April 10, 2023 Issue

I see in this week’s issue that Kelly Reichardt has a new movie out. Titled Showing Up, it’s about a sculptor in Portland, Oregon. Richard Brody calls it “an instant classic of life in art.” He says, 

Working with the cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, Reichardt films as if in a state of rapt attention, reserving her keenest ardor and inspiration for the art itself: as Lizzy sculpts and assembles and glazes and even just ponders, the film’s visual contemplations seem to get deep into Lizzy’s creative soul. ["Goings On About Town: On the Big Screen"]

Sounds good; I think I’ll check it out. Reichardt directed one of my all-time favorite films – Wendy and Lucy (2008). Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott listed it as one of their “25 Best Films of the Century So Far” (The New York Times, June 19, 2017). See also Jonathan Raban’s excellent review of it, “Metronatural America” (The New York Review of Books, March 26, 2009; included in his great 2010 essay collection Driving Home).