Small films deserve big screens / Mindsets and art making
Thoughts on Kelly Reichardt's Showing Up
Small films deserve big screens
Recently, I rewatched Kelly Reichardt’s fantastic Showing Up on the big screen. Seeing Williams’ portrayal of Lizzy on the big screen elevated my experience of it. I rave about Williams’ performance here:
I previously saw it on my television for our Deep Cut podcast episode on it. Listen here. In the age of streaming and convenient content on our phones, there has been a shift away from the cinemas. I am not the first to recognise this and there’s a marked decrease in cinema-going in Singapore despite previously having one of the highest per capita visits to the cinema per annum.
We lose a lot for a film like Showing Up if we watch it at home. As a “small” film rooted in the quotidian life of a single character with subtle emotional arcs, the big screen amplifies important information, and makes the viewing experience more worthwhile. I have often heard people think of films like Showing Up as films that are “good enough” to watch at home. I say emphatically NO. If anything, it is even more important you watch them on the big screen compared to the latest action-heavy and CGI-laden extravaganza.
In Showing Up, observing characters is the number one activity we are engaged with as an audience. Blowing up those performances on the big screen gives us clarity into those performances. Williams’ micro-expressions, her posture, her ways of moving through space, these are more easily observed when made large. Especially in wide shots, when characters move through space at the rhythms of daily life, the quietness of atmosphere and the tactility of the space can be better felt. In the opening scene, Lizzy peeks out at Jo in the backyard from the yard door. She remains there, exceptionally still, and she never closes the distance. That combative distance is much better felt when we can see her near life-sized on a larger screen.
In contrast, that big action film is so overstuffed with stimulation that watching it on a smaller screen allows you to see the mechanics of its making more clearly rather than being completely bowled over by it. Maybe we should invert our ideas of what deserves to be big and what deserves to be small.
Additionally, with the inability to pause, the theatre cares not for your distractions. Cinematic time moves forward independent of your schedule. As an easily distractible person, I need that sanctity of time and space of the cinema to better appreciate slow or simple films. Films that do not use the most aggressive attention-grabbing tools of the trade. These “small” films require more effort from an audience, and going to the cinema gives you the capacity to better engage.
To be frank, I am not the biggest fan of slow cinema. Being in the theatre affords the opportunity to sit with characters and the unfolding events in time. Submitting to the pace and rhythm of a film allows you to let go of control. With no avenue to do anything else, you are better able to create the mindful space I describe here, to actively receive and respond emotionally and intellectually. By letting go of temporal control in the darkness of the theatre, you can let it in.
Even if the mind wanders in a screening, you are locked in your seat, unless you choose to leave the theatre. To be distracted at home while watching a film, is to be distracted by events outside the film, like your wife asking you to go to bed, your child wanting to play, or your sibling asking you why you only ever watch the oddest movies. In the theatre, your attention can only stray to the margins of the film, to what is on-screen, and being distracted in a cinema is to be distracted by the film or the thoughts and feelings it conjures. It is how I realised the white dog that’s in the college office is Lizzy’s mom’s dog when I noticed it in her home later. At first, I thought the dog was merely a fun little detail at the college until I noticed him sleeping conspicuously again at a door threshold in Lizzy’s mom’s home. Having a sense of the owner of the dog creates this tiny connection that makes the world come a little more alive. Reichardt’s films in particular thrive in these minute details.
This sanctity of the cinema experience is a big reason why I find people who check messages in theatres so infuriating. You willingly introduce a source of distraction into the space for yourself, and, worse still, for others. It is not the film’s fault you have no attention span, or that you need to be constantly stimulated! I rather you allow yourself to fall asleep, which I flagrantly do all the time in the cinema, and wake up discombobulated and grasping for the current narrative thread. That can be an interesting cinematic experience in itself. I sometimes wake up in the cinema dreaming of the film I am still seeing.
Of course, a fruitful experience at the cinema assumes the film is good. Even if it might not cater to your taste, at least cinema-going gives it a chance, and you approach your conversation with the film in better faith. On the television, that small film might be dead on arrival. I have seen many small films at home, and I know I am not meeting them with the respect they need for me to appreciate them fully. I hope I can someday revisit some of these films on the big screen.
Mindsets and art making
Recently I was sitting in the library in a non-quiet section listening to someone berate another on the phone, consistently saying “you don’t bullshit [sic]”, “you stupid [sic]”, etc. I assumed it was a business partner or employee, but after eavesdropping for a while I realised they were talking to their child, calling them out on lying about doing their schoolwork. It was appalling and while I am not ready to start fights in libraries yet, I was tempted to ask whether they thought their behaviour was good parenting. I think most would be in agreement that this is not, but Showing Up engages with a different kind of poor parenting.
In the video, I briefly mention Magaro's character Sean being labelled a “genius” early and how it affects him in living up to the label. I have recently read Carol Dweck’s book Mindset, where the term “growth mindset” comes from, and she addresses this same phenomenon. Labels are dangerous. It is a poignant little sub-theme that Reichardt sneaks into the film and contrasts with Lizzy’s tenaciousness because she is not considered to be particularly talented. Sean is coddled by his mother who has a firm belief that her son is a talented artistic genius. While Reichardt’s narrative does not dig particularly deep into the way the mother’s perspective has warped Sean’s own self-narrative, the consequences are plain to see. Sean is broken by the need to live up to this label of genius.
On the flip side, for Lizzy, to hear her mother talk of another sibling’s artistic genius, while she herself is trying to produce art, feels trying. It is as if her mother has already picked a winner early on in both her children’s artistic careers, and she will only see this initial bet through. Lizzy’s mother cannot see her responsibility in what is happening to her son, nor can she see how it affects her daughter. There’s something dour about the family dynamic here, as lightly funny the film can be. There’s a curmudgeonly perspective to the film, refusing to depict the “middle-aged” art making life as an entirely joyous pursuit, like how the young art school students behave. Art making is tough, competitive, lonely, and it can make you feel insignificant searching for insignificance. If you make it your life, life becomes difficult.
However, this is not a narrative of hard work trumps talent. Lizzy is as afraid of success as she is of mediocrity, and she will probably feel safer being unseen her whole life. Lizzy is fixed in a mindset that no one appreciates her or her work. It is the source of her grouchy temperament, and she feeds on this. She is her number one obstacle in her career, and it is only in the moments of opening up, to Jo, to the bird, that she realises she can find joy in the work. I find much kinship in Lizzy and Sean; they feel like the two halves of my id; they still have wounds to heal, room to grow.
Notes
In Singapore, The Projector is still showing Showing Up. Please go see!
Yes, I am doing video now. This first one is part of a series I’m calling “One Thing”. Less film reviews, more me talking out one idea from a single film. For video, I intend to only talk about films I am seeing in the cinema for now. The release schedule will be irregular. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to making more analytical video essays like my Kore-eda one on Still Walking, but I might!
Bhargav, loyal listener to the podcast, has a great piece about Showing Up here.