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DGA QUARTERLY 71 (a struggle typically repeated by the protagonists in her stories). Certain Women, shot on 16mm over 30 days in and around a cold and windy Livingston, Mont., was made for $2 million, her biggest budget yet. (Wendy and Lucy, by contrast, was made for $120,000.) For years, she's had a steady gig teaching film and video at Manhattan's Bard College, which, along with some patronage, grants and fellowships, has so far made her output possible. But what about the films' artistry—such as the potent visual compositions and distinctive approach to sound? It's an aesthetic shaped partly on those road trips, amid the powerful noise of wind, truck traffic and freight trains. Environmental sound, coupled with a frequent absence of dialog, became an important way for Reichardt to tell her stories. In the opening sequence of Meek's Cutoff, for example, none of the characters speaks for interminable minutes as they traverse the untamed plains of Oregon in 1845 alongside cover- ed wagons. "These people have been walking across the country for six months together—I'm sure they didn't have too much left to say to each other," Reich- ardt explains. "But the rattling and squeaking of the wag on wheels is so loud, I ended up using that for a soundscape." The climax of Certain Women, shot in the windy, icy-cold park- ing lot of a Livingston, Mont., law firm, achieves a devastating emotional impact when one character (Stewart) is unable to muster a single soothing word to satisfy another character's (Lily Gladstone's) aching need for connection. "I think we started out with a bit more dialog, but you start to realize what you can do without," says Reichardt. That leaves the idea of unbridgeable distance to play out in the actresses' wind-whipped faces. "The wind was so heavy that the producers originally said, 'We can't shoot this scene today,'" Reichardt recalls. "But I thought, this is going to add a whole new level of drama. The actors really have to be there in the moment because the elements call for it." Reichardt's visuals, heavy on wide shots and gallery-worthy compositions, have become increasingly refined over the course of her partnership with cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt on her last three films. Growing up in 1970s Miami, where her parents both worked in law enforcement, she was initially inspired by crime scene photography, which figures prominently in her debut film, River of Grass. "You can have a pristine home with a dead body lying on the carpet. It certainly places people in their environment, in some strange way." When her father gifted her with a Pentax K1000, "It was like I was the one who'd discovered the telephoto lens—everything I shot was wide," remembers Reichardt. Later, she became enamored with the banal and bleak landscapes in the '70s art photography practiced by Stephen Shore, Robert Adams, Joe Deal and others of that era. When she met Blauvelt, who came on as a replacement DP in the second week of shooting Meek's Cutoff, "We were working off Robert Adams photos, which were super-inspiring. With Night Moves, we were thinking about [painter] Charles Burchfield a lot. I always have books of images with me." Besides sharing a simpatico aesthetic, she's found a critical ease of collaboration with Blauvelt. "He puts the camera exactly where I want it. From there, he might ask, 'Would this be better?' But that's a great place to start," she relates. "For years, the hardest thing about filmmaking was that I always had to be the greater debater about where the camera should go. A lot of DPs are out there thinking about what their reel is going to look like. Chris is figuring out how to get you what you want." That's something to which Reichardt devotes a lot of advance planning. "I storyboard and go to the locations and map it out, 'cause I really hate figuring stuff out in front of a crew," she says. "Chris and I will go through every shot in the movie, looking for holes in the design and figuring out the transitions." That same attention to detail underlies her fascination with chores and process—she's known for having actors actually perform chores rather than imitate them. Oddly enough, it was the opportunity to film a ranch hand (played by Gladstone) performing daily duties with horses that first drew her to Certain Women. She worked out a meticulous shooting strategy in advance with a Montana rancher at her side. All of that connects, in a greater way, with how time spent traversing American highways has helped shape Reichardt's methods and aesthetic across a body of work. "I love a chore," she explains, "in that it has a beginning and an end, and a routine to it. I like the small parts that are the journey of the task, as opposed to the end point. In a bigger way," she reflects, "that's what a road movie is. You've left a place, and you're heading to a place, but it's not about the destination. It's the in between of what it takes to get there." ® T ALWAYS SEEMS A MIRACLE THESE FILMS CAN GET OUT AT ALL. I