![]() ![]() Its second half fails, in one way or another, to meet the expectations established by the first.It fails to meet the expectations established by its director’s previous films.It fails to meet the expectations established by its genre.In general, everyday and professional audiences rejected and continue to reject Night Moves for at least one of three reasons: Reichardt’s films have never been a hit with multiplex crowds, but it’s telling that her “most accessible film,” a film Rosenbaum characterizes as “conventional and predictable” and “an effort to do something commercial with popular young stars,” managed a dismal 41 percent Audience Score from more than 10,000 reviews. Affording the film just a single paragraph, he offers the familiar mix of measured acclaim and dismissal you’ll find across its Rotten Tomatoes page. Hindsight’s vantage has not, however, given Rosenbaum any more insight into Night Moves than most of its contemporary audiences had. He calls out several of the same “journalistic shortcuts” as Michelitch, most notably ahistorical terms like “slow cinema” and the facile comparisons between Wendy and Lucy and the work of Vittorio De Sica favored by eminent New York critics. He too argues that far too many critics have neglected to embark on this process of discovery or regularly wander off course in their attempts. At first, his 2020 career overview ecstatically supports a thesis not unlike Michelitch’s, that confidently inhabiting Reichardt’s worlds first necessitates a process of “discovering how not to watch” her films. No less than Jonathan Rosenbaum calls Night Moves both “impeccably realized” and his “least favorite” of Reichardt’s features - that backhanded compliment at least implies just how consistently excellent Reichardt’s films have been. According to a B+ TIFF dispatch from Indiewire’s Eric Kohn, the film was, as of 2013, Reichardt’s “most accessible film to date.” This despite the fact that it “frequently takes the form of an anti-thriller.” That term is as reductive and meaningless in the context of Reichardt’s film as “anti-hero,” another pre-chewed cliche employed in the name of mild praise by a critic who nevertheless chides Night Moves for its second-half forays in to what he calls “cliched territory.” What exactly is Night Moves? Well, according to The Guardian’s chief critic, it’s a “thriller that behaves as if it is a gentle, indie-arthouse film,” of course - whatever the hell that means. A positive write-up in The Guardian, for example, is continually cheapened by the kind of genre reductionism that Reichardt has so expertly defied since her feature debut. Critics hungry to continue chewing on conventional wisdom while professing a taste for Reichardt’s work must have salivated at the synopsis and its promise of digestible thrills. ![]() The film premiered in 2013 and follows a trio of radical environmentalists who plan, commit, and attempt to live in the aftermath of an act of terrorism: blowing up a dam on an Oregon river, just one of hundreds that, to paraphrase the film’s leads, is killing scores of salmon to help run iPods and keep Bend’s abundance of golf courses green. That even Reichardt’s ardent fans often miss the point has never been clearer than upon the release of Night Moves. All too often these writers become lost and wind up relying on “pre-chewed categories of genre and isms” to get their analyses back on track and help them reach their word counts. They begin to discuss the films in purely reductive terms, clarifying only what they aren’t, what their characters fail to articulate, and what conventional pleasures Reichardt neglects to offer. ![]() “Reichardt’s accumulated experiences,” Michelitch writes, “are made up of hundreds of tiny flickering moments of transformation.” When these aren’t immediately obvious, even seasoned critics are often left with nothing more than “minimalist plots and technical craft” to orient themselves. Some of the problems stem from a lack of imagination. Writing for Cineaste, Jason Michelitch spends several paragraphs cataloging the ways in which prominent critics have dismissed Reichardt’s work outright or, in praising it, betrayed an insufficient appreciation of its wonders. Even the one great exploration of her work that I’ve found can’t help but address this fact. Too conventional for some and too elliptical for others, Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves is too often dismissed as a lesser entry in its director’s impressive filmographyįew contemporary directors as acclaimed as Kelly Reichardt have contended with quite so many misapprehensions and misinterpretations. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |