Miracle of Michelle

Is it time to anoint Michelle Williams as the best actress of her generation?  What woman around 30 would you watch with more confidence in her ability to make any character come alive, whether it’s the waif of Wendy and Lucy or the emergency room doctor of Mammoth, not to mention her Oscar nom for Brokeback Mountain?  Here are two more I’ve just seen.

Blue Valentine.  (2010, MC-81)  I couldn’t decide whether the characters in this movie were a mess, or the movie was a mess, but the film’s value lies in the questions it leaves open, your urge to make sense of it after the fact.  Derek Cianfrance channels Cassavettes in a lacerating romantic drama, which flashes back and forth between the end and the beginning of a relationship, from love at first sight to miserable ever after.  Though he is reputed to have worked on the script for 12 years, and had the two stars attached for many years, the writer-director finally went on set and instructed Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling to surprise him.  And they do, and us, and themselves as well.  There are marvelous and revealing moments, but does it all hang together?  The characters are sufficiently complicated that our reactions to them have to be complicated, but some elements seem over-determined.  I was unhappy with the ending on several levels, but credit the film’s commitment to truths of intimate reality rather than wish fulfillment.  It’s definitely an experience, but not for everyone (NC-17 or not).

Meek’s Cutoff.  (2011, MC-85) is also an experience, excruciating in an entirely different way.  In Kelly Reichardt’s film, three covered wagons traverse a trackless sagebrush wilderness on their way to Oregon in 1845.  They’ve hired Meek to guide them and he has led them into a shortcut that goes on forever, as their water runs out and disaster looms on every side.  Though eschewing widescreen panorama, the film does capture tiny human figures lost in a vastness.  We go through most of the film with no close-up view of the characters, with scenes in darkness lit only by lantern or campfire, with mumbled dialogue less audible than the sound of the wind or creaking wagon wheels.  It takes a long time to recognize Michelle Williams hidden in her bonnet, as the woman who takes the lead, first amongst the other women, Shirley Henderson and Zoe Kazan, and eventually among the whole train, as Meek loses all credibility.  Slow moving and unresolved in a way that infuriates many, this too is a film that radiates reality while foiling audience expectation.  You will be rewarded only if you are patient enough.