How Kel­ly Reichardt’s depic­tion of lone­li­ness helped me feel full again

Few film­mak­ers pos­sess the abil­i­ty to illus­trate the human expe­ri­ence in a way that allows the view­er to see their own reflec­tion where they might oth­er­wise have nev­er thought to look. Released in 2016, Kel­ly Reichardt’s Cer­tain Women not only con­veys the com­pli­cat­ed notion of lone­li­ness with great clar­i­ty, it also depicts a spe­cif­ic female long­ing for some­thing more.

The direc­tor makes it clear from the out­set that the sub­jects of the film are all fierce­ly inde­pen­dent indi­vid­u­als: Lau­ra Dern is Lau­ra, an expe­ri­enced lawyer; Michelle Williams is Gina, a head­strong wife and moth­er; Kris­ten Stew­art is Beth, a young and over­tired lawyer; and Lily Glad­stone is Jamie, a soli­tary farm­hand. As their sto­ries devel­op, so these women begin to unrav­el – as did I, watch­ing the film for the first time as a 17-year-old.

We observe Jamie as she car­ries out the mun­dane task of tak­ing care of hors­es at a farm in Liv­ingston, Mon­tana. Day after day, she silent­ly per­forms the same actions, with no one but the farm dog for com­pa­ny. She’s alone, and that dev­as­tat­ing fact nags at her. She yearn for some­thing more. Anything.

This ago­nis­ing want leads Jamie to an almost emp­ty high school class­room in the ear­ly evening. She’s a sore thumb among the mid­dle-aged pupils wait­ing to be edu­cat­ed on the his­to­ry of US scholas­tic law. The teacher of this class is Beth, who stum­bles into the class­room with seem­ing­ly no idea what she’s doing. Jamie sees Beth from the back of the room and decides that she wants to reach out to her, per­haps to have some­thing with her, even if she isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly able to artic­u­late what that some­thing is.

Study­ing Lily Gladstone’s per­for­mance, one plagued with inter­minable soli­tude, was a slap in the face to my per­ceived notion that I was going along just fine in my life. Jamie’s long, dis­tant stares into the Mid­west­ern moun­tains – wait­ing for some­thing to alle­vi­ate her malaise – shook me to my core. I felt so exposed see­ing this per­son attempt­ing to form some kind of connection.

I recog­nised the long­ing when Jamie takes Beth to a local din­er and abrupt­ly cut through her silence with a bold state­ment. ​“I could show you if you stay longer…” ​“Show me what?” ​“The ranch, the hors­es.” Jamie holds her breath, expos­ing a vul­ner­a­ble side to her­self that almost seems out of char­ac­ter. When her invi­ta­tion is reject­ed, we can only watch hope­less­ly as Jamie dri­ves back to the farm alone, star­ing at the road, play­ing the moment back to her­self on a loop.

See­ing Jamie in this way remind­ed me of the hole I had been try­ing to con­ceal in my own heart. This film took that gap­ing hole and made it glow. It forced me to recog­nise my own lone­li­ness, a feel­ing which, much like Jamie, I didn’t know what to do with.

Reichardt didn’t change my view of the world – but she has made me more cog­nisant of it. I realised through Williams’ Gina that being strong-willed is not an instant salve for the iso­la­tion one can feel when rela­tion­ships are not going well. I saw through Dern’s Lau­ra that some­times being a woman means lis­ten­ing to oth­ers’ griev­ances in spite of them ignor­ing yours. This came less as a gut-punch than a con­fir­ma­tion of a fact of wom­an­hood, one that I didn’t reck­on with until I had to.

I revis­it Cer­tain Women from time to time and wit­ness the same women going through the same ago­nis­ing strug­gles. As they fall apart, I start to feel myself become whole again. A cru­el truth: every time, it’s as if Reichardt is hold­ing a mir­ror to my face and telling me that, yes, this is what I’m feel­ing. It’s the most lov­ing real­i­ty check I could ever ask for. This film will always hold a spe­cial place in my heart for per­mit­ting me to feel the things I once was too ashamed to admit to myself.