Kelly Reichardt names the ‘epiphany movie’ that changed her life
Although she may not be at the forefront of mainstream audience’s minds, Kelly Reichardt has been quietly putting out some of the most fiercely original and singular independent cinema for nearly 30 years. After releasing her debut, River of Grass, in 1994, the writer/director has built up a seven-part filmography, each demonstrating an incredibly authentic and distinct filmmaking voice.
It was in her sixth film, Certain Women, that Reichardt would gain more widespread popularity as a director. Winning the ‘Best Film’ award at the 2016 BFI London Film Festival, the movie followed the intersecting lives of Laura Dern’s Laura Wells, Kristen Stewart’s Beth Travis, and frequent Reichardt-collaborator Michelle Williams as Gina Lewis.
Based on three short stories from American writer Maile Meloy’s collections Half in Love and Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, it also boasted a pre-Killers of the Flower Moon Lily Gladstone. A year before that, the director had brought us the 2013 thriller Night Moves, and it was whilst promoting this that Reichardt gave fans a glimpse into her formation as an artist, and movies she liked and didn’t.
Speaking to IndieWire, the director first revealed what it was in a filmmaker that she didn’t like: “When I’m watching a film if I feel there’s a dishonest overstimulation just trying to scratch some itch or serve something up, I become untrusting of the filmmaker right away.” This makes sense for a director who exercises such restraint with her own work and is generally regarded as part of the ‘minimalist’ movement of cinema in the US.
On top of naming her pet peeve when it came to cinemas, which was “Listening to people eat in a movie theatre”, and regularly citing German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder as a profound inspiration and decidedly answering the question of whether she likes The Avengers with “I don’t”, Reichardt also touched upon one movie in particular that she considered her “epiphany” movie – one where she first realised the filmmakers were “doing something.”
“One movie that definitely made an impression on me was Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?,” Reichardt explained, singling out “The nighttime scene at the end when the sun hits the morning. When they go to the beach, it’s in black and white. That’s probably the first time I thought about, wow, someone is doing something. They changed something that I know.” The 1962 psychological horror was directed by Robert Aldrich and starred Hollywood heavyweights Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
An absolute classic of the ‘psycho-biddy’ sub-genre of horror, which usually features a predominantly older female character facing off against a younger woman, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? had Davis as a former child actor living in the financial shadow of her more youthful and more successful sister, who is now bound to a wheelchair following a mysterious accident that Davis’ character, Jane, is blamed for. Upon hearing that her sister plans to sell their mansion, Jane embarks on a psychotic campaign of psychological torture.
