Kelly Reichardt’s ‘Showing Up’ is Quiet, Courageous Filmmaking

For her seventh feature film, Showing Up, writer-director Kelly Reichardt returns to the Pacific Northwest to tell the story of a pair of artists living in Portland, Oregon. Lizzy (played by frequent Reichardt collaborator Michelle Williams) and Jo (played by Hong Chau in her first film since her Oscar nomination for The Whale) are sculptors and members of a local arts collective and school. As the film begins, the two women are preparing for exhibitions that are only a few days away.

The film wisely avoids making the women overt rivals. They are not competing with each other. Jo attends Lizzy’s show and often compliments her work; Lizzy does not show Jo the same courtesy. It’s not intended as the snub it may seem. Jo barely seems to notice. However, we frequently see Lizzy studying Jo’s work from the mezzanine of their shared gallery space, giving Jo a measure of silent admiration.

Showing Up also avoids the weary cliche of becoming an underdog story where the women are fighting for their big breaks, hoping to be rising stars on the international arts scene. The film is set firmly in a small market arts scene where few people outside of their fellow artists, colleagues, students and family members are likely to ever see the results of their hard work. It’s the story of artists who create because they have to, because they can’t imagine themselves doing anything else. The characters live in a world where art results from passion and not commerce.

Showing Up treads some of the same thematic ground as Steven Spielberg’s most recent film, The Fabelmans. Coincidentally, both films star Williams, and both films feature Judd Hirsch in supporting roles. Those superficial similarities aside, the two movies examine the plight of the artist and the single-minded commitment it takes to pursue a life as a filmmaker or a sculptor. Lizzy has no romantic partner, no kids and thanks to Jo, who’s also her landlord, no hot water. Little Sammy Fabelman will grow up to find global fame and box office fortune. Lizzy’s financial future seems much less rosy.

Cinema is filled with interesting pairings of directors and actors. The men (not surprisingly) always seem to take centerstage: Martin Scorsese and Robert Deniro, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, Bong Joon-Ho and Song Kang-ho, even John Carpenter and Kurt Russell. Showing Up proves once again what a powerful combination Reichardt and Williams make on screen (Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Certain Women). Williams delivers a subtle, quiet performance with dialogue that rarely rises above a monotone. It’s an interior performance that perfectly inhabits the space provided by Richard’s writing and direction. The two women share the kind of telepathy you find between long-time bandmates. Each intuits the other’s moves.

The screenplay is so unobtrusive that it’s impossible to tell if a cast member is delivering a written line of dialogue or if the moment was improvised. Reichardt’s characters never give voice to the themes of the film. She has confidence in her audience to absorb the many possible meanings of the images unspooling on screen. The artwork generated by the two lead characters and the reactions of secondary characters to that art carries emotional weight. It also conveys information about the characters with nary a word spoken.

With the exception of her debut feature, River of Grass (1994), Reichardt edits her own films. Through her co-writing, directing and editing, her films develop a unique rhythm. Her decisions to linger on a moment or cut away feel effortless (which undoubtedly means they’re the product of careful consideration). It’s as if she has an internal clock or metronome providing her with the perfect tempo for each scene.

Modern moviegoers who have grown accustomed to swooping camera moves and big CGI vistas may find Showing Up to be “slow”. For some, that word is mistakenly synonymous with boring. More accurately, it’s simply the tempo of Reichardt’s internal metronome, and the film is no less interesting for it. She isn’t concerned with plot beats, traditional character arcs and a standard three-act screenplay. She simply immerses her audience in the world of her characters and leaves them there for the handful of fictional days during which the film unfolds.

It’s Reichardt’s avoidance of standard filmmaking tropes that make her films so compelling and authentic. Nothing in Showing Up occurs because it “needs” to happen to set up a future event. The standard set up and pay-off from mainstream cinema is nowhere to be found. It’s not boring filmmaking. It’s courageous.