With Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt sculpts a portrait of an artist on edge, featuring a wonderful Michelle Williams and Hong Chau
Michelle Williams and Kelly Reichardt have become a powerhouse filmmaking team over the last fifteen years. Beginning in 2008 with Wendy and Lucy, the two have worked together on a total of four movies, including the superb triptych Certain Women. In their latest collaboration, Showing Up, the two seem to have perfected their style and language.
Williams plays Lizzy Carr, an independent sculptor who spends her days working at the Oregon College of Art and Craft (closed in real life in 2019 but open in the world of Showing Up) and her nights in her studio as she prepares for her first solo show. Lizzy comes from a family of artists; her father (Judd Hirsch) is a washed-up but still successful sculptor, her mother (Maryann Plunkett) is the dean at the school where Lizzy works, and her mentally ill brother (John Magaro) is an artist himself when his manic and depressive episodes allow for creativity. Even Lizzy’s best friend/neighbor/landlord Jo (Hong Chau) seems to be outshining Lizzy with two simultaneous shows going on at the same time as Lizzy’s.
The ensemble nature of the cast allows Michelle Williams the ability to act opposite ten different types of performances as she plays the straight woman to their various problems. In her perfect world, Lizzy would be able to just sit in her studio with her cat and sculpt in peace. But peace eludes her as various issues appear in the weak leading up to her art show. Injured pigeons, manic episodes, overheated kilns, and scheduling conflicts all become problems for Lizzy. Forced to juggle more than she is capable of, we watch Michelle Williams downplay nearly every emotion, but the fury, sadness, and fear always cut through.
Kelly Reichardt delivers maybe the tensest film she’s made since 2013’s Night Moves. Yet while that movie was about domestic eco-terrorism, Showing Up is about the anxiety-inducing art world. Editor/writer/director Reichardt has built a vehicle where Williams can thrive, constructed splendidly to emphasize comedic moments and underplay sorrows. Michelle Williams is often considered an “always the bridesmaid, never the bride” Oscar perennial, but this film seems to pull from a different skill. Williams is subdued and simmering, playing a character who thinks she is in more control over her emotions than she actually has. Williams can basically do no wrong with the always marvelous and always underrated Hong Chau as her predominant scene partner.
Though Showing Up is light on plot, it is heavy on symbolism. Lizzy is a master of minimalism, modeling clay into human figurines in various poses. Her louder and more bombastic neighbor Jo instead works in maximalist yarn works, a different field and style for a different woman. The biggest clash between the two involves healing a pigeon with a broken wing. Jo saves the pigeon, but Lizzy nurses it. She feels like she deserves credit for that when she also was indirectly responsible for the pigeon’s injury. It’s a complicated situation where no one is necessarily right or wrong. Lizzy is much like the injured pigeon, her wing tied down but still wanting to fly. She’s trying to save herself.
Williams has made a number of films and TV shows about artists (Synecdoche New York and Fosse/Verdon come to mind), but here she is able to dig deep into the joy of being creative, and we see her smile so rarely. But her biggest moments of glee arrive when she sees her art being pulled out of a kiln and looking perfectly suited to her vision. The darkest moment comes when she finds a burned work, her ideal work of art now slightly marred. But as the kiln operator and fellow artist (played by André Benjamin in one of two movies at the New York Film Festival this year) notes, sometimes imperfections are secretly the best part of art because you can see the work put into them.
Sure, there are some flaws to Showing Up. But those imperfections are why I love it and Kelly Reichardt so much. The flaws are a feature.
