Certain Women (2016)
Director: Kelly Reinhardt
Writers: Kelly Reinhardt (screenplay), stories by Maile Meloy
Starring: Lily Gladstone, Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams
Dear Person in the World, Who Walks and Breathes,
Certain Women is a film that makes you think about acting. It makes you think about acting as a craft and why it matters and what it is.
When I wrote about the film Maestro last year, I said that a true actor/actress is someone who can sit calmly, and who we would enjoy watching sitting calmly. Do you remember that? Because strong acting involves a deep interior life that vibrates with the actor. Maestro, I said, was a film, because it oozed. It charged.
Certain Women is in a different category. It does not zoom and ooze and charge. It opens.
Certain Women is an opening, and that is why it is special. It is a work of art that says to the viewer:
“Hmm.”
“Let’s look at this.”
“Oh.”
It captures a feeling of spaciousness, the way a good listener provides a feeling of spaciousness so you can be. I have begun to realize that healing arts can all be whittled down to how much depth and space a listener is able to give without judgement. We don’t really need anything else, and Certain Women provides this openness for your own story to unfold, for your own exploration, and for your own connection to awaken.
I am going to be honest with you. I sit with the question all the time of why I am writing to you once a week about films that I choose. Is it selfish of me? Should I be trying to find what engages an audience more? What do people want and what can I provide, and blah blah blah?
And then I sit with a film like this, and decide I’ll keep doing what I’m doing because I believe in it.
Certain Women operates like a therapist who says, “Tell me more.” The creature tilts her head and shifts slightly in her chair. She is wearing a warm and soft sweater. Her eyes are unassuming. There is a delicate silver wring on her right hand, on her middle finger. Who gave her the ring? It is the kind of ring you wear when you are 16. Who is this creature who knows things and sits so quietly and doesn’t need anything from you, but her ring is the ring of a 16-year old? And she manages to arrive in front of you again and again, with each new breath and in each new moment?
Oui? Oui.
That’s Certain Women.
This film is based on the stories of author Maile Meloy and I can tell you that many years ago, after my daughter was born and I couldn’t find a book that could hold my attention, I got Meloy’s book Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It. I loved the title. This book was the only book I could manage to read in bed, during the precious few moments I had in bed before a temporarily sleeping baby woke up to cry and eat. A mother who is growing a child and then feeding a child and then caring for a child has different hormones and different brain responses. It is animalistic, to carry and birth, and we still have not respected as a culture this sacred act and what it means. All this is to say, if a book of literary short stories can hold your attention when you are a post-partum mom, it is doing something damn-near miraculous.
And Certain Women does justice to the short story form. The way it does justice is by giving space for the inner lives of the characters to be palpable on the screen. So much can be communicated without words, and this comes back to acting itself. It is not about the lines on the page, my sweetheart—it is about the depth of the Presence. Otherwise we can all just do commercials, oui? How much depth can an actor bring to herSelf, and how much of a world is inside Her, that a camera can capture something in a few quiet moments when she doesn’t speak? Consider this next time you watch a film or practice the craft of acting. Can you hold an audience’s attention without speaking? Are we wondering what you are thinking? Are we sitting with you and able to sit?
This also highlights why film is different from theater. As a genre, cinema carries with it certain elements, which is that we as the viewer get up close and personal. We see the eyes, the facial expressions, the interior state of an actor. Theater, on the other hand, is about the body and about the voice carrying these energies. One is a painting; the other is a visual sound bath.
This film could not be a play and it is better for that.
The last section of the film, the third story, is the one I found most heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking so that your own heart can be opened. This is Lily Gladstone as a horse rancher who shows up at a night class at the area high school. There is no clear understanding of what this character is thinking, because it is so clear that this character hasn’t been allowed to open up and feel or share. She is like the earth, only known by enlightened animals, unseen and unheard, unconsidered, non-binary without having to be labeled. In her soul and in her performance are these Montana mountains—beautiful and vast, impenetrable, but worth something to those who adventure a little bit, or who are lost and need someone to nod at them to know they are still breathing.
In the midst of all these more famous actresses—Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart—Lily Gladstone steals the movie with the vastness of her Presence. Presence with a capital “P.” The mountains and the largeness of the land is inside her. She is Montana. She is the prairie. These other women are just passing through.
Now, for some creative prompts to get your juices flowing. This can work for actors, writers, painters, or anyone interested in developing imagination and empathy as a healing practice.
Certain Women is about three women who are different and involved in different life situations. Imagine these three moments (which I am basing on the stories in the movie) and write in prose, poetry, or script form.
Try at least 10 minutes of writing for each of these, on three separate days.
A woman who has a realization that she has given too much of herself and taken too many risks to help others, and now she needs to do something to help herself and only herself. (If prose, try in first-person and third person, separately.)
A woman who wants something and makes all the arrangements to get it, but once she gets it, she realizes that it was only a distraction. What she truly wants is frightening, and she has a moment of recognizing what it is she truly wants.
A woman who falls in love with another woman but has no understanding of what that kind of love is called, whether anything could come from such a love, what that means about her identity, and if that other woman could possibly love her back. All she knows for sure is her heart is aching.
Acting Prompts
*If you are an actor, can you present these scenarios to a class or an acting group and try them out through improvisation? On your own, can you practice each scenario in front of a camera with a tripod, or with an assistant who helps you film? Try different wigs, accessories, clothing and locations for each scenario. (If you are a man, play a woman. Say you are honoring Shakespeare.)
For secondary school or college teachers:
Show your students this PBS episode about Lily Gladstone working with high school students. Help them engage with the craft of acting, storytelling, and U.S. history so they can create on their own. I showed it to high school students last year and they found some good takeaways.
Oh my goodness, I would just fill up with joy if you try any of these and let me know how it goes!
Kisses and hugs,
Ms. Wonderful