Showing Up

In college, I had friends who were art students. The work they did had a very different way of expressing meaning than I was used to as an English major, always dealing with text and narrative. This film really brought back to me what it was like to be around them, to see what they were working on, with the usual material challenges in the background.

Ursula LeGuin, among other writers, has pointed out that there's a commonly expressed idea that stories are about conflict and that narrative structures such as the three act structure follow from it, but, many cultures have different forms of story. I'd been dubious about that, but it struck me that this film is a good illustration of a different sort of story. We're watching artists, one in particular, doing their work and living their lives, and we're often asked to simply watch closely what they're actually doing. Much as the sculptors I knew asked me to do.

Are you an artist? Do you have impostor syndrome? Does it feel like everyone is getting on with their lives except you? Well, let me tell you: IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD.

This movie has taught me that in adulthood we accept one another as we are. Just like Jo accepted Lizzie.

This movie has taught me that things take time.

This movie embodies the weakness and fear inside all of us. The voice that doesn't speak up and piles up thoughts upon thoughts upon thoughts.

If anxiety and calm had a baby, it would be this movie.

I don't recommend watching this. Great performances from all the actors. But that's about it.

This director is known for making arthouse pictures that arent targetted at a mass audience. These are the kind of small pictures filmcritics love to watch, but I cant get excited about.

The bad: this movie is literally going nowhere. We get to see the mondane and boring life of an artist. We get to see her take care of a pigeon. Talk to her landlady etc. It's just one contineous lame uneventful portrait.

More bad: I started watching it for Michelle Williams, who has starred in some excellent pictures in the past. She can act! And although the purpose of her acting performance is to portray an uneventful life of a mundane artist, her performance didnt entice me for one second.

Only suited for fans of this director's work. Others better pass this incredibly tedious movie by...

I've been a fan of Kelly Reichardt's other movies, notably "Wendy and Lucy" and "First Cow," but this one left me cold.

Michelle Williams plays a sullen and mousy artist who walks around in a fog of frustration over not having enough time for her art because of the demands of other people. I can get on board with a slow burn that reveals bits and pieces of a character's inner life that finally coalesces into something like a whole. But that doesn't happen here. At the very end of the movie, there are some moments that I liked and finally made me start to understand some of the circumstances that contributed to Williams's character being the way she was. But then the movie just abruptly ended, and the pay off was not anywhere near recompense for the tediously slow and border line boring movie that led up to it.

There is a running storyline with an injured pigeon that results in obvious and over used symbolism.

Grade: C+

There's a sculptor who has a glass and it's half empty, lives in a world full of despair that's just not carefree, no hot water in her tap, things are generally just crap, she is the epitome of gloom and misery. Then a pigeon pays a call and gets cat mauled, this leaves the artist most annoyed, slightly appalled, but she sends it on its way, it returns boxed up next day, a bird that's clearly been well trained, you'll be enthralled! (it's a talented bird) The mood continues to be more downbeat and muted, as the artist gets her pieces executed, familial issues do not please, as her brother eats the cheese, but that's the price you have to pay, when you're deep-rooted.

Wonderful performances and great dialogue, but not a lot else.