On her way to Alaska, “where they need people,” Wendy’s (Michelle Williams) journey gets derailed: her car breaks down, she gets busted for shoplifting, and her dog disappears. However, Wendy and Lucy is less a tale of sentimental friendship between a journeywoman and her faithful dog and more a melancholic story about social and personal mobility.
A number of director Kelly Reichardt’s films (Meek’s Cutoff, Old Joy) take place is Oregon, and Wendy and Lucy is no exception. Nor is it a coincidence. The journey that Wendy makes from South Bend, Indiana is routed closely to the original route of the Oregon Trail, the historic east-west wagon route that connected lands from the Mississippi river to the Pacific coast. Cleary, the difference here is the one-hundred-and-seventy year gap in migrations. Whereas the initial treks were undertaken on wagons and horseback through plains, valleys, and mountains with only the food that could be carried, Wendy’s travels occur in a small red car as she wends her way along arterials, freeways, highways, and through commerce-based cities and towns replete with strip malls and “Jack’s” groceries.
And, it is within this contrast that the deepest subtext of the film resides. In 1843, mobility was a means through which civilization was established and expanded. In contrast, mobility in 2008 signifies expanding commerce, which makes Wendy’s existence rather anachronistic and iconoclastic. Throughout Wendy and Lucy, Wendy walks along sidewalks, overpasses, and treks through the woods at various times. In each of these scenes, Reichardt meticulously includes charging, cargo-carrying locomotives, eighteen-wheelers rushing along arterials, and cars carrying commuters from home to work. This subtle, quiet contrast places Wendy in an alternate world, a cog removed from the system. Because she’s “just passing through,” she has no address, and because of this, she barely exists, and it’s as if she’s been ostracized from the system because of her choice to move with a motive that does not figure into increasing commerce.
After finding that her car costs more to repair than it is worth, Wendy is left at the end of her rope, lamenting “can’t get a job without an address,” a sentiment affirmed by a friendly security guard who adds, “can’t get an address without an address; can’t get a job without a job.”
The irony within Wendy’s conundrum is that she wants to find refuge somewhere that that “need people.” Choosing Alaska, Wendy selects the farthest state accessible by car, and one that is, essentially, an island unto itself, completely detached from the United States, a move that suggests her mentality and objectives have been dismissed, relegated to the very end of the country. Here, Reichardt illustrates the difference between mobility as a means of opportunity and mobility as a stigmatizing impediment, classifying her as “white trash” that “ain’t got no rights.”
An additionally ironic element are the obstacles encountered by our contemporary traveler in contrast to those in the nineteenth-century. During the great migration, settlers battled dysentery, spoiled food, and wild animals. In 2008, the major trial seems to be navigating man-made policies. Having nowhere to sleep, Wendy and Lucy choose to stay in her car in a department store’s parking lot. The lot is empty, and Reichardt makes a point to show us this, but the security guard is compelled by his paycheck to wake Wendy and dawn to make sure she removes her car. The disparity in time periods is clearly illustrated here: the weary Wendy is seeking a better life, but she can only accomplish this by resting in rentable hotel rooms. The nomad is no longer welcome because he or she can take up a space reserved for someone ready to spend money – even if it’s theoretical – and even if the purpose of their journey is to earn this much necessitated money. Each space has a price, much like the sixty feet from the curb at which Wendy’s car stalls to the door of the garage ($50).
Therefore, Wendy and Lucy is not just about the trials of mobility in an industrialized, commercialized world, but also about the difficulties in achieving social mobility. As a stranger with no residence, Wendy is already an “other” in an established system, and without acceptance, she is unable to earn a living. However, without a living, she’s unable to earn a status, so, the farther away she travels from South Bend, the more the vicious cycle becomes more of a malevolent spiral.
What makes this heavily allegorical film even more powerful is Michelle Williams. As an actress, she’s consistently solid, and it’s a wonder that she didn’t receive a 2008 Academy Award nomination for this film. Characteristically, her performance is nuanced and subtle. She acts with her eyes and the seamless transitions that the corners of her mouth make between happiness, relief, and terror. When she breaks down, so does the audience, not because we are trained to do so from myriad other movies, but because she’s believable.
Most likely, she will be nominated this year for My Week With Marilyn, and, rightly, she should. She carried the film and she does Wendy and Lucy, and she’s the actress I most look forward to watching for another generation.
