Wendy and Lucy

I can't believe this movie was made in the "recession" climate that has enveloped the independent and mainstream Hollywood scene. Okay, maybe made, since the story is simple, and I imagine Michelle Williams made concessions, but WENDY AND LUCY's distribution is a miracle.

Kelly Reichardt has made a masterpiece about what it must feel like to be a young person in a strange nation trying to overcome an economic downturn. This film is the gentle breeze that whisked off the violent storm that was INTO THE WILD. Fuck, after seeing this I thought about all of my friends suffering months without a job, with fucked up cars, with a dog we can't take care of, not knowing what the hell is next- I know it has to do with me, too, but what about everybody else?

There are no fingers pointed at anybody in this film. Societies rules are bizarre: the fixed prices, the unjust self-righteousness, the inability to park here or sleep there. Yet it's the way things have been set up in America: we're born to be pushed around or be confined. We have to be made examples of if we live outside the dotted line that we're expected to. People can be kind, sure, but in life it's hardly ever as grandiose as something at the end of Tom Sawyer, or being given shelter by a kind family, in other words, there is no rich old tycoon to rescue you. You'll get seven bucks from a security guard at best. We, the middle class, are so strapped that all we can give is a kind gesture. What are we supposed to do with that aside from smile and nod and move on?

It's not that there's no hope. There is. Wendy in the movie is crafty in her own way. Smart people survive. They hum. O, the humming. The humming in the movie is probably the hypnotic tune the madman on the pier in PIERROT LE FOU was talking about. There you go. We have a goal, in Wendy's case it's Alaska, this ray of hope, and we're faced with so many obstacles, so all we can do is hum.

WENDY AND LUCY will be known by those who see it, and have lived what the film depicts, as a staple of these times. It also features a very cute dog.