct and removed from the more cutthroat and pretentious world of international modern art we’re used to seeing in movies. That was interesting to a point but this feels like minor Reichardt by pretty much any standard.