![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i457.photobucket.com\/albums\/qq299\/kenmorefield\/1more\/april2009\/Wendy.jpg\")
Warning! This review contains major plot spoilers.<\/strong><\/p>\nProposition<\/strong>: People who cannot afford a dog should not own a dog. Mr. Neo C. Crunchycon, your opinion?<\/p>\n Crunch<\/strong>: Look, Ken, despite director Kelly Reichardt\u2019s clumsy attempts to (as she said in the Q&A at the Toronto Film Festival) \u201cexplore\u201d (yeah, we know she meant \u201cindict,\u201d wink-wink) the \u201cwhy can\u2019t they pull themselves up by their boot straps\u201d rhetoric she heard in the wake of Hurricane Katrina by pretending that Wendy is the victim of an unjust society which exploits her poverty-induced helplessness, it\u2019s clear to anyone with eyes to see that the film as a whole supports the above contention and that Wendy (and by implication most poor people) is simply a victim of her own bad choices.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just her shameful, petulant resentment of the store clerk\u2014carefully branded with a cross necklace in the sort of reflexive \u201call people of faith are villains\u201d Hollywood iconography that drove Michael Medved to despair in Hollywood vs. America<\/em>\u2014who caught her shoplifting that shows her true colors, nor even her inexplicable frustration at the mechanic (who doesn\u2019t charge her for the diagnostic and even gives her a discount on towing). It is the fact that she steals the dog food not out of necessity but while she has enough cash in her pocket to pay for it. (She pays her fine at the jail in cash, remember.)<\/p>\n While Wendy\u2019s situation is sympathy inducing, her response to it is typical of the moral poverty created by the entitlement culture fostered by the nanny state. When caught stealing, first she lies, then claims that since she is \u201cjust passing through\u201d the store needn\u2019t fear recidivism. Somehow we are supposed to feel sorry for Wendy as she accumulates unexpected costs\u2014but those unexpected costs are the consequence of her ignoring the warnings and help that others are trying to give her. When the car won\u2019t start she mentions to the mechanic (in Oregon) that a previous mechanic in Utah had told her the serpentine belt needed to be replaced, yet she continued to drive it anyway, doing more damage to car. This sort of \u201cthinking only in the moment\u201d results\u2014duh!\u2014in consequences she finds undesirable and burdens she is unable to meet because she hasn\u2019t taken the time in between the warning about and arrival of consequences to prepare for them. Instead she opts to trust that something will happen to avoid a crisis or someone else will step up to bear the costs of her decisions for her.<\/p>\n Just about the only responsible thing Wendy does is giving up the dog, but even that is done only when she is forced to and not because it\u2019s the right thing to do.<\/p>\n Ken<\/strong>: Very interesting, thanks Crunchy. Mr. Liberal P. Bleedingheart, rebuttal?<\/p>\n Bleedingheart<\/strong>: Ah, nice to see the compassion in \u201ccompassionate conservatism\u201d isn\u2019t in any danger of eclipsing the conservatism. Sure, Wendy has contradictory impulses and strategies for dealing with her ever-mounting problems, but that\u2019s precisely the point. Reichardt shows the \u201cdamned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don\u2019t\u201d problems faced by the poor in our \u201cblaming the victim\u201d society. If she uses her money on unexpected expenses we say, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you plan better?\u201d If she holds it back for the costs she will need to get to Alaska and start a new job, we say, \u201cWhy should we help you when you are not willing to invest your own resources?\u201d If she tries simply to do without, such as when she sleeps in her car, we say, \u201cYou can\u2019t park here!\u201d or \u201cIt\u2019s reckless and irresponsible of you to put yourself at risk.\u201d Perhaps Wendy should have just stayed in Indiana and gone on welfare, but\u2014and I think this is important\u2014her stated motivation for trying to go to Alaska is that she heard there was work there.<\/p>\n Yeah, the store manager and clerk did indeed \u201cteach her a lesson,\u201d but that lesson is going to be an expensive one for them, too, because the drain on the economy created by taking someone who wants to work and is having problems and stripping her of the few resources she has pretty much increases the chances that she will end up on welfare and be a much bigger drain on public resources in the long run.<\/p>\n Crunchy<\/strong>: Ah, nice to see that logic is in no danger of replacing \u201ctortured\u201d in \u201ctortured liberal logic.\u201d It\u2019s not that people aren\u2019t compassionate to the poor\u2014the security guard lets Wendy use his phone and gives her a handout, the mechanic gives her a discount, the home-owner gives the dog a good home rather than leaving it to be put down. Who\u2019s to say that if Wendy didn\u2019t ask, that the store manager (or clerk) wouldn\u2019t have let her work for the stuff she stole or showed the same compassion the security guard and mechanic did? It\u2019s the steal-first-beg-only-if-caught-and-never-ask attitude that gets Wendy in trouble, not the meanness of principled people, who are actually more generous towards Wendy than she deserves.<\/p>\n Bleedingheart<\/strong>: There is such a thing as institutional injustice or structural oppression. Let\u2019s look at your hero, the security guard. He makes a big deal out of giving Wendy the handout, but when the camera pans on it, we see that it is a five wrapped around some ones. In other words, it\u2019s clear that this is insufficient to deal with Wendy\u2019s problems\u2014and he knows it. So it\u2019s really more of a symbolic gesture than a serious offer of help, more about assuaging one\u2019s own conscience, allowing him to turn away from the poor person who is in front of him without doing any serious damage to his notion of himself as a good person. As for the mechanic, you are assuming he is being truthful, and he may well be. But he knows Wendy doesn\u2019t have the money for a tow to get a second opinion, and he is shown on the phone placing a bet with a bookie. For all we know, the car could need only a relatively minor repair (such as the previous mechanic suggested), but he uses Wendy\u2019s helplessness and ignorance to his advantage to bilk her out of a car that he can then liquidate for his gambling debts.<\/p>\n Crunchy<\/strong>: Well that\u2019s a huge, cynical, pessimistic assumption, typical of suspicious liberals\u2014reading sinister motives behind kind acts. You have no way of knowing if that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n Bleedingheart<\/strong>: No, I don\u2019t. But neither do you. And more to the point, neither does Wendy. It\u2019s not that Wendy is in trouble because she happens to meet some unscrupulous people; it\u2019s that she\u2019s in trouble because the way society is structured makes it hard (if not impossible) for those who are poor to protect themselves from whatever unscrupulous people there may be since it is much harder for them to avail themselves of the services and protections that most of us take for granted. There is a point in the film where Wendy is walking and she passes a graffiti covered wall that says, ominously, \u201cGONER.\u201d It is her resources, not her efforts that will determine her fate, and her destiny is a foregone conclusion.<\/p>\n Heck, even the question of what is a necessity and what is a luxury is one that the film probes. The aforementioned sentiment, actually uttered by the clerk, that people who can\u2019t afford dog food shouldn\u2019t own a dog assumes that a dog is a luxury\u2014a pet. But given the omnipresent threat of sexual molestation and attack that surrounds Wendy once she becomes homeless, a dog can take on a very different role\u2014that of protector. Would the clerk and his friends sound so smug if we glossed this statement as saying, \u201cWomen who can\u2019t afford to pay for physical protection should be willing to go without rather than trying to hold onto it\u201d? Or maybe we\u2019d all feel better if Wendy just exercised her second amendment rights to bear arms and bought a gun (which she wouldn\u2019t have to feed) instead of a dog.<\/p>\n Crunchy<\/strong>: Yeah, I saw that \u201cGONER,\u201d too. But you know what? I reject the fatalistic, deterministic world view that it symbolizes. The demand for those less fortunate to pull themselves up by their boot straps is less about demanding they succeed than that they try\u2014that they don\u2019t, like you, just say, \u201cwell, it\u2019s hard, so therefore someone needs to do it for me.\u201d And I don\u2019t think you should despise the little things. You have no idea if that six or seven dollars the guy gave her was a widow\u2019s mite. Wendy is surrounded by any measure of things that, say, the poor in Two Legged Horse<\/em> would give their right arms (no pun intended) to have\u2014public transportation, cheap communication, free public services (like the animal control shelter), public restrooms where she can wash and relieve herself, but it\u2019s just never enough for you people, is it? The solution is always that society needs to do more for the individual, never that the individual needs to do more for society. You know what, go watch The Pursuit of Happyness<\/em> a couple dozen times. What one man can do, another can do.<\/p>\n Bleedingheart<\/strong>: Oh boy, you\u2019d rather be poor in America than Afghanistan. There\u2019s a goal to aspire to and a standard to be proud of.<\/p>\n Ken<\/strong>: Hmm. Is there anything you two can agree on?<\/p>\n Crunchy\/Bleedingheart<\/strong>: Well, we can certainly agree that Reichardt\u2019s direction is precise and assured, and we like the fact that she lets the situation speak for itself rather than glossing over or omitting the points that would be problematic to the point of view with which her ultimate sympathies lie. And we can all agree, we hope, that Michelle Williams is pretty damn terrific and would be guaranteed a best actress nomination were Wendy and Lucy<\/em> a big studio release. She may get one anyway. Not only does she appear in every scene in the film, but she has to suggest change\u2014particularly the gradual breaking of Wendy\u2019s spirit\u2014as much physically (in her posture, in her timing) as through dialogue. Because the movie doesn\u2019t give her a flashy, Oscar baiting, scene, it might be easy to overlook just how accomplished this performance is. Sure, even a lesser actress could wring a tear or two out of Wendy\u2019s good-bye to Lucy, but watch Williams in the quiet scenes\u2014when Wendy\u2019s on the train after leaving Lucy, when she wakes up from sleep to the imminent prospect of rape or murder and is frozen between the urge to run and the need to remain perfectly still, or when she is fingerprinted a second time and shows in her posture and face the silent transition from struggle to capitulation, from anger (at herself and at those too indifferent or distracted to see her) to resignation. She even manages to make the one overtly mawkish and sentimental scene seem real and not a manipulative grab for tears, probably because the script allows us to understand how much Lucy means to her not by having her tells us in inflated words but by showing us just how hard Wendy tried to hold on before finally letting go.<\/p>\n This review originally appeared at Looking Closer Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Great art doesn’t always have to have its origin in huge ideas or projects of great scope. Minute observation of everyday life will always turn over questions of great significance, because we are all faced with and live through such questions. Wendy and Lucy is about a girl and her dog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1555,"featured_media":11352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,95,67],"tags":[119,120,105],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2008-top-10-top-10-lists","category-elsewhere","category-top-10-lists","tag-kelly-reichardt","tag-michelle-williams","tag-wendy-and-lucy"],"yoast_head":"\n