Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt, EUA, 2008, 80'

Wendy is Wendy Carrol, a young woman driving towards Ketchikan, Alaska in an old, 1988 Honda Accord with Indiana plate 40681H7. Lucy is Lucy, her companion, a brown-yellow-gold labrador-bloodhound mix with “droopy ears, brilliant eyes, and a friendly face’. This is Wendy’s description of her dog when Lu disappears during one of her stops on the trip.

Once again, a film about duos and the road. Once again, another film about landscapes: the exteriors of neighbourhoods on the outskirts of small Oregon towns, and the interior of its characters.

And once again, a collaboration between Kelly Reichardt and writer Jon Raymond, in this case the author of the short story on which the film is based, a story set among train crossings called “Train Choir”.

A freight train is heard in the distance, and the film begins. This industrial landscape of iron and wagons is the stage for this story. Wendy walks with Lucy between the tracks while she hums a song. We know next to nothing about her past: a maroon car, a canine travel companion, a roadmap, and a handful of dollars that Wendy rations out at each stop. Wendy has a wound on her right ankle, but that chapter is part of her past, a space we know little about.

A young woman and her dog crossing the country on side roads is the first image.

The next one has to do with train tracks. It is a country that we could call “the land of those living on the edge of major railways”. Forgotten, losers, crazy, travellers, poor, youth with no set home or mobile phone, old school dreamers, and runaways. It is as if they were part of a nomadic tribe, with night time bonfires near train tracks bringing together storytellers.

That is where we find Icky (once again, musician Will Oldham), telling his story about travelling up to the frozen rivers of the north.

It is nice when films connect with each other, as if one were the continuation of the other. That happens twice in this case: the dog Lucy already appeared in Old Joy (2006), and now becomes the protagonist. Also, the aimlessly wandering Kurt (Will Oldham) already appeared in Old Joy, now transmuted into a secondary character telling a story of failure and flight.

Reichardt says that she came to actress Michelle Williams through her producer friend Todd Haynes. Reichardt says that Michelle only placed one condition on her involvement in the film: being able to jump onto a moving freight train. Her performance is a small wonder. I say small because it is fragile, subtle, and exciting, because it contrasts with the speed of the “big” world that has no place for her.

We follow Wendy and Lu on their journey, taking back up the pure American tradition of being on the road. The film also recognises the tradition of a certain type of North American social photography of crisis, and I now recall the work of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans: observing those that no one observes. Sketching those that the system turned its back on because they are no longer productive.

Lu disappears on the streets of Lombard, Oregon outside Jack’s general store. Wendy was just passing through, but has to draw out her stay in this lost place in the middle of nowhere to get her travel companion back. That is where the film’s questions and answers arise: What is life like in a western town you will never come back to? What do its people do? What does the supermarket security guard do when he gets off work? Who does the guy working in the car repair shop talk to on the phone? Why don’t they run away like Wendy does? Why don’t they jump on a train taking them far away from this routine forever? Or is it possible that they have found a place where they can be happy? Or at least a place where they can find peace and feel less alone?

“If you come back around here sometime, come say hi”, the security guard says to Wendy.

Wendy rediscovers that there are good people. There, once again, is the humanism of Reichardt's films.

If there is something that we can learn from her films, it is the way her stories and images train our attention and sensibility. The minute of her minor characters is made major when projected onto the big screen. This happens, for example, with a guy reading a book while having breakfast at the same diner Wendy just walked into. A nameless character with no lines, someone who we would never have noticed, who appears for just six seconds. But this young man is reading a book called Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kessey.

Ken Kessey was the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), yet it is precisely Sometimes A Great Motion (1964) that critics consider his magnum opus.

This book tells the story of a revolution where Oregon loggers face off against workers on strike. Kessey gave the book this title after being inspired by a Lead Belly blues song.

Sometimes I lives in the country

Sometimes I lives in the town

Sometimes I have a great notion

To jump into the river an’ drown

All of this is happening in just six seconds, while Wendy continues to look for Lucy.

This is the interior landscape that appears over and over again in Reichardt’s films: characters moving from one part of the country to another, while trains and revolutions pass within. And always, in the end, there is the ability to continue on the road.