Night Moves

Dir: Kelly Reichardt

2013

***

I'm a huge fan of Kelly Reichardt's films but Night Moves, her fifth feature, is her weakest to date in my opinion. However, visually, it is probably one of her strongest. Without wanting to sound to nerdy or technical, Night Moves has some of the best night time footage I've seen in many years. The film follows the lives of three radical environmentalist who conspire to blow up a damn that they believe is causing damage to the surrounding environment. One is an ex-Marine (Peter Sarsgaard), one is a organic farm worker (Jesse Eisenberg) and one is a young environmentalist who works at a local sauna (Dakota Fanning). The film is totally character driven and follows the three closely but it is a rather quiet film, and Reichardt relies heavily on gesture and mood to tell the story. Here lies the problem in my opinion. Sarsgaard is okay but he's a talky actor and Jesse Eisenberg can only play it one way. Jesse Eisenberg is Jesse Eisenberg, you could say he was well cast but personally I think it's a little bit lazy but then I don't like him very much. You say 'intense' I say 'Dead eyes'. Dakota Fanning on the other hand, puts them both to shame. She gets it and can utter a thousand lines without saying a word and I'm not sure the film would have worked without her. The film is of two halves, what happens before the explosion and what happens afterwards. You'd think that the explosion would be the film's big scene and its most important but that isn't the case and this is what I liked best about the film's structure, although I feel that the ending had very little impact considering the build-up, and it really should have been a devastating conclusion, so striking even that it could have been an iconic moment in modern cinema. I just didn't like the performances or the script and felt they were a long departure from Reichardt previous films. Wendy & Lucy has everything you could ask of a film, is perfectly balanced with just one immaculate performance, I'm just not sure how she couldn't come close to that with three talented actors and an exciting story. It's beautifully directed but it's just so slow and stunted, the long silences didn't created the desired mood at all but I did love the story and structure. Swap actors, add a few extra lines and it could have been a real masterpiece.