Spring Break
Wendy and Lucy
John Bryant
Issue date: 3/4/09 Section: Entertainment
Wendy and Lucy (2008) is a simple tale, a very simple tale. I have yet to see a movie with such a dogged minimalist slant, such ragged slightness. The film is fashioned out of stunted, desperate motion and sparse, hopeless dialogue. These delicate webbings are knitted together by a string of modest camera strokes. There is no musical score, only a sporadic humming that eerily sifts in and out of diegetic and non-diegetic space. All that to say: Wendy and Lucy is a film that, at the end of its 80 minute runtime, literally evaporates. But that is not to say it is not well-crafted. It is indeed a deceptively simple film, shadowed in desolation, tracing out haunting silhouettes of despair. Wendy and Lucy is an important film that should be seen, but not by everyone. It is a movie that demands you fall in tune to its own odd chamber-rhythms. It is a film insulated from box-office demands and pressures, a movie that exists only by momentum of its own internal potential to evoke art. However, for those who qualify, there are nuggets of dense, cosmic weight shoehorned into this slim vessel. It is a movie of confounding lightness, a movie of near-transcendent bareness.
Wendy and Lucy is the story of just that. Wendy (Michelle Williams) is a twenty-something drifter on the run from something (maybe herself) and Lucy is her loyal missed breed retriever. The film tracks her impossible journey to Alaska, where she hopes to get a job. Before too long, her car breaks down in a small, nothing town and she loses her dog. And that's it. Roll credits. Really.
Ok, not really. That is only the surface workings. Peel back the layers and you will see that it is really a study of loneliness, a snapshot of alienation, utter and complete. This is the story of a bastard child of the American heartland who is shoved out to the razors edge of existence. The film relies on hidden subtexts and subtle cinematic slight-of- hand to tell this real story.
That being said, the camera is the true storyteller here, bending and warping a generic reality into one of perplexing and profound poignancy. The camera primarily does this by persistently hedging Wendy into a prison of her own surroundings. In this way, the cinematography mirrors Wendy's psychic inner-reality with heartbreaking clarity. In each frame, she is almost always shot obstructed, whether by foliage, doors, fences. She is never given freedom to move or freedom to join. Wendy also never shares the same frame with any other actor. She talks to others with her back turned or while caught in a net of onscreen barriers. Her responses to characters can only be found on the peripheries of the screen. She is confined to her own inscrutable madness throughout the film. The viewer cannot breach that barricade and neither can any character. We can only hear the echoes of loneliness build up to deafening crescendo. Wendy can never be known, she can only be pitied as an exhibit. Lucy, the only one to breach this boundary, becomes more than a pet. She is the lifeline, the bearer of meaningful connection and sanity. When Lucy is lost and that connection severed, Wendy and Lucy pivots from road narrative into island-stranded character study ala Castaway. Watching Wendy and Lucy is a watching someone become completely undone. If you're searching for something meaningful and different, check it out.
Wendy and Lucy is the story of just that. Wendy (Michelle Williams) is a twenty-something drifter on the run from something (maybe herself) and Lucy is her loyal missed breed retriever. The film tracks her impossible journey to Alaska, where she hopes to get a job. Before too long, her car breaks down in a small, nothing town and she loses her dog. And that's it. Roll credits. Really.
Ok, not really. That is only the surface workings. Peel back the layers and you will see that it is really a study of loneliness, a snapshot of alienation, utter and complete. This is the story of a bastard child of the American heartland who is shoved out to the razors edge of existence. The film relies on hidden subtexts and subtle cinematic slight-of- hand to tell this real story.
That being said, the camera is the true storyteller here, bending and warping a generic reality into one of perplexing and profound poignancy. The camera primarily does this by persistently hedging Wendy into a prison of her own surroundings. In this way, the cinematography mirrors Wendy's psychic inner-reality with heartbreaking clarity. In each frame, she is almost always shot obstructed, whether by foliage, doors, fences. She is never given freedom to move or freedom to join. Wendy also never shares the same frame with any other actor. She talks to others with her back turned or while caught in a net of onscreen barriers. Her responses to characters can only be found on the peripheries of the screen. She is confined to her own inscrutable madness throughout the film. The viewer cannot breach that barricade and neither can any character. We can only hear the echoes of loneliness build up to deafening crescendo. Wendy can never be known, she can only be pitied as an exhibit. Lucy, the only one to breach this boundary, becomes more than a pet. She is the lifeline, the bearer of meaningful connection and sanity. When Lucy is lost and that connection severed, Wendy and Lucy pivots from road narrative into island-stranded character study ala Castaway. Watching Wendy and Lucy is a watching someone become completely undone. If you're searching for something meaningful and different, check it out.
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