Showing Up

There’s been no better movie to encapsulate the year, and no better movie, period, than Kelly Reichardt’s matchless Showing Up, which is all about making art in a world that also requires you to make money.

Not only is Showing Up the best movie of the year, it’s arguably the one most in need of rescue. That’s your cue, friends.

[Reichardt and Williams's] shorthand creates its own universe, and it's as insular as the world they're depicting. Outsiders will likely feel like they're showing up without an invite.

The comedy is often as dry as an untouched paintbrush.

Like Lizzy’s sculptures, there’s a wounded tactility at work here—in miniature, even. What you get out of it will depend on your patience for such thoughtful if prickly work.

The film is a testament to my favorite kind of character, the ones who go about their lives in a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other manner.

Reichardt is one of the few directors who truly knows how to use Williams, and the resulting portrait is detailed, deep, and compassionate.

The movie is candid about the frustrations and resentments within the insular art community – frenemies Lizzy and Jo’s perfectly played rivalry is the central comic relationship – but also art-making as a spiritual vocation.

The movie does not make fun of the artist characters but is as earnest as they are. The film is about people’s process and has an underlying cautionary moral to not judge people based on how we perceive them.

The movie is slow-paced, and nothing much happens on screen, but if someone wants to see a bond blossom between two completely different women in the most tangible of ways, this is their movie.