In her interview with Vadim Rizov, Kelly Reichardt complicates our understanding of effective activism when she says, "Young people going out and taking an action that will land them for the next generation of their life in jail is probably not the best plan. But what the fuck? What should anybody be doing right now? No answer was discovered in the making of [Night Moves (2013)] for that question." The film itself explores and debates but never answers the question of whether Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), Dena (Dakota Fanning), and Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) have furthered their environmentalist cause in any significant way.
During the environmentalist film screening scene, someone asks Jackie what they're "supposed to do" about the issues presented. Jackie answers that they should focus on "a lot of small plans." This scene is staged such that we know at least Josh is not on board with just "a lot of small plans." As the lights turn on, we see that he isn't sitting with the crowd but rather leaning against the walls, symbolically on the margins of this environmentalist community. It's also evident that he doesn't care much about the conversation that follows, given how the film cuts away in the middle of a person's sentence shortly afterwards. It's as if the camera has checked out of this discussion of half-measures in much the same way Josh has. Importantly, the scene Reichardt cuts to is one in which Josh and Dena wait to meet up with Harmon. Their plan - far from being "a lot of small plans" - is big, which we can tell from Josh's apparent nervousness. Sensing his nervousness, Dena tells him to "breathe." So, no, they're not on their way to recycle some cans. This is some next, next level environmentalism.
This big plan, as Jonathan Romney points out, is given some fairly extensive, suspenseful lead-up. From the eerie music in the background to the children (potential casualties of the dam explosion) playing at the campsite to the car getting fixed on the road while the eco-activists/terrorists wait in the water, trapped between getting caught and a literal bomb, Reichardt expertly shows just how big a deal this dam explosion is...for Josh, Dena, and Harmon anyway.
Whether the dam explosion is a big deal to the rest of the world is up for debate. The following morning, the people Josh lives with argue over whether the event (documented in the newspaper) mattered. One man says, "I'm not interested in statements; I'm interested in results." Another replies, "You don't call that results?" To which the man replies, "I call that theatre." With that, there is an implicit "ouch," as Josh is in the same room, seeing the ordeal as "big" when others do not. Reichardt never seems to take a stand one way or the other, but she does let in a line of dialog in which someone remarks on the dozens of other dams in that same river. There's a sense that the event was big enough to make headlines but too small to make a dent in the actual problem. Perhaps that is why Rizov describes the film as "almost-defeatist."
In any case, the second half of the film shifts from the event's social ramifications to its personal ones. Reichardt never even hints at any lasting, widespread impact, perhaps either because there is none or because Reichardt is uncertain whether there would be. So, it seems we're caught between extremist activism that lacks extreme results and "a lot of small plans" that feel good more than they actually do anything. If that's not a cause for despair, then I don't know what is!
On a different note, can a person love their environment without money? By that, I mean, if someone cares about the environment enough to try to preserve it, can they translate that care into legitimately effective protection without access to extensive resources (financial and otherwise)? Let's consider these questions in light of the dialog line about the exploded dam being one of dozens in that river. To blow up one dam, Josh mentions that he had to spend up to $10,000 on the boat alone, not including the thousand pounds of fertilizer that we can imagine also costs a small fortune. To blow up the dozen+ dams and adequately protect the environment - as Josh, Dena, and Harmon imagine it would do - would cost ludicrous amounts of money. Thus, the power of someone with almost no financial resources to "love" their environment is limited, whether they love it through extremist activism, lobbying for change, etc. The more money you have, the more power you have to make positive (or extraordinarily negative) change in the environment.
Very nice. Good reading of the movie-screening scene. One point worth making is the characterization of them as "extremist activism." It's understandable to do so and perhaps justified. But at least in one of the readings KR points out that what companies such as BP etc do is much more extreme (insofar as their actions--and by implication our governments' enabling policies and, by implications, our voting for our governments--not only destroy the environment in the abstract but literally kill millions of organisms, including non-human animals but also humans). So I'm always a bit leery to characterize those who resist as extremists if/when what is being resisted is not also characterized as such (assuming one can agree with KR's position, in this case). Obviously this is a bit like the " terrorist v. freedom fighter" debate: what the former is to one person is the latter to another, etc.
Vadim Rizov, in his review of Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves, refers to the central action as an “act of eco-terrorism/-activism,” which succinctly notes one of the most potent questions posed in the film: is Josh, Dena, and Harmon’s bomb an act of full-fledged terrorism or environmentally-conscious activism? More importantly, perhaps, is the question of what people can do in order to minimize the damage they do to the planet. This question is directly posed in one of the first scenes, when an activist filmmaker does a Q&A at her screening. Dena notes that the filmmaker posed no solutions in her film about the disastrous condition of the planet, and she asks Jackie, the director, what she suggests. Jackie tiptoes around the question in a way that is humorously vague, offering something that is very in line with Zygmut Bauman’s argument that humans no longer have long-term projects, careers, or commitments, but rather a series of short-term ones. Like the filmmaker within the film, Reichardt offers no real solutions – unsurprising considering her talent for vague endings.
Slight detour: Jesse Eisenberg, generally hard to watch due to his tendency to, well, not move his face, proved a great casting choice, as the subtlety of his expressions made the film even more interesting. This subtly also contributed to the ambiguity of the answer as to whether or not the act was for good or evil (or both).
Two specific shots were particularly striking. One occurred before we saw the terror trio eating breakfast (or lunch? whatever) in the restaurant. The camera momentarily showed a seemingly upper-middle class family with their SUV: the parents secured their kayaks onto the roof of their car while the children sat on a hill and watched. It was an interesting shot, and although the message was not clear, perhaps it was showing a general trend in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere, noted by Reicholdt: people take advantage of the outdoors with their camping, hiking, kayaking, etc., but they fail to take care of it by, at the same time, riding around in their SUVs, trashing their campsites, and continuing to expand their towns into the forests. The other shot I noted occurred while Josh, Dena, and Harmon were traveling down the river on Night Moves. As they floated along, small, in the background, two little boys played on the shore in the foreground. They made shooting noises with their toy guns, amidst an expanse of tree stumps. As our protagonists journeyed to send a message about human destruction, the boys, distracted by their game, seemed oblivious to the mass destruction that surrounded them. Perhaps the gunplay, human-on-human violence, foreshadowed the unintentional killing of the camper as well.
As far as money and its effect on relationships, Night Moves rarely deals directly with the characters' finances. It appears that the characters live simply, especially Josh, because they choose to in order to be closer with nature. Perhaps only Harmon is struggling because of his stint in prison.
The only way that Reichardt directly addresses money is when Josh and Harmon discuss Dena's role in the "project." She bought her way in to the deal, and Harmon warned Josh against letting her participate any more - a warning that, in hindsight, he likely should have heeded. Dena had the money to buy her way into this trio, but it ended up killing her. One could also consider costs in term of the land/environment and argue that capitalist/material greed consumed (and still consumes) our greatest resource, I guess.
When first beginning to think about Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves (2013), my mind didn’t immediately turn to money, capitalism, or liquidity, although splashes of those themes are certainly present in the film, but instead turned to the film’s portrayal of the fine line between righteously defending an ideology and turning into a massive hypocrite when trying to defend a cause (Aydin?). It quickly becomes apparent in the film that there is a cinematic contrast between nature and harmful machinery that exists on almost all levels. All the diagetic noise consists of either serene sounds emitted from natural causes (the river, the spa in the beginning, the woods) or gritty, decaying machines (the engines of their beat up old trucks, the boat engine, or the machine used to sift the chemicals). Often these contrasts are portrayed visually; we are given a close up of the truck’s dashboard and gauges as they prepare to leave, a close up of the chemicals being sifted and then all packed in the boat, and meanwhile all of this exists in the supremely beautiful setting of Oregon's forests. What this contrast highlighted for me, and where this film I believe makes some gesture toward the potential hypocrisy of radical actions like these, is that the three main characters all use these environment killing devices as means to carry out a terroristic act in the name of defending said environment. None of their trucks, for instance, are in any way eco-friendly, and Josh at one point is literally framed in a deep focus shot throwing the excess parts of the boat off into a massive landfill. While the unintended death would be the most obvious narrative device in highlighting or complicating the morality of their crusade, the visual and audible cues consistently placed throughout the film were, I believe, equally as complicating to the characters’ sense of duty to the environment.
There are also some thematic tie-ins to our discussion of a liquid economy; as we have seen in Reichardt’s other two films, the gloomy Oregon setting she uses again evokes the feeling that these places have become economically obsolete and are struggling to reconfigure for modern markets. The man whom Josh works for describes to him the many years of hard work to establish his farm that he has jeopardized by being involved in the bombing, implying some very hard times preceeding the film (although they don’t seem to be particularly above water yet). Reichardt interestingly notes in an interview that the nature of having Josh work on an organic farm, a newer trend in the economy of food, is associated with “people trying to find new ways to live” (Rizov). Reichardt doesn’t elaborate on this, but given this we do see her acknowledge to some degree that this film involves itself briefly with a story of people working to catch up to a liquid market that has left them behind. So, in that sense, the film does touch on her reoccurring theme of finding ways to adapt to our constantly changing surroundings, and in this case what the consequences of our constantly changing economic needs might have on our world as a whole.
I'm glad you drew a connection between the characters in Winter Sleep and Night Moves (titles that also coordinate in an interesting way?). I viewed the trio as being more similar to Nihal; in an attempt to do the "right thing" and be somewhat "selfless," they showed poor foresight.
"It quickly becomes apparent in the film that there is a cinematic contrast between nature and harmful machinery that exists on almost all levels." Very nice observation and discussion of how this plays out in the film!
In relation to Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves (2013), first and foremost on my mind is the concept of ‘cement mixer’. Having been employed in construction and manufacturing settings in the past, the recurring sight of this piece of equipment during the film alerted me to a possible motif: There is a cement mixer that makes its appearance twice (or three times, if you consider the dumping scene), and, while the film’s plot does not insinuate that these are ontically the same mixers—in fact Reichardt shows that they are NOT the same by way of a scene in which Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) throws one of the two, along with the contents of a gutted boat, into a garbage dump while a highly emotive portrait of the Oregon wilderness lingers in the background—, both of these mixers share crucial meanings when Night Moves is analyzed at a level deeper than its surface.
What initially comes to my mind when I think of cement mixers is industry and development. Obviously, larger mixers (the kind that consist of the entire rear of a truck) are used for larger scale-projects, but that is not to say that small cement mixers are not used for the finishing touches of, say, a newly developed suburban neighborhood or of a similar project; in fact, they are routinely used during such endeavors.
The aspect that interested me about the use of this tool was Reichardt’s subversion of meaning behind the 'cement mixer'. In one scene we have characters using the tool to make explosives, while in another we have characters legitimately making fertilizer for a community garden. In an article published in the Guardian, we find Reichardt avowing that one of her fascinations with the Oregon location is a clash among ideas such as “civilization and nature, and industry and activism” (Brooks, 2016). What better way to visualize these oppositions than a device that connotes the production of physical stability but can also be contrived to produce a bomb or to sustain an ecologically sensitive community?
In terms of narrative, I believe that the cement mixer is central to Josh’s life. In Josh’s character we catch the glimpse of an ideological zealot who has gone beyond the pale: he has invested all of his being in an idea, a set of tenets. His framework is, to him, undeniably solid. The problem is that he has invested next to nothing in community. Both products of the mixer, one as agent of destruction (and possible renewal), and the other, of sustainability, become exploded for him. So, what happens when an individual has lost all navigable territory? “You gotta get real lost,” says Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard). And, in the final scene, we find that Josh really is lost, unable to make sense of his past even for the purposes of a simple job application in order to start anew.
Excellent close reading of the cement mixer's role in the film. What this shows, of course, is also that a tool in and of itself is less about its "essence" (what it "is") than about what can be DONE with it.
The film Night Moves (2013) opens in a different fashion compared to most of Reichardt’s films; it begins by making the viewer seem a bit uncomfortable. In the opening scene the film take us to a spa, where Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) facial expression says it all. (To be honest I was feeling exactly what he expressed.) Jonathan Romney explains, “Like all the best dramas about undercover operations, Night Moves is extremely good on the matter of procedure, work, getting the business done.” It explains the film quite good, as the plot unfolds the suspense of the criminal act delivers dilemma. The film does a good job of not keeping the audience in the loop of what kind of crime Josh, Dena (Dakota Fanning), and Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) are going to commit. Eventually, finding out they plan to destroy the water damn in an act of social justice. The night scene creates a huge amount of tension because as they start the bomb a car pulls up in hyne sight, which allows the viewer to grasp the suspense of the trio getting caught. After the explosion of the damn, Josh shows the anxiety he suffers through his acting. This illustrates the fact that he knew it was wrong, but the feeling of anxiety worsens as he finds out that a man was killed during the bombing. The intention was on accident but it the result of ethics it was their fault for the tragedy of the man. This is all too much for Dena and Josh to handle. Josh eventually kills Dena, and is shown running from the problem. The film displays how radical decisions can go wrong and later cause fear. “It makes the people who perform militant acts very human and very knowable” Romney said; Harmon seems to not trigger this particular feel, as where Josh does. When Josh calls Harmon in the ending sequence the only thing he tells Josh to do is go far and go in deep hiding. On a side note, Reichardt does a brilliant job with all her film, in delivering social activism. The dialogue in Night Moves captures the social status of each character, as they seem to be normal people in society who have a problem with the confinements of the government. The dialogue in the scene where Josh and Dena are traveling up to Wyoming really caught my attention. The fragments of space in the dialogue that explains what close is, compares the city folks to country folks. Josh and Dena in the dialogue show their meaning of close, as Dena makes it seem really short, and Josh’s close is a bit farther in comparison.
In her previous films, Kelly Reickhardt shows the harmonious nature humans and the environment have with one another. She is so in tuned with nature and its affect on people, that we now see her showing the opposite relationship, how humans affect the environment. As Rizov presents in an interview, Night Moves only shows “environmentally conscious community” with no “corresponding voice heard scoffing” (Rizov). Without the opposing viewpoints, we are focused on how to deal with climate change. The three eco-activists want one big plan to solve the current climate change, which is why they decide to blow up the dam. But, as the women says after the documentary, they must take it step by step and continually push forward to help. As the film goes on, Josh realizes this point. In the beginning, we saw, through his eyes, the need for him to continue his plan. Seeing the backyard waterfall and hearing about the over abundance of golf courses, angered him by the misallocation of resources. However, Eisenberg’s “twitchy intensity” and “ strangled tones and trigger reactions” show the films turn from their plan to blow up the dam to them dealing with its consequences (Rizov, Romney). Josh starts to doubt the significance of what the trio has done and this is seen through his twitchy hands and the paranoia he has with Dena. The guilt and realization that their act didn’t really help their cause also had a physical effect on Dena, as we can see with her rashes. Eisenberg’s performance also gives the film a thriller feel as tensions continue to rise until his breaking point of killing Dena. We are given doubts about each character as they become suspicious of each other and wonder if they can trust one another. Although Harmon says that it’s healthier for Josh to be paranoid, we actually see this paranoia break the trio and lead to their isolation. More than just the message of helping the environment, Reickhardt’s actual purpose is to focus on the characters’ relationships and how they deal with trusting one another.
In one of the readings KR talks about how such (lefty) activism often, perhaps always, ends up turning into paranoia. The problem is, of course, that everyone who participates is vulnerable to the others who might "rat" on them; that knowledge--that one's allies *might* not turn out to be tough enough--starts (inevitably?) eating at one's perceptions.
In her interview with Vadim Rizov, Kelly Reichardt complicates our understanding of effective activism when she says, "Young people going out and taking an action that will land them for the next generation of their life in jail is probably not the best plan. But what the fuck? What should anybody be doing right now? No answer was discovered in the making of [Night Moves (2013)] for that question." The film itself explores and debates but never answers the question of whether Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), Dena (Dakota Fanning), and Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) have furthered their environmentalist cause in any significant way.
ReplyDeleteDuring the environmentalist film screening scene, someone asks Jackie what they're "supposed to do" about the issues presented. Jackie answers that they should focus on "a lot of small plans." This scene is staged such that we know at least Josh is not on board with just "a lot of small plans." As the lights turn on, we see that he isn't sitting with the crowd but rather leaning against the walls, symbolically on the margins of this environmentalist community. It's also evident that he doesn't care much about the conversation that follows, given how the film cuts away in the middle of a person's sentence shortly afterwards. It's as if the camera has checked out of this discussion of half-measures in much the same way Josh has. Importantly, the scene Reichardt cuts to is one in which Josh and Dena wait to meet up with Harmon. Their plan - far from being "a lot of small plans" - is big, which we can tell from Josh's apparent nervousness. Sensing his nervousness, Dena tells him to "breathe." So, no, they're not on their way to recycle some cans. This is some next, next level environmentalism.
This big plan, as Jonathan Romney points out, is given some fairly extensive, suspenseful lead-up. From the eerie music in the background to the children (potential casualties of the dam explosion) playing at the campsite to the car getting fixed on the road while the eco-activists/terrorists wait in the water, trapped between getting caught and a literal bomb, Reichardt expertly shows just how big a deal this dam explosion is...for Josh, Dena, and Harmon anyway.
Whether the dam explosion is a big deal to the rest of the world is up for debate. The following morning, the people Josh lives with argue over whether the event (documented in the newspaper) mattered. One man says, "I'm not interested in statements; I'm interested in results." Another replies, "You don't call that results?" To which the man replies, "I call that theatre." With that, there is an implicit "ouch," as Josh is in the same room, seeing the ordeal as "big" when others do not. Reichardt never seems to take a stand one way or the other, but she does let in a line of dialog in which someone remarks on the dozens of other dams in that same river. There's a sense that the event was big enough to make headlines but too small to make a dent in the actual problem. Perhaps that is why Rizov describes the film as "almost-defeatist."
In any case, the second half of the film shifts from the event's social ramifications to its personal ones. Reichardt never even hints at any lasting, widespread impact, perhaps either because there is none or because Reichardt is uncertain whether there would be. So, it seems we're caught between extremist activism that lacks extreme results and "a lot of small plans" that feel good more than they actually do anything. If that's not a cause for despair, then I don't know what is!
On a different note, can a person love their environment without money? By that, I mean, if someone cares about the environment enough to try to preserve it, can they translate that care into legitimately effective protection without access to extensive resources (financial and otherwise)? Let's consider these questions in light of the dialog line about the exploded dam being one of dozens in that river. To blow up one dam, Josh mentions that he had to spend up to $10,000 on the boat alone, not including the thousand pounds of fertilizer that we can imagine also costs a small fortune. To blow up the dozen+ dams and adequately protect the environment - as Josh, Dena, and Harmon imagine it would do - would cost ludicrous amounts of money. Thus, the power of someone with almost no financial resources to "love" their environment is limited, whether they love it through extremist activism, lobbying for change, etc. The more money you have, the more power you have to make positive (or extraordinarily negative) change in the environment.
DeleteVery nice. Good reading of the movie-screening scene. One point worth making is the characterization of them as "extremist activism." It's understandable to do so and perhaps justified. But at least in one of the readings KR points out that what companies such as BP etc do is much more extreme (insofar as their actions--and by implication our governments' enabling policies and, by implications, our voting for our governments--not only destroy the environment in the abstract but literally kill millions of organisms, including non-human animals but also humans). So I'm always a bit leery to characterize those who resist as extremists if/when what is being resisted is not also characterized as such (assuming one can agree with KR's position, in this case). Obviously this is a bit like the " terrorist v. freedom fighter" debate: what the former is to one person is the latter to another, etc.
DeleteVadim Rizov, in his review of Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves, refers to the central action as an “act of eco-terrorism/-activism,” which succinctly notes one of the most potent questions posed in the film: is Josh, Dena, and Harmon’s bomb an act of full-fledged terrorism or environmentally-conscious activism? More importantly, perhaps, is the question of what people can do in order to minimize the damage they do to the planet. This question is directly posed in one of the first scenes, when an activist filmmaker does a Q&A at her screening. Dena notes that the filmmaker posed no solutions in her film about the disastrous condition of the planet, and she asks Jackie, the director, what she suggests. Jackie tiptoes around the question in a way that is humorously vague, offering something that is very in line with Zygmut Bauman’s argument that humans no longer have long-term projects, careers, or commitments, but rather a series of short-term ones. Like the filmmaker within the film, Reichardt offers no real solutions – unsurprising considering her talent for vague endings.
ReplyDeleteSlight detour: Jesse Eisenberg, generally hard to watch due to his tendency to, well, not move his face, proved a great casting choice, as the subtlety of his expressions made the film even more interesting. This subtly also contributed to the ambiguity of the answer as to whether or not the act was for good or evil (or both).
Two specific shots were particularly striking. One occurred before we saw the terror trio eating breakfast (or lunch? whatever) in the restaurant. The camera momentarily showed a seemingly upper-middle class family with their SUV: the parents secured their kayaks onto the roof of their car while the children sat on a hill and watched. It was an interesting shot, and although the message was not clear, perhaps it was showing a general trend in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere, noted by Reicholdt: people take advantage of the outdoors with their camping, hiking, kayaking, etc., but they fail to take care of it by, at the same time, riding around in their SUVs, trashing their campsites, and continuing to expand their towns into the forests. The other shot I noted occurred while Josh, Dena, and Harmon were traveling down the river on Night Moves. As they floated along, small, in the background, two little boys played on the shore in the foreground. They made shooting noises with their toy guns, amidst an expanse of tree stumps. As our protagonists journeyed to send a message about human destruction, the boys, distracted by their game, seemed oblivious to the mass destruction that surrounded them. Perhaps the gunplay, human-on-human violence, foreshadowed the unintentional killing of the camper as well.
As far as money and its effect on relationships, Night Moves rarely deals directly with the characters' finances. It appears that the characters live simply, especially Josh, because they choose to in order to be closer with nature. Perhaps only Harmon is struggling because of his stint in prison.
DeleteThe only way that Reichardt directly addresses money is when Josh and Harmon discuss Dena's role in the "project." She bought her way in to the deal, and Harmon warned Josh against letting her participate any more - a warning that, in hindsight, he likely should have heeded. Dena had the money to buy her way into this trio, but it ended up killing her. One could also consider costs in term of the land/environment and argue that capitalist/material greed consumed (and still consumes) our greatest resource, I guess.
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ReplyDeleteWhen first beginning to think about Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves (2013), my mind didn’t immediately turn to money, capitalism, or liquidity, although splashes of those themes are certainly present in the film, but instead turned to the film’s portrayal of the fine line between righteously defending an ideology and turning into a massive hypocrite when trying to defend a cause (Aydin?). It quickly becomes apparent in the film that there is a cinematic contrast between nature and harmful machinery that exists on almost all levels. All the diagetic noise consists of either serene sounds emitted from natural causes (the river, the spa in the beginning, the woods) or gritty, decaying machines (the engines of their beat up old trucks, the boat engine, or the machine used to sift the chemicals). Often these contrasts are portrayed visually; we are given a close up of the truck’s dashboard and gauges as they prepare to leave, a close up of the chemicals being sifted and then all packed in the boat, and meanwhile all of this exists in the supremely beautiful setting of Oregon's forests. What this contrast highlighted for me, and where this film I believe makes some gesture toward the potential hypocrisy of radical actions like these, is that the three main characters all use these environment killing devices as means to carry out a terroristic act in the name of defending said environment. None of their trucks, for instance, are in any way eco-friendly, and Josh at one point is literally framed in a deep focus shot throwing the excess parts of the boat off into a massive landfill. While the unintended death would be the most obvious narrative device in highlighting or complicating the morality of their crusade, the visual and audible cues consistently placed throughout the film were, I believe, equally as complicating to the characters’ sense of duty to the environment.
ReplyDeleteThere are also some thematic tie-ins to our discussion of a liquid economy; as we have seen in Reichardt’s other two films, the gloomy Oregon setting she uses again evokes the feeling that these places have become economically obsolete and are struggling to reconfigure for modern markets. The man whom Josh works for describes to him the many years of hard work to establish his farm that he has jeopardized by being involved in the bombing, implying some very hard times preceeding the film (although they don’t seem to be particularly above water yet). Reichardt interestingly notes in an interview that the nature of having Josh work on an organic farm, a newer trend in the economy of food, is associated with “people trying to find new ways to live” (Rizov). Reichardt doesn’t elaborate on this, but given this we do see her acknowledge to some degree that this film involves itself briefly with a story of people working to catch up to a liquid market that has left them behind. So, in that sense, the film does touch on her reoccurring theme of finding ways to adapt to our constantly changing surroundings, and in this case what the consequences of our constantly changing economic needs might have on our world as a whole.
I'm glad you drew a connection between the characters in Winter Sleep and Night Moves (titles that also coordinate in an interesting way?). I viewed the trio as being more similar to Nihal; in an attempt to do the "right thing" and be somewhat "selfless," they showed poor foresight.
Delete"It quickly becomes apparent in the film that there is a cinematic contrast between nature and harmful machinery that exists on almost all levels." Very nice observation and discussion of how this plays out in the film!
DeleteThe trio - Nihal connection: yes, that's an interesting point. It should come up on Friday when we discuss the "money burning" scene in WS
DeleteIn relation to Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves (2013), first and foremost on my mind is the concept of ‘cement mixer’. Having been employed in construction and manufacturing settings in the past, the recurring sight of this piece of equipment during the film alerted me to a possible motif: There is a cement mixer that makes its appearance twice (or three times, if you consider the dumping scene), and, while the film’s plot does not insinuate that these are ontically the same mixers—in fact Reichardt shows that they are NOT the same by way of a scene in which Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) throws one of the two, along with the contents of a gutted boat, into a garbage dump while a highly emotive portrait of the Oregon wilderness lingers in the background—, both of these mixers share crucial meanings when Night Moves is analyzed at a level deeper than its surface.
ReplyDeleteWhat initially comes to my mind when I think of cement mixers is industry and development. Obviously, larger mixers (the kind that consist of the entire rear of a truck) are used for larger scale-projects, but that is not to say that small cement mixers are not used for the finishing touches of, say, a newly developed suburban neighborhood or of a similar project; in fact, they are routinely used during such endeavors.
The aspect that interested me about the use of this tool was Reichardt’s subversion of meaning behind the 'cement mixer'. In one scene we have characters using the tool to make explosives, while in another we have characters legitimately making fertilizer for a community garden. In an article published in the Guardian, we find Reichardt avowing that one of her fascinations with the Oregon location is a clash among ideas such as “civilization and nature, and industry and activism” (Brooks, 2016). What better way to visualize these oppositions than a device that connotes the production of physical stability but can also be contrived to produce a bomb or to sustain an ecologically sensitive community?
In terms of narrative, I believe that the cement mixer is central to Josh’s life. In Josh’s character we catch the glimpse of an ideological zealot who has gone beyond the pale: he has invested all of his being in an idea, a set of tenets. His framework is, to him, undeniably solid. The problem is that he has invested next to nothing in community. Both products of the mixer, one as agent of destruction (and possible renewal), and the other, of sustainability, become exploded for him. So, what happens when an individual has lost all navigable territory? “You gotta get real lost,” says Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard). And, in the final scene, we find that Josh really is lost, unable to make sense of his past even for the purposes of a simple job application in order to start anew.
Excellent close reading of the cement mixer's role in the film. What this shows, of course, is also that a tool in and of itself is less about its "essence" (what it "is") than about what can be DONE with it.
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ReplyDeleteThe film Night Moves (2013) opens in a different fashion compared to most of Reichardt’s films; it begins by making the viewer seem a bit uncomfortable. In the opening scene the film take us to a spa, where Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) facial expression says it all. (To be honest I was feeling exactly what he expressed.) Jonathan Romney explains, “Like all the best dramas about undercover operations, Night Moves is extremely good on the matter of procedure, work, getting the business done.” It explains the film quite good, as the plot unfolds the suspense of the criminal act delivers dilemma. The film does a good job of not keeping the audience in the loop of what kind of crime Josh, Dena (Dakota Fanning), and Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) are going to commit. Eventually, finding out they plan to destroy the water damn in an act of social justice. The night scene creates a huge amount of tension because as they start the bomb a car pulls up in hyne sight, which allows the viewer to grasp the suspense of the trio getting caught. After the explosion of the damn, Josh shows the anxiety he suffers through his acting. This illustrates the fact that he knew it was wrong, but the feeling of anxiety worsens as he finds out that a man was killed during the bombing. The intention was on accident but it the result of ethics it was their fault for the tragedy of the man. This is all too much for Dena and Josh to handle. Josh eventually kills Dena, and is shown running from the problem. The film displays how radical decisions can go wrong and later cause fear. “It makes the people who perform militant acts very human and very knowable” Romney said; Harmon seems to not trigger this particular feel, as where Josh does. When Josh calls Harmon in the ending sequence the only thing he tells Josh to do is go far and go in deep hiding.
On a side note, Reichardt does a brilliant job with all her film, in delivering social activism. The dialogue in Night Moves captures the social status of each character, as they seem to be normal people in society who have a problem with the confinements of the government. The dialogue in the scene where Josh and Dena are traveling up to Wyoming really caught my attention. The fragments of space in the dialogue that explains what close is, compares the city folks to country folks. Josh and Dena in the dialogue show their meaning of close, as Dena makes it seem really short, and Josh’s close is a bit farther in comparison.
In her previous films, Kelly Reickhardt shows the harmonious nature humans and the environment have with one another. She is so in tuned with nature and its affect on people, that we now see her showing the opposite relationship, how humans affect the environment. As Rizov presents in an interview, Night Moves only shows “environmentally conscious community” with no “corresponding voice heard scoffing” (Rizov). Without the opposing viewpoints, we are focused on how to deal with climate change. The three eco-activists want one big plan to solve the current climate change, which is why they decide to blow up the dam. But, as the women says after the documentary, they must take it step by step and continually push forward to help. As the film goes on, Josh realizes this point. In the beginning, we saw, through his eyes, the need for him to continue his plan. Seeing the backyard waterfall and hearing about the over abundance of golf courses, angered him by the misallocation of resources. However, Eisenberg’s “twitchy intensity” and “ strangled tones and trigger reactions” show the films turn from their plan to blow up the dam to them dealing with its consequences (Rizov, Romney). Josh starts to doubt the significance of what the trio has done and this is seen through his twitchy hands and the paranoia he has with Dena. The guilt and realization that their act didn’t really help their cause also had a physical effect on Dena, as we can see with her rashes. Eisenberg’s performance also gives the film a thriller feel as tensions continue to rise until his breaking point of killing Dena. We are given doubts about each character as they become suspicious of each other and wonder if they can trust one another. Although Harmon says that it’s healthier for Josh to be paranoid, we actually see this paranoia break the trio and lead to their isolation. More than just the message of helping the environment, Reickhardt’s actual purpose is to focus on the characters’ relationships and how they deal with trusting one another.
ReplyDeleteIn one of the readings KR talks about how such (lefty) activism often, perhaps always, ends up turning into paranoia. The problem is, of course, that everyone who participates is vulnerable to the others who might "rat" on them; that knowledge--that one's allies *might* not turn out to be tough enough--starts (inevitably?) eating at one's perceptions.
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