Rent Certain Women (2016)

Thoroughly enjoyable - Certain Women review by Philbuff

A beautifully crafted & acted film about everyday dramas in the lives of ordinary people - no less intensely felt for not being the stuff of headlines. Absorbing to watch, it reverberates long afterwards.

What a waste of Montana and good actors - Certain Women review by CP Customer

I was really pleased to receive this DVD. Had planned to catch Certain Women at the cinema, but that didn't work out. Have long dreamed of visiting Montana. This film poured cold water on that. Many scenes are at night, or in dimly lit spaces. It was hard to see what was going on. And we learn little about these women and their lives. Laura Dern's character is patient and compassionate, but seems wasted. Michelle William's role is a stronger woman, but what does she acheive? Then we have a lonely ranch hand and a young lawyer trying to earn a few bucks in a job that doesn't work out. How this got an award and a 100% rating beats me. Haven't seen a good film in a while. But that was Lion. Brilliant.

A quietly staggering, beautiful portrayed modern American masterpiece - Certain Women review by CP Customer

If you can tune into Reichardt's wavelength, and allow yourself to slow down and match the pacing of her films, to explore her uses of landscape and the quiet moments of seeming irrelevance, a whole world and way of life open up to you. I won't say anything about the plot, or even the performances, which are magnificent. I will describe a single scene, not even a scene, just a moment, that i thing sums up Reichardt's powers as a filmmaker.

There is a moment where the camera starts at the counter between a diner's kitchen and the counter. We see, slightly obscured, a cook putting together a meal of burger and fries. We hear the clatter of equipment and sizzle of food. The cook moves the plate from the kitchen onto the counter, where it is picked up by the counter waitress, and then moved into the hand of another waitress, who fumbles with some cutlery in her hands. It then cuts, not yet to any character with whom we are familiar, but to a native American eating his food.

This sounds mundane, even dull, and it is. But because Reichardt has measured, so beautifully and with economy, the interior lives of the all the characters in these different stories, you cannot help but sense the interior lives of these people, too. The cook, the waitress, the other patron, all of whom share the strange, cold and epic landscape of Montana, feel like real people, in real places doing real things. In so many films, things feel staged and thus empty. A good enough representation of stuff, but ultimately flat. From Old Joy to Certain Women (and undoubtedly in First Cow, too) the full weight of humanity is felt in every single character. There seems to be nothing in her films that does not come with some deep truth attached to it.

For my money PTA, Malick and Reichardt are the three true American masters making films today.