After the success of 2019’s First Cow, you might have expected Kelly Reichardt’s 2022 follow-up, Showing Up, to be a bigger hit than it was. Critics liked it; audiences not so much. It seems that Reichardt most hits the target with paying punters when she delivers westerns. See also Meek’s Cutoff.
But all her films are engaging, and she’s always up to something, often in the background, as she is with Showing Up, which is the story of an artist who struggles through the distractions of everyday life to produce her work. But what Reichardt is she actually up to, that’s the question. Is this a slice of life? Or the story of an also-ran, along the lines of Inside Llewyn Davis or Frances Ha? Or maybe it’s a slo-mo subterranean horror movie?
Michelle Williams – fifth time out with Reichardt – keeps her entire performance on the disappointed-to-depressed gamut in her depiction of Lizzy, a sculptor/potter/ceramist working towards her next show and finding that all of life is getting in the way. She has no hot water and her landlord, Jo (Hong Chau), an artist like her, isn’t in a hurry to fix it. Dad Bill (Judd Hirsch) is distant. Brother Sean (John Magaro, now a Reichardt regular in his third gig for her) is a shut-in with mental health issues. Her job at an art centre is another distraction The cat wants food. A pigeon is suddenly inside her apartment and she feels duty bound to care for it after the cat mauls it. Everyone seems to like Lizzy’s work, there’s no quarrel there. But as the deadline comes ever closer, will she ever get the stuff made?
Showing up – just getting on with grinding it out, perspiration not inspiration – appears to be the idea. What is your image of an artist? Single-minded, self-absorbed, ruthless, monomaniacal, self-assured? Possibly also moneyed? Supported? Apart from the talent, Lizzy has none of the other attributes. She doesn’t have the determination (or bank account) that Jo has. She doesn’t have the support structure of parents who validate her. Her brother is a straightforward liability. She is not the girl with all the gifts, in fact she seems to have almost none of them.
It is a strange and small film, a thriller done as slow cinema, with Michelle Williams putting on a casually brilliant performance as the quietly despondent but borderline frantic Lizzy. It’s shot again by regular DP Christopher Blauvelt, who uses Japanese Kowa lenses from the 1960s to give the whole thing a low-contrast look with cool colours to match Lizzy’s mood.
All the performances are fantastic but low key. Chau, getting the threeway tug of Jo being a difficult landlord, a rival in art and an old friend. And while I also enjoyed Maryann Plunkett as Lizzy’s disappointed-with-life mother – Lizzy’s genetic bequest also not good – and John Magaro as her unstable brother, it was Judd Hirsch who was the most surprising. His loser performance – the dad who’s a soft touch to any passing freeloader, the artist who’s retired and is now happy to watch TV most of the day – shifts into another register when the day of the show arrives. He looks at the work, his face lights up and we finally see what might have encouraged Lizzy to be an artist when all the other flags are red. It’s a lovely moment in a film very short of them, and if you only know Hirsch’s comedy work (in Taxi, most famously) you will probably be surprised.
Not overlooking André Benjamin (of Outkast fame) in a small “don’t mind me” role as the technical guy who fires up the kiln and offers first-responder critiques of the work coming out of it. Benjamin also provides some flute noodling on the soundtrack (his entirely unexpected album entirely filled with flute music, New Blue Sun, followed not long afterwards).
The work Lizzy produces, in fact made by Portland artist Cynthia Lahti, is of small women bent into weird shapes, much as Lizzy is. Interestingly, Lahti’s career was re-ignited by Reichardt, a fan, asking her to provide the maquettes and sculptures Lizzy is meant to have made. Life imitates art as art imitates life.
Showing Up – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
