Showing Up marks the fourth collaboration between filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and actor Michelle Williams and at first glance, it might seem to be less ambitious than their previous team ups, Wendy and Lucy (2008), Meek’s Cutoff and Certain Women (2016). And yet, as much as I loved those earlier efforts, there is the distinct possibility that their latest effort just might be their strongest work today, a lovely and low-key examination of the artistic process and the frustrations of those who yearn to pursue it freely and fully but find themselves forced to balance those desires with the comparative drudgery of everyday life.
Set largely in and around a Portland, Oregon art school and the surrounding community, Williams plays Lizzie, a sculptor who is trying complete a series of figurines in time for an important local gallery show being held in a week’s time. Unfortunately for her, while her dedication to her work cannot be argued, the simple realities of day-to-day living requires her to work at what some might refer to as “a real job” in order to pay the bills and eke out time to pursue her craft when she can. To make matters worse, her job is at the school magazine that is run by her mother (Maryann Plunkett) and she gets to bear witness to the success stories of other artists who are doing much better than her without seemingly putting in a fraction of the sheer effort that Lizzie does. Key among them is Jo (Hong Chau), a former classmate who not only has a thriving career as an artist (she is currently putting together two shows) but who is also Lizzie’s landlord to boot.
Over the course of the week covered in the film, Lizzie’s finds her attempts to pursue her artistic process constantly being stymied by one distraction or another. Her water heater is on the fritz but her constant reminders to Jo to get it fixed are continually unheeded. Her cat attacks and wounds a pigeon and she winds up taking on the job of nursing it back to health, even taking it on an expensive trip to the vet at one point. She is worried about her father (Judd Hirsch), who seems to be doing an extended hosting of a bohemian couple that he barely knows, and her emotionally troubled brother (John Magaro), a brilliant artist in his own right whose latest “project” involves digging a very big hole in his back yard. Perhaps the most quietly cruel cut comes when Lizzie asks her mother for a day off so that she can focus entirely on her sculptures for a day and she merely responds, unthinkingly, with “If you need a personal day, just take a personal day.”
Showing Up is easily the most laid-back of Reichardt’s films—at times, it has the feel of one of Richard Linklater’s hang-out narratives—and those looking for some grand dramatic resolution or even some kind of confirmation of whether Lizzie’s work can be considered “good” or not may come away feeling a little bit frustrated. (The closest that the film comes to tension during its art show climax comes with whether one guest has perhaps helped himself to a little too much free cheese or not.) There isn’t even the sense that the show is particularly make-or-break for Lizzie either—you get the sense that at the worst, she will just go back to it again, trying to pursue her passion in the face of all the personal complications in the way. Even when it comes to the subplot involving the wounded bird, Lizzie finds herself cast to the side—having put in most of the hard work of healing it, she isn’t even around when it comes time for the triumphant capper.
For anyone who has found themselves in the position of trying to balance the two, the film will strike home and indeed, considering that Reichardt herself has a “day job” between her film projects as an artist in residence at Bard College, this clearly feels like her most personal and lived-in of all her films to date. I can imagine how this film idea could have been transformed into a caustic satire on artistic communities, the struggles of some of its participants and the successes of others. And yet, while there are some funny moments here and there borne out of Lizzie’s constant frustrations, Reichardt’s depiction is ultimately a positive and celebratory one. Even when Lizzie’s frustrations with Jo and the water heater (and, of course, her seemingly easy success in their shared field) finally boil over at one point, the bond as artists that the two share proves to be stronger and when it comes to showtime, Jo is there to support her friend and colleague.
At the center of it all is Williams, who is clearly one of the strongest of all American actresses working today and who seems to especially thrive when working with Reichardt. The last time we saw her on the screen was in The Fablemans, another film involving notions of family and the artistic process and which also featured Judd Hirsch in a supporting role. Although she received an Oscar nomination for her turn as the hero’s oddball mother, her uncharacteristically hammy work was perhaps the most significant of that film’s numerous disappointments. Happily, she is back on the mark here as Lizzie in what is one of her best performances to date. There are no “big” moments, per se—the kind that look good in an Oscar clip reel—but there is a fierce authenticity to everything that she does here that cannot be denied. Watching her as she sits in the magazine office, going through the day-to-day drudgery while surrounded by others currently free to follow their artistic pursuits with a quiet mixture of envy and misery, cuts deep but at the same time, she is also able to demonstrate the determination that drives her to continue on in a situation that most people would have given up on long ago.
Showing Up is a wonderful movie—I cannot imagine it not being on my list of the best films of 2023 come the end of December—but as much as I may enthuse about it, I recognize that recommending it, especially as highly as I am, is fraught with difficulty. For one thing, since it is a decidedly small-scale and low-key film, it may strike some people as the kind of thing that they figure they can just wait to see when it hits streaming, only to lose track of it once it gets swallowed up by the algorithm. For another, since it doesn’t really build to any big dramatic moments and is more observational in its approach than anything else, it is the kind of film that some might dismiss as not being about anything while wondering what all the fuss is about. All I can say is that if you want to see a film that has big cathartic moments that go out of their way to let you know how to feel at any given moment, there are always plenty of those out there to choose from. However, if you want to see something that, while admittedly quiet and restrained, is just about perfect, Showing Up is indisputably the one to see.