“Lots of people are creative,” but that doesn’t make them artists, says protagonist Lizzy (Michelle Williams) in Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up (2022), co-written with writing partner Jon Raymond. There are films galore about artistic geniuses and world-changing works of art, but most art and artists aren’t like that. In Proof (2005), there’s a flashback montage sequence (intercut with two other strands; it’s a complicated film) where Gwyneth Paltrow’s character proves a mathematical theorem, and we see her relying on journal articles and work done by others before her. Only at the very end does she have her own epiphany. Art is like this, too, a team effort masquerading as individual genius. Showing Up highlights the team.
Lizzy is a ceramic figurine sculptor (work created by Cynthia Lahti) whose day job is administrative assistant at her alma mater, the Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC, a real school shuttered in 2019, on whose premises the film was shot), working under her mom (Maryann Plunkett). She rents her home from best friend and fellow alumna Jo (Hong Chau), a full-time sculptor working with mixed media (including string, wire, and foam; work created by Michelle Segre) who is active, hands-on, and irrepressible. While Lizzy prepares for a show at a small gallery, Jo preps for two shows, one at OCAC, the other a prestigious endowed show. And Jo seemingly uses the double show as an excuse not to fix Lizzy’s hot water.
The show prep and perpetual search for a hot shower are just two of multiple plot strands that serve as stage business for this quiet character study. Lizzy is literally quiet and introverted, there are only a handful of shouted lines in general, and supervising sound editor Daniel Timmons’s all-encompassing and in-depth sound design only adds to the quiet at its center. For home viewers, it often sounds like someone is talking or walking around in the next room.
No matter what Lizzy is currently engaged in, the portrait is clear: She feels melancholy and isolated from the community. She rarely attends others’ shows, though everyone comes to hers. Not only does Jo appear more successful, while running errands on campus Lizzy has to face the throngs of students, each working on their own art with school resources, dedicated time, supportive mentors, and not a care in the world. Lizzy used to be one of them. Now she designs flyers for new courses, has to sculpt mostly at night, and borrows space in the school kiln, fitting in her pieces around and between the students’.
Yet she sculpts anyway. Some call art a calling, but that implies a sort of religious ecstasy. It’s more like a compulsion. Artistic endeavor is fundamentally impersonal, in the sense that, rather than trying to say something through the art, the art tries to say something through the artist. Joy, or any other affect, is irrelevant. Of all the shots of people working on “stuff” (as they call it), including long shots of Jo and Lizzy (edited by Reichardt), nobody is smiling. In fact, Lizzy can seem more anxious than usual, carefully attempting to realize the conception that appears in her head.
Artistic execution is impersonal, but artistic conception is entirely personal and contingent. How could it not be, abstracting from the artist’s life and thought as it does? Lizzy’s colorful figurines are inspired by mental images of people she observes, including Jo. When her centerpiece gets burned by the kiln on one side because it’s displaced by student work, the chill kiln master (André Benjamin, a.k.a. André 3000) says that he likes the imperfection. It has spontaneity; it spotlights the source of art in life. Over the next couple of days, an initially distraught Lizzy slowly comes to agree, though she still tries to defend herself to a New York gallerist attending her show, who pointedly replies, “At this point you just have to own it.” And she does. Very few artists of any medium can work free from extraneous cares (filmmakers least of all!), and even for those who can, the work itself is the biggest source of anxiety. Artists might as well roll all of this into the art.
Reichardt is one of the few directors who truly knows how to use Williams, and the resulting portrait is detailed, deep, and compassionate. We also see other artist archetypes besides the anxious working artist (Lizzy), the go-getting up-and-comer (Jo), and the carefree student. There’s the teacher (Heather Lawless) who still yearns to create though her spark has seemingly faded, the retiree (Judd Hirsch) who’s done with the anxieties of artistic creation, and the possibly mad possible genius that everyone worries about (John Magaro). Each of these, even the last guy (albeit reluctantly), is ensconced in the artistic community, to the point where I don’t recall the words “art” or “artist” being used a single time in the film — they go without saying. And it’s all anchored by an institution and its resources, a strong argument for promoting and maintaining art schools.
The community itself is immersed in nature, long one of Reichardt’s leitmotifs (cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt). Students taking the class “Thinking and Movement” move and flow through tall grass; there’s a heavily symbolic bit of business involving a wounded pigeon (animatronic created by Patrick Rummans); and the film ends with Lizzy and Jo meandering the tree-lined streets. There’s some manufactured drama (notably the water heater), but this gem of a film is primarily a sketch of what it’s like being an everyday working artist.
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TNL Editor: Kim Chan (@thenewslensintl)
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