‘Certain Women’ is a lot like life — but dull
To eschew cheap dramatics, to avoid cliché and formula, to stay true to some inner sense of what is authentic and real — these are practices and aspirations to be praised.
[...] the trick for any filmmaker who aspires to use film to present a vision of real life — whether you’re talking about Bergman, Ozu, Antonioni or Kelly Reichardt, the director of “Certain Women” — is to find the hidden drama in the everyday.
[...] yet . . . there’s a distinct talent at work here and an underlying intensity and purpose to this film that must be recognized, that almost can’t not be recognized.
Reichardt is attuned to her characters and alert to her actors in a way that’s practically biological, as though she had tentacles or snail feelers.
Michelle Williams plays a rural woman who wants to build a sandstone wall in her home.
Laura Dern plays a lawyer, whose former client (Jared Harris) was injured in an accident and should have had a strong personal injury case.
Lily Gladstone is a rancher who stumbles into a night class on education and law and stays because there’s something about the woman who is teaching it.
[...] for every scene that somehow jumps out like a fish in a placid stream, there are five or six others that just lie there, including stretches of silent, rote activity that are without any apparent possibility of interest.
[...] we end up with a movie in which it becomes very possible to respect the intent and yet be frustrated by the result.