Nathan’s Movie Collection: Certain Women (2016)
“It'd be so lovely to think that if I were a man I could explain the law and people would listen and say, ‘Okay.’”
Note: Most of these movies have been around for a considerable amount of time, so assume there will be spoilers all throughout.
There’s a car wreck in this movie that is one of the smoothest car wrecks I’ve ever seen on film. Like, you’re aware it’s happening but it’s so gentle and slow-moving that by the time the vehicle takes out a fence, it’s like “oh right, I’m watching a car wreck.” My family and I were riding in an SUV doing 40 PM when a tractor trailer doing 70 plowed into the back of us; “gentle” and “slow-moving” are not words my broken jaw and teeth would use to describe the event. I had no idea how to begin this one which is why I’m off on a tangent. The movie is Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women.
Pairing this with The Master this month was unintentional1, but it’s perfect because Certain Women is also a movie I didn’t fully get the first time I watched it. I remember being really moved by the Kristen Stewart/Lily Gladstone segment but not being really sure what to make of the movie as a whole. But like The Master, there was something drawing me back, in this case the three lead performances. Movies like this can feel dull and pretentious if they’re not casted properly and Reichardt has a murderer’s row with Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Lily Gladstone.
Kelly Reichardt makes movies that feel like reading a really good novel. In the case of Certain Women, it’s a handful of short stories by Montana author Maile Meloy. This one was written solo by Reichardt, but quite a few of her other movies are co-written by novelist and short story writer Jon Raymond, with some of his own original work being adapted by Reichardt into movies like Wendy and Lucy and First Cow. I really liked her latest from this year, Showing Up, also co-written by Raymond, although it’s probably not the Reichardt movie I’d start someone with. It is fun though watching André 3000 play an art professor who’s more than likely working on an experimental flute album on the side.
In my personal experience, I’ve also found that Reichardt’s movies have the kind of pace where certain people2 tend to sigh every five seconds. It reminds me of the time I went to see The Green Knight, a slow and contemplative David Lowery movie, and a couple sat down next to me that were clearly expecting more action. The sighing started almost immediately and happened for half of the running time before they gave up and left. At one point, I looked over and saw one of their phones—full brightness in effect—where they had been googling “Michael Keaton.” And just for the record, Michael Keaton is not in the film The Green Knight.
Anyway, back to Certain Women. I’m not always great at summarizing movies, so I had my research assistant3 draw one up for me:
Three strong-willed women strive to forge their own paths amidst the wide-open plains of the American Northwest: a lawyer forced to subdue a troubled client; a wife and mother whose plans to construct her dream home reveal fissures in her marriage; and a lonely ranch hand who forms an ambiguous bond with a young law student.
Laura Dern leads the first segment as a lawyer (also named Laura) in Livingston, the troubled client Fuller played by Jared Harris. Because he accepted his company’s small settlement after a workplace injury, Fuller’s unable to sue them and rather than accept the outcome, he repeatedly shows up at Laura’s office hoping for a different answer. It’s a real tightrope act sympathizing with both Laura and Fuller and that’s what makes a Kelly Reichardt movie so impressive to me. She makes you sympathize with Fuller’s predicament while at the same time showing the hell he is putting Laura and everyone else in his life through. The movie circles back around to these two at the end where Fuller is in prison for holding up his former place of employment. He’s visited by Laura, who brings him a burger and shake. He complains that she hasn’t been writing back to the letters he’s been sending her, a presumptuous demand to make as you’re chowing down on food brought to you in prison by your ex-lawyer who’s not even obligated to do this in the first place.
During the early moments of Certain Women, we see Laura in bed with Ryan (James LeGros). At the end of Laura’s segment, we find out that Ryan is married to Gina (Michelle Williams), the protagonist of the next segment, making this affair an obvious source of strain in their marriage. Reichardt doesn’t punish her characters for making bad decisions, but she doesn’t shy away from showing the consequences. It’s what makes a frigid character like Gina sympathetic because we see how she’s being neglected. When they’re speaking to an older gentleman (René Auberjonois) about purchasing some sandstone for a home they’re building, he ignores Gina and chooses to engage only with Ryan. We’re left to sit in Gina’s loneliness moving into the final segment, but when we circle back around to them at the end, they’re having a barbecue with friends on their land, seemingly enjoying each other’s company for now.
The third and final segment is led by Jamie (Lily Gladstone) a ranch hand with a monotonous daily routine living outside of Belfry. She drives into town one evening and stumbles into a night class on education law being taught by Beth (Kristen Stewart). Jamie finds herself coming back every week, having no interest in studying law and every interest in spending time with Beth. They sit at the local diner where Beth eats dinner before driving four hours back to her home in Livingston. One week, Jamie travels to class on horseback and takes Beth for a ride. The turn happens when Jamie shows up for class one week and finds that Beth has quit and another teacher has taken her place. There’s a final scene between her and Beth where Jamie has driven four hours to Livingston to find her at work. In the original story, Jamie was a male character and that kind of unrequited love usually carries undertone of menace, especially when they’re finally rebuffed. Here, we watch Jamie quietly swallow the rejection and get back in her truck. The camera stays on her as she drives away and slowly lets the heartbreak set in.
Weirdly enough, I feel like this final segment is the most hopeful. It doesn’t end with Jamie finding what she’s looking for, but the way Gladstone plays Jamie when she’s finds something that brings her out of a rut, it’s a glimpse of what a happy life could be for her. We don’t know if the rejection will push her into an even stricter daily routine to occupy her mind, but there’s hope that it was exhilarating enough that she might find the courage to try again. After she fixes the fence she drove through after falling asleep at the wheel.
Of all the leads, Michelle Williams is the one who’s worked the most with Reichardt and while Wendy and Lucy is probably my favorite performance of hers, she’s really great in this. The way most people feel about Meryl Streep, I feel about Laura Dern; she’s never been bad in anything as far as I’m concerned. 2023 was the year of Lily Gladstone with Fancy Dance, Killers of the Flower Moon, Quantum Cowboys, and The Unknown Country. I think Certain Women should have been her launching point and it’s wild to think she was close to hanging it up before she got a Zoom request from Martin Scorsese.
I really recommend the Criterion essay for this movie, which goes into so much more that I’ve noticed and appreciated in each rewatch. If it’s not for you, that’s totally fine. And before you ask, no, Michael Keaton is not in the film Certain Women.
Thank you so much for reading Nathan’s Movie Collection. It was a 2023 project and while I’m not ending it for good, I am putting it on hiatus as we move into 2024. 22 movies is the pared down list so there are still titles I may come back and write about when I feel like it.
My output is going to be a little bit lower in 2024, but I still have some things planned that I’ll announce eventually. I’ve got two pieces planned for early January and after that will be a “Checking In” newsletter at the end of February. Until then.
It’s also a Laura Dern-themed month seeing as how she’s in The Master for a few crucial scenes.
I promise I wasn’t trying to make a pun, but I’ll take the credit for it.
The plot summary on Letterboxd.