Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008) shares quite a bit in common with many of the films we’ve already examined. The film’s opens to the familiar situation of a financially desperate woman in a transitional phase of her life, and from there goes on to explore the often under-acknowledged nuances of homelessness, something that we definitely have not seen explicitly looked at in other films. Wendy’s homelessness is (partially) characterized through the paradox of the constant movement that homelessness seems to require in the film (outside the fact that Wendy’s ultimate goal is getting to Alaska) and the necessitation of money to do so. Wendy is constantly required to be on the move throughout the film, whether it be relocating her car from the Walgreen’s parking lot, finding a safe place to sleep while her car is not available, or figuring out transportation to find her dog. Other homeless people she encounters are on the move, stowing away on trains and wandering through the forest. At the same time, Wendy needs to come up with money to pay her taxi driver, fix her car, and pay her jail fine to be able to leave Oregon. The tension between money and mobility is present all over the film, and is an aspect of homelessness that largely goes unsung in the popular discussion of homeless people.
I was looking for insights to make that extended beyond the cinematic devices we’ve already beat into the ground that involve the consistent tropes of movement and traveling throughout the film but was experiencing some difficulty. One comment from Reichardt in Armstrong’s interview, however, struck me as incredibly interesting and allowed me to realize where this particular film becomes very effective. In describing her attraction to John Raymond’s works, Reichardt notes that she was initially drawn to the way his “characters came through in simply how they existed in the places they were in” rather than being developed through expositional work or whatever else. Reichardt’s filmmaking, both this film and Old Joy (2006), evokes this exact same method of building characters and creating messages through spatial interactions. In the film we feel Wendy’s frustrations as she searches for a safe place to sleep, analyzing the landscapes that are shown in the point of view shots with the same nervous skepticism as Wendy. Reichardt has Wendy move through many different spaces that are “behind” places, so to speak, like looking for Lucy out behind the grocery store near the dumpsters or looking for places to sleep behind the train tracks in the woods. This decision reminds viewers that these are really the only places that homeless people are socially allowed to move, which is made all the more evident by the casually “thoughtless judgment” (Armstrong) that she experiences when trying to confront people and make them sympathetic to her problems. The grocery store worker is completely unable to see anything but a thief when addressing her, you can feel a underlying tone of condescending thoughts and slight annoyance from the local pound secretary when trying to discern a way to contact her, and then blatant classism from the group of young kids that walk by her car. The environment plays as big a role as anything in shaping the political tone of the film.
Additionally, and more in line with the themes of our class, the film’s environment is very indicative of a place that has been rendered economically obsolete by a changing globalized economy. The local businesses (the car shop, the grocery store) have an obvious air of being well beyond their prime and occupied by lower middle class people. The town was formerly a town that worked primarily around one particular industry (I forget which), and the modernization of that industry has left the town and its people behind, a theme we’ve run across before. As far as the relationship between love and money is concerned, that issue is addressed through the titular Wendy and Lucy. Wendy loses Lucy, ultimately, because of her quickly descending financial situation, and while she maybe could have taken him back in the end it wouldn’t have been easy. As with other films Wendy and Lucy offers no definitive answers to this modern dilemma, but the lack of money once again complicates and strains the loving relationship at the heart of the film.
"The tension between money and mobility is present all over the film, and is an aspect of homelessness that largely goes unsung in the popular discussion of homeless people." Good point.
"“behind” places"--I like this notion and your observations relating to it. Nice!
Wendy and Lucy (2008) opens and closes on shots of train tracks. Repeatedly, we come back to them during the film. Whenever Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) is on the hunt for something, we come back to them. One of the last shots of her is when she is walking along the tracks, about to hop aboard a box car, after deciding to leave Lucy behind. Trains, since their invention I would argue, have become this symbol of romantic escapism, of freedom from a bad to a better one. This romantic dream is shaken a little by the people we see at the bonfire near the train tracks that Lucy leads Wendy to when she runs off. Will Oldham’s character, Icky, is rambling on about his forklift experience in Alaska, and both the audience surrounding the bonfire and we on the other side of the screen have to be subjected to it. Being so early on, in fact, it’s the first thing that really happens in the film plot-wise, it sets the tone for hopelessness. Immediately before this, even, we see a slightly out-of-focus shot of Wendy, shouting “Come on back, girl!” to Lucy, foreshadowing her loss. Humming is also repeated at specific moments in the film. The first scene with Wendy and Lucy is the two of them playing their game with the stick, Wendy humming over it. She hums to herself later, as she’s outlining her plan again, and things look on the up-and-up – she’s about to go pick up her car, Lucy has been found – Wendy is happy. She knocks herself out of it, because she realizes the time, and heads off to get her car, which, of course, becomes impossible and she loses the car. One more time, we hear humming, very briefly, as Wendy approaches the house where Lucy has been for the past few days. This is her last shot at something going back to what it was, in some way, her last moment of hope, and she’s humming there, albeit a little dejected. After this, she decides to let Lucy have a better life, because she’s already made it there, with a yard and a kind owner who can provide for her, and Wendy has lost her hope, so she follows the train tracks. Wendy does have one friend in all this, her “temporary Lucy,” the security guard at the Walgreen’s. When he originally appears, he seems like the start to a not-so-great day, waking her up to get her out of the parking lot, but he grows into her only point of hope in this small town. He encourages her, gives her directions, and provides what little help he can, when he can. Kelly Reichardt points this out in her interview with Zachary Wigon, “When you live off in your gated community, then it becomes like, the people on the bottom rungs have to look after each other. These are people who are not equipped to give that much… It’s all these levels of precarious living.” The security guard gives her seven dollars at the end of the film, and is cautious about his daughter seeing him giving her the money. But this connection is what carries Wendy through it all. The other important connection, that Reichardt specifically says is the “closer” of the two, is Wendy’s encounter with the man by the train tracks near the bonfire where she sleeps for the night. This is where Wendy wakes up to the realities of what her situation is, and, possibly, what helps lead her to the decision to let Lucy go.
Of the ideas that our class continues to explore in the films we are presented with, this one, above all, highlights on connections that people make with others in a very specific way. Knowing what we know now about Reichardt’s filmmaking, it’s easy to deduce what she is doing here with her conversation about homelessness. Wendy has been living in a string of unlucky events, which apparently started even before the story we see unfold. As Reichardt mentions in her interview with Gus Van Sant, “So we imagined Wendy as a renter; no insurance, just making ends meet, and a fire occurs due to no fault of her own and she loses her place to live.” This stems from one of the main ideas that drove the film, the scramble faced by those in charge during Hurricane Katrina, and the struggle of those who were trying to get out, along with the misinformation flying around. The force behind the film then becomes this tale of, or exposition of, how society answers for those struggling. As Reichardt said in the same interview, “There’s a certain kind of help that society will give and a certain help it won’t give.” The ways in which the society of small-town Oregon treats Wendy in her moments of need – not being able to sleep in this parking lot, stealing for her dog and being put through the system for it – or small-town Indiana, when she calls her brother-in-law, her sister refusing to help before knowing what kind of help she needed, is reflective of how any one of us would presumably treat someone on the street. We assume something about them, that they are weak or lazy, and label them as such, before considering the person within. This film aims to show us exactly that.
Kelly Reichardt somehow managed to outdo Homeward Bound as far as sad pet-related content. It may have even outdone Fry’s dog waiting for him in Futurama. You know, the one really sad part in Futurama (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6GDil0rGls). Anyway, I would first like to thank Ms. Reichardt for almst making me cry in class. Twice.
What makes Wendy and Lucy particularly sad is that the human has to make a choice based on a difficult economic situation that is out of her control, as far as we know. We have discussed the lateral nature of the world now, and Wendy is, unfortunately, scuttling around (referencing the crab example), moving across the country but never moving between financial situations. Although little to no background information is provided (she has a brother, I guess?), audiences may assume that she has run out of options. She crosses her fingers and ventures to the only seemingly possible job in her Accord. (Here, I have to note that I highly doubt an Accord’s engine would screw anyone that badly, as I am 100% solely and whole-heartedly a Honda Accord driver and on my second one.) Sadly, at the end of the film, she finds that just as human-human relationships cannot be sustained without money, human-dog relationships are equally as doomed.
Aside from portraying the nature of a human’s love for her or his dog, the film, perhaps even more so, portrays the injustices of being poor. At the beginning of the film, audiences are not immediately aware of Wendy and Lucy’s situation. They walk, seemingly carefree, until Lucy wanders into a campground filled with people with strange beards rolling joints. She appears threatened, even though the campers show nothing but good will toward her. Williams’ performance gives us the sense that Wendy is in a constant state of worry.
Other signs of Wendy’s homelessness occur, including the sad sound of the last few bits of dog food hitting the bottom of the bowl (which, for privileged people, means an annoying trip to the store, while, for Wendy, it means selling cans), the use of her car as her mobile motel, and her concern about the mechanic giving her a fair price. In the beginning, she could be one of those hippies who chooses a life of wandering and living simply because it’s, like, cool or whatever, but she clearly struggles.
As Matthew stated, Reichardt did a wonderful job of portraying "the often under-acknowledged nuances of homelessness." Wendy’s poverty (and perhaps her androgyny, which could be threatening to men, even in a progressive state like Oregon, but I won’t get into that) positions her as a victim of our systems in multiple ways. When she steals from the grocery store, audiences cannot possibly feel that she is wrong. Her car won’t start and her dog is hungry. After all, what’s a pastry here or there? Furthermore, when Wendy is in the cruiser with the cop, she expresses concerns over her dog, growing smaller and smaller as she pleadingly watches out the back window and asks the cop to do something about Lucy. Finally, when Wendy leaves prison, a woman informs her that she owes a $50 fee. First of all, someone being locked up for petty crimes likely would not happen to just have that amount, and second of all, the woman also informed Wendy that if she did not pay the fee immediately, she would have a warrant and need to come back in two weeks to pay that $50 plus court fees. Wealthy people really like to talk about how poor people should really just help themselves and pull up the old bootstraps, but poverty is now a true cycle – perhaps it always has been, although I know less about it in the past. Reichardt addresses this notion in her interview, saying that the idea came from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I found that fascinating, although many are uncomfortable talking about the aftermath and the hurricane's victims because, well, it mostly wiped out the poor black neighborhoods. Part of me wants to talk about the idea of writing a white woman's story inspired by an incident that most seriously harmed non-white people, but it seems exhausting, so I will simply address that it's interesting and let Beyonce draw attention to the black women who suffered. I guess you make films of what you know, and Reichardt does Pacific Northwest sad films very, very, very well. It's always interesting to consider, though - even if I love Reichardt's film and her characters, particularly Lucy.
The film also warns against teenage dudes wearing humorously large cross necklaces.
"no background information is provided (she has a brother, I guess?)" It's actually a sister, tho W predominantly speaker's with her brother-in-law, who seems a bit more sympathetic to W than her sister is.
Reg. your point about race: yes, good point. I think all of KR's films are ABOUT white (poor or lower income) people up until W&L. And I don't recall any black or non white people in her films, including Night Moves and her forthcoming film, CERTAIN WOMEN. I don't think one HAS to hold this against her; it's perfectly ok, I think, to focus on just one ethnicity, in this case white people. But it is at the same time a legitimate question to ask: why do this, what is the effect of that, also and esp w/r/t the films' diagnostic quality about the problems they engage, such as poverty, homelessness, being lost, the decline of the middle class, the decline of liberalism etc.
"her androgyny"--choosing this "Look" for W is certainly an interesting choice on KR and, presumably, MW's, part. Perhaps it can also be chalked up to "realism": would a homeless drifter like Wendy be "traditionally" pretty, without money for all the things that help us be good looking (in the "traditional" sense), such as make up and hair products and so on? More, not looking "sexy" (in the "traditional" sense) might also be a way to protect herself from unwanted approaches by (male) strangers whom he knows she's bound to encounter while sleeping in unsafe spaces.... But of course, as you point out, this "androgynous" look could also backfire as we, sadly, know only all too well from all those incidents where people whose gender identity is unclear to others are being attacked for precisely this reason. It's an interesting detail in the film--on one hand just a detail, on the other so highly visible. I don't think this has been widely discussed (there's one reference to it in our readings, made by KR herself).
"I have to note that I highly doubt an Accord’s engine would screw anyone that badly, as I am 100% solely and whole-heartedly a Honda Accord driver and on my second one" LOL. Even tho Hondas have a good rep, only because you have had two--out of however millions and millions they've produced--doesn't mean its engine can't break down. Be carful inferring from one or two examples a generalization.... Every car breaks down: that's in the nature of machines and, importantly, to capitalism, which HAS to have things break down or else it would be very difficult to get people to buy new stuff, which is necessary for this economic system. It's called planned obsolesce, which includes both the actual wearing out of materials and the becoming outdated of machines such as iPhones etc, which seemingly have to be replaced every 2 or 3 years lest you run the danger of your apps not longer fully functioning and so on.
"Williams’ performance gives us the sense that Wendy is in a constant state of worry." Yes, good observation. And of course we se that she's got good reason to be worried.
Wendy and Lucy (2008) set a tone of the peaceful environment, for the small town in Oregon. Although the film, never establishes the actual location in Oregon, the scenery of the small town shows a lack of modern society. Everything seems to roll in a slow pace environment. Regarding class, this little town seems to be the home of lower-middle-class citizens. Wendy Carroll (Michelle William) is homeless but tries to make it work with her dog, Lucy. Wendy seems to care about Lucy more than herself. As the plot moves along, Wendy spends most the film looking for her dog Lucy and ends up finding her, but what is interesting the atmosphere, in which, Wendy finds Lucy. Wendy being homeless, notices the yard and house surrounding Lucy and loving her so much, she knows living with those people Lucy would be treated right. The say if you love something let it go can be a metaphor for this sequence. This particular scene explains the movement of the economy in our country, seeking an opportunity to build a life. Wendy is constantly trying to leave the small town, as she is on the move to Alaska, for a better economic state. Sam Littman’s article on director Kelly Reichardt, talks about the scene where security guard gives Windy some money - “Don’t let her see” – “profoundly heartwarming moment that illustrates the theme of poverty.” This sequence shows that humanity is real, and illustrates that the security guard knows how hard life get, for he doesn’t ask for anything in return.
Of all the films we have watched in this class so far, none fit the "love without money" ideal quite as well as Reichardt's film "Wendy and Lucy". This movie is a literal embodiment of love, shown through the great lengths that Wendy goes to recover her only true friend Lucy. It is obvious in the film that money is tight, and in fact that Wendy and Lucy are homeless. This presents a problem from the start if we are to believe that love cannot exist without money. After Wendy is arrested, we see the two finally part, and she spends the rest of the film searching for Lucy. What happens when she finds her is really the defining moment in the film however. At this moment, Wendy openly realizes that her love for the dog cannot exist with her current economic standing. She cannot love and take care of the dog with no money, no home, and now no car. She realizes this and even makes a point to come back and get Lucy when she has made some money. She leaves Lucy in the care of someone who is capable of loving her because they have enough money to do so. This film is really a wake up call to middle america to open their eyes and see the real problem of poverty. Reichardt mentions her standing on this topic in her interview, and even goes as far to say that Obama isn't doing much about the lower impoverished class, but rather working more for the middle class. I believe this film is a ploy to really get people thinking about those in need and perhaps even insight action.
In Wendy and Lucy, Reichardt shows the audience how isolated Wendy is from society and how she is looking for some kind of purpose. When we first meet Wendy, we see her only with Lucy, having little human interaction. We even see her look in on a group of people from a distance, to convey how she doesn’t feel quite right joining them. Most of the times we see her, Wendy is alone or people are leaving her. As Wendy stands next to a character, we usually see that character get into a car and drive off leaving her just standing there. In this instance, these characters have a purpose, have somewhere to go and people to be with, while Wendy is firmly planted in Oregon. However, after Wendy loses Lucy, we start to see her with a new added purpose, which is why she stays in Oregon, to find her dog. Lucy is the only thing that has made Wendy feel less alone, which is why she tries so hard to find Lucy, to reduce the feeling of loneliness and isolation she feels with the rest of society. At one point, we see Wendy think “she’s closer to the security guard,” but once he pulls up in a car with a women, she then realizes that “they’re not on the same plane” (Wigon). It is slightly heartbreaking to see her realize that she has more in common with the homeless guy that went through her stuff, than all the other people she has met. During her plea at the supermarket, she repeatedly tries to tell them that she isn’t like other people who are in poverty. But, as the film goes on, we see as Wendy starts to see that she is more similar to them than others she has met. Reichardt also tries to show the audience that if you are not able to take care of yourself, then you cannot take care of others. This is verbalized with the supermarket worker who busted Wendy for stealing. During this scene, it was also a wonder why a minimum wage worker was so inclined to punish Wendy, while his boss seemed almost sad to have to send her to the sheriff. This all leads to Wendy finally realizing that she will need to be able to make money to take care of herself before she can take Lucy. Here, money is important, and without it, she feels alone because she does not have her dog that she feels like family with. This film shows the important the effect money has on love. That is why Wendy must make the decision of leaving her dog she leaves, so that she can garner some wealth and come back to Lucy again; ready to take care of her. The love and money relationship has also put a strain on Wendy’s family. As she makes calls to her sister and brother-in-law, her sister continuously asks why Wendy is calling and what she wants from them. Both sides are strapped for money, and without the stability wealth gives them, Wendy’s family abandons her in her time of need. You feel no familial ties during their phone conversation, showing why Wendy does whatever she can to reunite with Lucy because Lucy loves Wendy unconditionally.
"During this scene, it was also a wonder why a minimum wage worker was so inclined to punish Wendy, while his boss seemed almost sad to have to send her to the sheriff. " Yes, that's quite noticeable and raises an interesting question. It's been suggested that people of the lower middle classes--also known as the "petit bourgeoisie"--are in their attitude harder w/r/t the poor than the middle classes and upper classes, precisely because they, the lower middle class, is constantly fearing to fall back into poverty (they're just the one proverbial paycheck out of poverty) while having aspirations toward being idle class. The teenage guy seems to embody this, albeit in a bit of an exaggerated and perhaps overly obvious manner.
I really enjoyed Wendy and Lucy (2008), but honestly, there was one very specific scene that really hit home. There are many things I could talk about with this film, but I'll cut right to the chase and discuss my favorite scene- the one where Wendy discusses her hardships with the Security Guard.
In this scene, the Security Guard politely asks if Wendy has a job, or is looking for one. Wendy replies with her repetitive response, "I'm just passing through" and explains that she does not have an address for a job. This is when the Security Guard responds sympathetically with my favorite quote: "You can't get a address without an address. You can't get a job without a job."
This really resonated with me. In this day and age, it is nearly impossible to find a job or a house without paradoxical prerequisites. Many of the people in my generation, and the generation before, suffer from this paradox that is clearly explained in Wendy and Lucy. This paradox stems from the aftermath of 9/11, as Homeland Security has since upped the requirements for gaining employment or housing safely. This may seem odd to bring up, but for example, prior to 9/11, one wouldn't need anything more than an ID for an entry-level job. Now, post-9/11, a social security card, a prior work history record, and a stable address is now required for working a very basic job. This can make it super difficult and nearly impossible for a great majority of people to get a job or a home, which can be seen in Wendy and Lucy with both Wendy and the other homeless individuals just outside of the town.
That all being said, I really wanted to point out the emphasis in the idea of these paradoxical prerequisites. They're really prevalent in the film, and they're super prominent in our every day life, even in the year 2016.
Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008) shares quite a bit in common with many of the films we’ve already examined. The film’s opens to the familiar situation of a financially desperate woman in a transitional phase of her life, and from there goes on to explore the often under-acknowledged nuances of homelessness, something that we definitely have not seen explicitly looked at in other films. Wendy’s homelessness is (partially) characterized through the paradox of the constant movement that homelessness seems to require in the film (outside the fact that Wendy’s ultimate goal is getting to Alaska) and the necessitation of money to do so. Wendy is constantly required to be on the move throughout the film, whether it be relocating her car from the Walgreen’s parking lot, finding a safe place to sleep while her car is not available, or figuring out transportation to find her dog. Other homeless people she encounters are on the move, stowing away on trains and wandering through the forest. At the same time, Wendy needs to come up with money to pay her taxi driver, fix her car, and pay her jail fine to be able to leave Oregon. The tension between money and mobility is present all over the film, and is an aspect of homelessness that largely goes unsung in the popular discussion of homeless people.
ReplyDeleteI was looking for insights to make that extended beyond the cinematic devices we’ve already beat into the ground that involve the consistent tropes of movement and traveling throughout the film but was experiencing some difficulty. One comment from Reichardt in Armstrong’s interview, however, struck me as incredibly interesting and allowed me to realize where this particular film becomes very effective. In describing her attraction to John Raymond’s works, Reichardt notes that she was initially drawn to the way his “characters came through in simply how they existed in the places they were in” rather than being developed through expositional work or whatever else. Reichardt’s filmmaking, both this film and Old Joy (2006), evokes this exact same method of building characters and creating messages through spatial interactions. In the film we feel Wendy’s frustrations as she searches for a safe place to sleep, analyzing the landscapes that are shown in the point of view shots with the same nervous skepticism as Wendy. Reichardt has Wendy move through many different spaces that are “behind” places, so to speak, like looking for Lucy out behind the grocery store near the dumpsters or looking for places to sleep behind the train tracks in the woods. This decision reminds viewers that these are really the only places that homeless people are socially allowed to move, which is made all the more evident by the casually “thoughtless judgment” (Armstrong) that she experiences when trying to confront people and make them sympathetic to her problems. The grocery store worker is completely unable to see anything but a thief when addressing her, you can feel a underlying tone of condescending thoughts and slight annoyance from the local pound secretary when trying to discern a way to contact her, and then blatant classism from the group of young kids that walk by her car. The environment plays as big a role as anything in shaping the political tone of the film.
Additionally, and more in line with the themes of our class, the film’s environment is very indicative of a place that has been rendered economically obsolete by a changing globalized economy. The local businesses (the car shop, the grocery store) have an obvious air of being well beyond their prime and occupied by lower middle class people. The town was formerly a town that worked primarily around one particular industry (I forget which), and the modernization of that industry has left the town and its people behind, a theme we’ve run across before. As far as the relationship between love and money is concerned, that issue is addressed through the titular Wendy and Lucy. Wendy loses Lucy, ultimately, because of her quickly descending financial situation, and while she maybe could have taken him back in the end it wouldn’t have been easy. As with other films Wendy and Lucy offers no definitive answers to this modern dilemma, but the lack of money once again complicates and strains the loving relationship at the heart of the film.
Delete"The tension between money and mobility is present all over the film, and is an aspect of homelessness that largely goes unsung in the popular discussion of homeless people." Good point.
Delete"“behind” places"--I like this notion and your observations relating to it. Nice!
Wendy and Lucy (2008) opens and closes on shots of train tracks. Repeatedly, we come back to them during the film. Whenever Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) is on the hunt for something, we come back to them. One of the last shots of her is when she is walking along the tracks, about to hop aboard a box car, after deciding to leave Lucy behind. Trains, since their invention I would argue, have become this symbol of romantic escapism, of freedom from a bad to a better one. This romantic dream is shaken a little by the people we see at the bonfire near the train tracks that Lucy leads Wendy to when she runs off. Will Oldham’s character, Icky, is rambling on about his forklift experience in Alaska, and both the audience surrounding the bonfire and we on the other side of the screen have to be subjected to it. Being so early on, in fact, it’s the first thing that really happens in the film plot-wise, it sets the tone for hopelessness. Immediately before this, even, we see a slightly out-of-focus shot of Wendy, shouting “Come on back, girl!” to Lucy, foreshadowing her loss.
ReplyDeleteHumming is also repeated at specific moments in the film. The first scene with Wendy and Lucy is the two of them playing their game with the stick, Wendy humming over it. She hums to herself later, as she’s outlining her plan again, and things look on the up-and-up – she’s about to go pick up her car, Lucy has been found – Wendy is happy. She knocks herself out of it, because she realizes the time, and heads off to get her car, which, of course, becomes impossible and she loses the car. One more time, we hear humming, very briefly, as Wendy approaches the house where Lucy has been for the past few days. This is her last shot at something going back to what it was, in some way, her last moment of hope, and she’s humming there, albeit a little dejected. After this, she decides to let Lucy have a better life, because she’s already made it there, with a yard and a kind owner who can provide for her, and Wendy has lost her hope, so she follows the train tracks.
Wendy does have one friend in all this, her “temporary Lucy,” the security guard at the Walgreen’s. When he originally appears, he seems like the start to a not-so-great day, waking her up to get her out of the parking lot, but he grows into her only point of hope in this small town. He encourages her, gives her directions, and provides what little help he can, when he can. Kelly Reichardt points this out in her interview with Zachary Wigon, “When you live off in your gated community, then it becomes like, the people on the bottom rungs have to look after each other. These are people who are not equipped to give that much… It’s all these levels of precarious living.” The security guard gives her seven dollars at the end of the film, and is cautious about his daughter seeing him giving her the money. But this connection is what carries Wendy through it all. The other important connection, that Reichardt specifically says is the “closer” of the two, is Wendy’s encounter with the man by the train tracks near the bonfire where she sleeps for the night. This is where Wendy wakes up to the realities of what her situation is, and, possibly, what helps lead her to the decision to let Lucy go.
Of the ideas that our class continues to explore in the films we are presented with, this one, above all, highlights on connections that people make with others in a very specific way. Knowing what we know now about Reichardt’s filmmaking, it’s easy to deduce what she is doing here with her conversation about homelessness. Wendy has been living in a string of unlucky events, which apparently started even before the story we see unfold. As Reichardt mentions in her interview with Gus Van Sant, “So we imagined Wendy as a renter; no insurance, just making ends meet, and a fire occurs due to no fault of her own and she loses her place to live.” This stems from one of the main ideas that drove the film, the scramble faced by those in charge during Hurricane Katrina, and the struggle of those who were trying to get out, along with the misinformation flying around. The force behind the film then becomes this tale of, or exposition of, how society answers for those struggling. As Reichardt said in the same interview, “There’s a certain kind of help that society will give and a certain help it won’t give.” The ways in which the society of small-town Oregon treats Wendy in her moments of need – not being able to sleep in this parking lot, stealing for her dog and being put through the system for it – or small-town Indiana, when she calls her brother-in-law, her sister refusing to help before knowing what kind of help she needed, is reflective of how any one of us would presumably treat someone on the street. We assume something about them, that they are weak or lazy, and label them as such, before considering the person within. This film aims to show us exactly that.
DeleteKelly Reichardt somehow managed to outdo Homeward Bound as far as sad pet-related content. It may have even outdone Fry’s dog waiting for him in Futurama. You know, the one really sad part in Futurama (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6GDil0rGls). Anyway, I would first like to thank Ms. Reichardt for almst making me cry in class. Twice.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes Wendy and Lucy particularly sad is that the human has to make a choice based on a difficult economic situation that is out of her control, as far as we know. We have discussed the lateral nature of the world now, and Wendy is, unfortunately, scuttling around (referencing the crab example), moving across the country but never moving between financial situations. Although little to no background information is provided (she has a brother, I guess?), audiences may assume that she has run out of options. She crosses her fingers and ventures to the only seemingly possible job in her Accord. (Here, I have to note that I highly doubt an Accord’s engine would screw anyone that badly, as I am 100% solely and whole-heartedly a Honda Accord driver and on my second one.) Sadly, at the end of the film, she finds that just as human-human relationships cannot be sustained without money, human-dog relationships are equally as doomed.
Aside from portraying the nature of a human’s love for her or his dog, the film, perhaps even more so, portrays the injustices of being poor. At the beginning of the film, audiences are not immediately aware of Wendy and Lucy’s situation. They walk, seemingly carefree, until Lucy wanders into a campground filled with people with strange beards rolling joints. She appears threatened, even though the campers show nothing but good will toward her. Williams’ performance gives us the sense that Wendy is in a constant state of worry.
Other signs of Wendy’s homelessness occur, including the sad sound of the last few bits of dog food hitting the bottom of the bowl (which, for privileged people, means an annoying trip to the store, while, for Wendy, it means selling cans), the use of her car as her mobile motel, and her concern about the mechanic giving her a fair price. In the beginning, she could be one of those hippies who chooses a life of wandering and living simply because it’s, like, cool or whatever, but she clearly struggles.
As Matthew stated, Reichardt did a wonderful job of portraying "the often under-acknowledged nuances of homelessness." Wendy’s poverty (and perhaps her androgyny, which could be threatening to men, even in a progressive state like Oregon, but I won’t get into that) positions her as a victim of our systems in multiple ways. When she steals from the grocery store, audiences cannot possibly feel that she is wrong. Her car won’t start and her dog is hungry. After all, what’s a pastry here or there? Furthermore, when Wendy is in the cruiser with the cop, she expresses concerns over her dog, growing smaller and smaller as she pleadingly watches out the back window and asks the cop to do something about Lucy. Finally, when Wendy leaves prison, a woman informs her that she owes a $50 fee. First of all, someone being locked up for petty crimes likely would not happen to just have that amount, and second of all, the woman also informed Wendy that if she did not pay the fee immediately, she would have a warrant and need to come back in two weeks to pay that $50 plus court fees. Wealthy people really like to talk about how poor people should really just help themselves and pull up the old bootstraps, but poverty is now a true cycle – perhaps it always has been, although I know less about it in the past. Reichardt addresses this notion in her interview, saying that the idea came from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I found that fascinating, although many are uncomfortable talking about the aftermath and the hurricane's victims because, well, it mostly wiped out the poor black neighborhoods. Part of me wants to talk about the idea of writing a white woman's story inspired by an incident that most seriously harmed non-white people, but it seems exhausting, so I will simply address that it's interesting and let Beyonce draw attention to the black women who suffered. I guess you make films of what you know, and Reichardt does Pacific Northwest sad films very, very, very well. It's always interesting to consider, though - even if I love Reichardt's film and her characters, particularly Lucy.
DeleteThe film also warns against teenage dudes wearing humorously large cross necklaces.
"no background information is provided (she has a brother, I guess?)" It's actually a sister, tho W predominantly speaker's with her brother-in-law, who seems a bit more sympathetic to W than her sister is.
DeleteReg. your point about race: yes, good point. I think all of KR's films are ABOUT white (poor or lower income) people up until W&L. And I don't recall any black or non white people in her films, including Night Moves and her forthcoming film, CERTAIN WOMEN. I don't think one HAS to hold this against her; it's perfectly ok, I think, to focus on just one ethnicity, in this case white people. But it is at the same time a legitimate question to ask: why do this, what is the effect of that, also and esp w/r/t the films' diagnostic quality about the problems they engage, such as poverty, homelessness, being lost, the decline of the middle class, the decline of liberalism etc.
"her androgyny"--choosing this "Look" for W is certainly an interesting choice on KR and, presumably, MW's, part. Perhaps it can also be chalked up to "realism": would a homeless drifter like Wendy be "traditionally" pretty, without money for all the things that help us be good looking (in the "traditional" sense), such as make up and hair products and so on? More, not looking "sexy" (in the "traditional" sense) might also be a way to protect herself from unwanted approaches by (male) strangers whom he knows she's bound to encounter while sleeping in unsafe spaces.... But of course, as you point out, this "androgynous" look could also backfire as we, sadly, know only all too well from all those incidents where people whose gender identity is unclear to others are being attacked for precisely this reason. It's an interesting detail in the film--on one hand just a detail, on the other so highly visible. I don't think this has been widely discussed (there's one reference to it in our readings, made by KR herself).
"I have to note that I highly doubt an Accord’s engine would screw anyone that badly, as I am 100% solely and whole-heartedly a Honda Accord driver and on my second one" LOL. Even tho Hondas have a good rep, only because you have had two--out of however millions and millions they've produced--doesn't mean its engine can't break down. Be carful inferring from one or two examples a generalization.... Every car breaks down: that's in the nature of machines and, importantly, to capitalism, which HAS to have things break down or else it would be very difficult to get people to buy new stuff, which is necessary for this economic system. It's called planned obsolesce, which includes both the actual wearing out of materials and the becoming outdated of machines such as iPhones etc, which seemingly have to be replaced every 2 or 3 years lest you run the danger of your apps not longer fully functioning and so on.
"Williams’ performance gives us the sense that Wendy is in a constant state of worry." Yes, good observation. And of course we se that she's got good reason to be worried.
Wendy and Lucy (2008) set a tone of the peaceful environment, for the small town in Oregon. Although the film, never establishes the actual location in Oregon, the scenery of the small town shows a lack of modern society. Everything seems to roll in a slow pace environment. Regarding class, this little town seems to be the home of lower-middle-class citizens. Wendy Carroll (Michelle William) is homeless but tries to make it work with her dog, Lucy. Wendy seems to care about Lucy more than herself. As the plot moves along, Wendy spends most the film looking for her dog Lucy and ends up finding her, but what is interesting the atmosphere, in which, Wendy finds Lucy. Wendy being homeless, notices the yard and house surrounding Lucy and loving her so much, she knows living with those people Lucy would be treated right. The say if you love something let it go can be a metaphor for this sequence. This particular scene explains the movement of the economy in our country, seeking an opportunity to build a life. Wendy is constantly trying to leave the small town, as she is on the move to Alaska, for a better economic state. Sam Littman’s article on director Kelly Reichardt, talks about the scene where security guard gives Windy some money - “Don’t let her see” – “profoundly heartwarming moment that illustrates the theme of poverty.” This sequence shows that humanity is real, and illustrates that the security guard knows how hard life get, for he doesn’t ask for anything in return.
ReplyDeleteOf all the films we have watched in this class so far, none fit the "love without money" ideal quite as well as Reichardt's film "Wendy and Lucy". This movie is a literal embodiment of love, shown through the great lengths that Wendy goes to recover her only true friend Lucy. It is obvious in the film that money is tight, and in fact that Wendy and Lucy are homeless. This presents a problem from the start if we are to believe that love cannot exist without money. After Wendy is arrested, we see the two finally part, and she spends the rest of the film searching for Lucy. What happens when she finds her is really the defining moment in the film however. At this moment, Wendy openly realizes that her love for the dog cannot exist with her current economic standing. She cannot love and take care of the dog with no money, no home, and now no car. She realizes this and even makes a point to come back and get Lucy when she has made some money. She leaves Lucy in the care of someone who is capable of loving her because they have enough money to do so. This film is really a wake up call to middle america to open their eyes and see the real problem of poverty. Reichardt mentions her standing on this topic in her interview, and even goes as far to say that Obama isn't doing much about the lower impoverished class, but rather working more for the middle class. I believe this film is a ploy to really get people thinking about those in need and perhaps even insight action.
ReplyDeleteIn Wendy and Lucy, Reichardt shows the audience how isolated Wendy is from society and how she is looking for some kind of purpose. When we first meet Wendy, we see her only with Lucy, having little human interaction. We even see her look in on a group of people from a distance, to convey how she doesn’t feel quite right joining them. Most of the times we see her, Wendy is alone or people are leaving her. As Wendy stands next to a character, we usually see that character get into a car and drive off leaving her just standing there. In this instance, these characters have a purpose, have somewhere to go and people to be with, while Wendy is firmly planted in Oregon. However, after Wendy loses Lucy, we start to see her with a new added purpose, which is why she stays in Oregon, to find her dog. Lucy is the only thing that has made Wendy feel less alone, which is why she tries so hard to find Lucy, to reduce the feeling of loneliness and isolation she feels with the rest of society.
ReplyDeleteAt one point, we see Wendy think “she’s closer to the security guard,” but once he pulls up in a car with a women, she then realizes that “they’re not on the same plane” (Wigon). It is slightly heartbreaking to see her realize that she has more in common with the homeless guy that went through her stuff, than all the other people she has met. During her plea at the supermarket, she repeatedly tries to tell them that she isn’t like other people who are in poverty. But, as the film goes on, we see as Wendy starts to see that she is more similar to them than others she has met.
Reichardt also tries to show the audience that if you are not able to take care of yourself, then you cannot take care of others. This is verbalized with the supermarket worker who busted Wendy for stealing. During this scene, it was also a wonder why a minimum wage worker was so inclined to punish Wendy, while his boss seemed almost sad to have to send her to the sheriff. This all leads to Wendy finally realizing that she will need to be able to make money to take care of herself before she can take Lucy. Here, money is important, and without it, she feels alone because she does not have her dog that she feels like family with. This film shows the important the effect money has on love. That is why Wendy must make the decision of leaving her dog she leaves, so that she can garner some wealth and come back to Lucy again; ready to take care of her. The love and money relationship has also put a strain on Wendy’s family. As she makes calls to her sister and brother-in-law, her sister continuously asks why Wendy is calling and what she wants from them. Both sides are strapped for money, and without the stability wealth gives them, Wendy’s family abandons her in her time of need. You feel no familial ties during their phone conversation, showing why Wendy does whatever she can to reunite with Lucy because Lucy loves Wendy unconditionally.
"During this scene, it was also a wonder why a minimum wage worker was so inclined to punish Wendy, while his boss seemed almost sad to have to send her to the sheriff. " Yes, that's quite noticeable and raises an interesting question. It's been suggested that people of the lower middle classes--also known as the "petit bourgeoisie"--are in their attitude harder w/r/t the poor than the middle classes and upper classes, precisely because they, the lower middle class, is constantly fearing to fall back into poverty (they're just the one proverbial paycheck out of poverty) while having aspirations toward being idle class. The teenage guy seems to embody this, albeit in a bit of an exaggerated and perhaps overly obvious manner.
DeleteI really enjoyed Wendy and Lucy (2008), but honestly, there was one very specific scene that really hit home. There are many things I could talk about with this film, but I'll cut right to the chase and discuss my favorite scene- the one where Wendy discusses her hardships with the Security Guard.
ReplyDeleteIn this scene, the Security Guard politely asks if Wendy has a job, or is looking for one. Wendy replies with her repetitive response, "I'm just passing through" and explains that she does not have an address for a job. This is when the Security Guard responds sympathetically with my favorite quote: "You can't get a address without an address. You can't get a job without a job."
This really resonated with me. In this day and age, it is nearly impossible to find a job or a house without paradoxical prerequisites. Many of the people in my generation, and the generation before, suffer from this paradox that is clearly explained in Wendy and Lucy. This paradox stems from the aftermath of 9/11, as Homeland Security has since upped the requirements for gaining employment or housing safely. This may seem odd to bring up, but for example, prior to 9/11, one wouldn't need anything more than an ID for an entry-level job. Now, post-9/11, a social security card, a prior work history record, and a stable address is now required for working a very basic job. This can make it super difficult and nearly impossible for a great majority of people to get a job or a home, which can be seen in Wendy and Lucy with both Wendy and the other homeless individuals just outside of the town.
That all being said, I really wanted to point out the emphasis in the idea of these paradoxical prerequisites. They're really prevalent in the film, and they're super prominent in our every day life, even in the year 2016.