WANDA (BARBARA LODEN, 1970)

Wanda:

“Whatever film I make is some extension of myself,”
—Barbara Loden, 1970

The girl’s name Wanda is of Slavic origin, and the meaning of Wanda is “the tribe of the Vandals”. The Vandals (or Wendlas) were an ancient Slavonic tribe whose destructive behavior led to the modern term “vandalism”. Also possibly (Old German) “wanderer”.

Wanda would be her only film, released ten years before she would succumb to breast cancer. The film opens on an exterior shot of a Pennsylvania coal mine that might as well be the surface of the moon or some dystopian wasteland. At first it’s completely silent, underlying the emptiness and aridness of the landscape. Only subtly do the sounds of heavy machinery arise as the camera pans left. In just the second shot we see a mountain of coal, a tiny figure utterly dwarfed at its base, as two bulldozers operate—one at the top piling on more coal, one at the bottom removing about the same amount. The effect is one of never ending cycle, of a task that can never be completed—the slope even suggests Sisyphus.

The film then cuts away to a dilapidated house nearby. There are interesting geometric features to the framing here that suggest a parallel between two smokestacks in the background and two pillars supporting the roof of the home—both man-made structures, one a vent for waste, the other the supposed harbor for familial growth.

Inside the home we immediately see an elderly woman sitting by the window, clutching a rosary as a lit candle illuminates a crucifix near a framed photograph of a uniformed Marine—which seems to rise out of her head as if he is what she’s contemplating at that very moment—the frame an image of traditional American values which will have no place in the narrative to follow.

We first see Wanda (played by the director herself) as she wakes to the sound of her screaming baby, being attended to by her mother, while Wanda emerges from a hangover on the living room couch. She is disheveled. Her only reaction to the child’s cries is the phrase, “He’s only angry cause I’m here.”

The scene cuts from her holding her head in her hands to a wide shot of the factory, the smokestacks, and the surrounding valley with homes cutting into the hillside in the distance, the camera zooming in on the tiny figure of Wanda walking across the landscape, utterly isolated and insignificant and outfitted in what appears to be pure white which contrasts not only to the surrounding mountains of dirt, but with her own inner state, as previously hinted at inside her home.

She begs for money. She refuses to defend herself in a divorce hearing, acquiescing that the children would be better off with their father, who tells the judge about her failure as a homemaker, mother, and wife. She makes $9.87 a day (in 1970) in a sewing factory, but works too slowly to keep the job. She sleeps with a man who tries to slip away before she wakes, and leaves her by the side of the road when she does anyway. This comprises the first twenty minutes of the film, and the only things we see her do to deal with her situation are smoke cigarettes, drink beer, eat ice cream, and window-shop. Consumerism as escapism (she even goes to the movies, though she falls asleep and has to be awoken by a janitor), and she’s essentially emotionless throughout, suggesting acceptance of her fate or a strong detachment.

Wanda enters a “closed” bar to use the restroom and inside she finds her own image in a broken mirror. The shot once again suggests her miniaturization—her visage is only visible in a small part of the mirror. The fractured image is her fractured life, her understanding of herself, her perception of the world. However it also suggests for some that our image of her is incomplete, that Wanda is of course human and should we stand in front of that same mirror a fractured image is what we would find. The perception of this shot depends on the judgementality of the spectator and in the end provides more insight into onesself than Wanda. Nevertheless, she’s unable to hold even her own gaze for more than a few seconds.

Wanda is attractive but is rarely shown in attractive light. In a scene near the center of the film where her face is given its first full and lasting close-up, her squinting into the harsh light of the setting sun makes her seem at times aged. When her new companion mentions her hair “looks terrible” her immediate response is, “What can I do?” A neat summation of her own concept of her plight. Her one asset rendered inneffectual, as is emphasized by Mr. Dennis, the incompetent thief she ends up accompanying.

The framing continues to place Wanda in a secondary role. Note Mr. Dennis’ placement in the foreground, looking down on her, though his own moral predicament is arguably just as compromising as her own (perhaps only more so insofar as it’s illegal).

A similar shot later in the film shows Wanda taking a bath, frequently obscured by Mr. Dennis’ cigar in the foreground, open to all manner of interpretation. The film constantly places her in these shots to remind us of the place she is in, has been placed in, has placed herself in, and we are left to consider which we feel is more important.

The only affection she is ever shown or shows is sexual. At times she appears willing to accept genuine affection, or just willing to give it, but the situation or persons in that moment are prohibitive. When Mr. Dennis asks her to sit closer to him in the car, the closest thing she gets to warmth is his hand on her inner thigh, which she ‘hugs’ with her legs, a substitute for a real hug, for real closeness and sincerity. The camera is even placed over her shoulder in a voyeruistic manner, such that the characters’ discomfort is paralleled by the spectator’s discomfort in peeping in at this scene.

Wanda’s detachment is made more prominent in the framing as the film progresses. In previous shots she was shown isolated within a landscape—a lone human against a coal mine, an empty theater, an empty bed—but here she is seen among a group of people yet set apart from them. She cannot join them—despite her physical proximity, she remains anathema.

A sign near the catacombs they visit proclaims, under the banner, “Christ in the Book of Genesis”, “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head…” It’s a direct quote from Genesis but there’s a typo (unclear whether it’s the fault of the sign-maker or the design of the director)—the final “she” is “he” in the original text. Since the rest of the quote is illegible (in which the culpability of the male is also detailed), it’s only the culpability of the female that is on display. So Wanda is suggested to be Eve the original temptress and Eve the victim of misplaced (and perhaps accidental or misguided) propaganda. It’s a small moment in the film, a background moment, but its relevance to the content is obvious. The duality of the meaning of the image that is consistent with the rest of the film in distancing from any direct judgement of Wanda. That is left to the spectator to decide.

Wanda’s unintentional destination is a failed bank robbery, and on the way to this we’re given a shot that neatly parallels the consumerist advertisement for personal loans (a type of capitalist slavery) with the image of the car on its way to a robbery—the ultimate capitalist outlaw statement (Steal Money) vs. the ultimate capitalist message (Buy Money).

After the failed robbery Wanda is nearly raped by a driver she’s apparently hitchhiked with, and for the first time we see her break down in tears—the first real emotion she’s displayed to this point in the entire film. It takes place in a remote and desolate landscape not unlike the coal mine that began the film, and so Wanda has come full circle. Her cries of desperation are juxtaposed with the only pure depiction of Nature in the entire film—every other shot containing greenery has contained some man-made structure—but here Loden chooses a shot of light filtered through tree tops, and the effect is to emphasize the disparity between Wanda’s situation and that which is natural, between humanity’s general course and nature.

Wanda’s filmic end is ambiguous, indeed as subjective as her beginning. To what extent her travails have taught her anything is likely relative to the extent they’ve taught the spectator anything.

The following New York Times article provides more detail about Barbara Loden’s life (and its parallels to the film) as well as her marriage to director Elia Kazan.

“THE arc of the actress and filmmaker Barbara Loden’s life was dramatic enough to be a Hollywood movie. She survived a hardscrabble Southern childhood; moved at 16 to New York, where she was a pin-up model and nightclub dancer; then went on to win a Tony award, marry the director Elia Kazan, and in 1970, write, direct and star in her own film — the bracingly realist ‘Wanda’ — before dying of cancer 10 years later at 48.
Related "Yet her inner journey, from a girl with little to leverage but her looks and seductiveness to an artist with an urgent story to tell, was no doubt even more complicated. When ‘Wanda,’ a portrait of a passive, disconnected coal miner’s wife who attaches herself to a petty crook, came out, Ms. Loden described it as partly autobiographical.

“’I used to be a lot like that,’ she told The Los Angeles Times in 1971, adding: ‘I had no identity of my own. I just became whatever I thought people wanted me to become.’

“The cinematographer and editor of the film, Nicholas T. Proferes, who also had an on and off romantic relationship with Ms. Loden, said this month in a telephone interview that she was driven by a desire to overcome her past and was fierce about becoming an artist. She fully inhabited her character in ‘Wanda,’ he said, ‘because it was her story.’

“With the film, which would ultimately be the only one she ever directed, Ms. Loden succeeded in leaving her past as eye candy far behind. Although some feminists objected to its central character’s weakness and victimization, other critics praised the film for its grittiness, the deeply authentic performances by Ms. Loden and her co-star, Michael Higgins, and the portrayal of a woman struggling, with almost no resources, to survive. After Ms. Loden’s death, the film was shown in France, where it attracted many admirers, including Marguerite Duras. In the United States the release of a DVD in 2006 brought the film to a somewhat wider audience.

“It is about to get more attention with a full restoration from the 16-millimeter original that may be truer visually to Ms. Loden’s and Mr. Proferes’s intentions than any previous version. The restored version, the work of the UCLA Film & Television Archive, with support from Gucci and the Film Foundation, will be screened on Thursday in Venice and on Oct. 27 at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

“Ms. Loden recalled her childhood as bleak and emotionally impoverished. She was born in 1932 in a small town in North Carolina. Her parents divorced when she was young, and her mother worked in another town, so she was raised by her maternal grandparents, whom she described as religious and not affectionate. In interviews over the years she described spending time as a child hiding behind the kitchen stove, wondering who she was and what she was doing there.

“She came to New York and found work modeling and dancing at the Copacabana. In the early 1950s she married Larry Joachim, who worked in television and got her a job as a scantily dressed sidekick on ‘The Ernie Kovacs Show,’ on which she would get pies thrown in her face or pretend to be sawed in half.

“Through a friend at the Copacabana she started acting classes with the Method teacher Paul Mann that she later saw as the beginning of her intellectual development. He required his students to read the newspaper and certain books, and he pushed Ms. Loden to delve into her background and understand how it had shaped her.

“And then, of course, there was Mr. Kazan, who was 23 years her senior. She sought him out, either at a party or a rerecording session for his 1957 film ‘A Face in the Crowd,’ depending on the version of the story, and they began an intense affair. In his memoir, published in 1988, he wrote about her with a mix of affection and patronization, emphasizing her sexuality and her backcountry feistiness.

“He gave her a small part in ‘Wild River’ (1960), and then a larger role in ‘Splendor in the Grass’ (1961), as Warren Beatty’s rebellious, sexually promiscuous sister. When he and Robert Whitehead selected Arthur Miller’s new play, ‘After the Fall,’ as the first production of Lincoln Center Theater, which they were founding, he cast her as Maggie, a thinly veiled version of Mr. Miller’s former wife, Marilyn Monroe. Her performance as Maggie, which ranged from childlike to feral, won her a Tony award in 1964.

“Despite the acclaim, she accepted few roles after that. In later interviews she said she wasn’t interested in the parts she was offered. By then she also had two young sons: one, Leo, by Mr. Kazan, and another, Marco, by Mr. Joachim. In the late 1960s Ms. Loden divorced Mr. Joachim and married Mr. Kazan, whose first wife had died in 1963. They would remain married, although with periods of estrangement, until the end of her life.

“Ms. Loden got the inspiration for ‘Wanda’ from a newspaper article about a woman who was convicted of being an accomplice in a bank robbery and who, when the judge sentenced her to 20 years in prison, thanked him. ‘That’s what struck me: Why would this girl feel glad to be put away?’ she told an interviewer in 1974.

“Mr. Kazan would later claim that he wrote the original script. At first, ‘it was like a favor I was doing for her, to give her something to do,’ he said with characteristic condescension in an interview shortly after her death. Then she rewrote it many times, and it became hers, he said.

“Mr. Proferes said that Mr. Kazan had suggested that he be the cinematographer, based on work he had done with the documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker.”‘He said, “Can you work with a woman?”’ Mr. Proferes recalled. ‘And I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t.’

“Ms. Loden made ‘Wanda’ on a budget of $115,000, put up by an eccentric entrepreneur named Harry Shuster. Aside from Mr. Higgins, she used mostly nonprofessional actors.

“The style of the film could not have been more different from Mr. Kazan’s style of psychological melodrama. In contrast to Ms. Loden’s hypersexualized performances in ‘Splendor in the Grass’ and ‘After the Fall,’ her performance in ‘Wanda’ is understated.

“’She has such control,’ the actress Isabelle Huppert, who released a DVD of ‘Wanda’ in France in 2004, said of Ms. Loden’s directing. ‘For a first film it’s so amazing.’

“Ms. Huppert said she saw Wanda’s attachment to the petty crook, Mr. Dennis, as a metaphor for Ms. Loden’s relationship to the movie world and to Mr. Kazan.‘It was almost like the character could be a metaphor for her as an actress, or her as a filmmaker, being tied to the movie business and this man,’ she said.

“Like her character, who is rejected by society, Ms. Loden ultimately found most doors in the film business closed to her.

“Mr. Proferes said the initial response to ‘Wanda’ was empowering. ‘She felt stronger about herself, more self-sufficient, that maybe she could go out on her own,’ meaning possibly leave Mr. Kazan, he said. But although she and Mr. Proferes wrote several other screenplays, they were unable to get financing to make them. Then, in the late 1970s, she learned she had breast cancer.

“In 1980, shortly before her death, she was interviewed for a German television documentary. She didn’t mention that she was ill but spoke about her work and how she hoped that it expressed something about the world she came from. After they left New York, the filmmakers learned she had died. In the last scene, Mr. Mann reads a letter from her.

“There’s so much I didn’t achieve, but I tried to be independent and to create my own way,’ she wrote. ‘Otherwise, I would have become like Wanda, all my life just floating around.’

“This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

“Correction: September 7, 2010

“An earlier version of this article about the restoration of Barbara Loden’s only film, ‘Wanda,’ on August 27, misstated the French actress Isabelle Huppert’s relationship to the film. She released a DVD of ‘Wanda’ in France in 2004, but her rights to the film have now expired.”

This is a truly wonderful film. Barbara Loden was quite an original talent, and it’s a shame she never got to make another movie.

JR thx for posting this beautiful piece. Bookmrked for late reading

A damn pity I haven’t seen it yet but since it contains heavy-handed spoilers, I’ll have to see it soon to contribute. I managed to read several excerpts of your review whilst avoiding the plot details. I read mainly sections regarding comments of Wanda the film to get a primary idea about it.

Fantastic introduction to a film I now need to view. Thanks!

An excellent film, and excellent also your approach to it via its visual construction.

It is believed to be Barbara Loden in the 1965 “Garry Winogrand”: http://www.texasphilatelic.org/resources/stamps2002/photography.jpg photo second from right bottom row.

I have an archived pane of this issue: Masters of American Photography.

Excellent JR !

I’m excited to see this now. You should write more film criticism this is very good.

Wanda is an absolute masterpiece. Thanks for this excellent write up, Josh.

Here’s an interview with her from the Mike Douglas show:

And another one with her husband: Kazan parle de Barbara Loden

Thanks, Karl. It was actually seeing the film on your profile page that spurred me to watch it.

Excellent analysis, I see you connected with the film a lot. However, I can’t say I cared too much for Loden’s single directorial effort. I’m a big fan of Cassavetes but the more “Cassavetes-esque” films I see praised yet can’t seem to enjoy, the more I think that what I like about the man’s work is less commonly duplicated / imitated by filmmakers. What I love about Cassavetes isn’t necessarily his minimal-plot character studies or his uncompromising naturalist sensibility (though I do find his approach with those things undoubtedly interesting), but rather the moments where his camera movements, closely fastened on his subjects, coming in and out of focus, are edited into segments that blur the line between traditional technique and modernist art (or formalist film.) His visual articulations provide such catharsis for me, and I think what makes him so invaluable is the fact that similar emotional release can probably never be accomplished by another filmmaker.

It is instances like these that put Cassavetes’ work together (for me at least.) Wanda lacked this entirely, and If I were to make any comparisons, I would say it felt like a lower-budget Five Easy Pieces more than anything else. It just kind of dragged. I think the appeal for this one is extensively limited to those who have a vast appreciation for minimalist realism.

^ Thanks for the post. While I can’t speak to why this film may appeal to others, I certainly have a “vast appreciation for minimalist realism”, though I’m not sure that “minimalist” quite fits Wanda simply due to the dynamic camera.

“What I love about Cassavetes isn’t necessarily his minimal-plot character studies or his uncompromising naturalist sensibility (though I do find his approach with those things undoubtedly interesting), but rather the moments where his camera movements, closely fastened on his subjects, coming in and out of focus, are edited into segments that blur the line between traditional technique and modernist art (or formalist film.) His visual articulations provide such catharsis for me, and I think what makes him so invaluable is the fact that similar emotional release can probably never be accomplished by another filmmaker.”

Roger, we are in groovy accord on this. Cassavetes, at moments, does quite interesting things with editing and camera. Not being the most exact shooter, his approach was lose, intuitive, jazz-like. Nonetheless, he often made wonderful discoveries. Same goes for editing. The way he would submit his material to constant recutting also allowed for providential effects.

" I’m a big fan of Cassavetes but the more “Cassavetes-esque” films I see praised yet can’t seem to enjoy, the more I think that what I like about the man’s work is less commonly duplicated / imitated by filmmakers."

How about the filmmaker’s that influenced him such as Morris Engel? His work, like Cassavetes, and Loden’s makes the details more important than the destination, but it’s more gentle in tone than Cassavetes and in spirit than Loden’s.

I think that what you see as dragging is the essence of why these kinds of films, while uniquely different in many ways, all provide the greatest rewards for a viewer. Loden won’t give you the emotional catharsis you seek because she’s giving you something else. With Wanda we are allowed to live for a time with a woman who’s life careens out of her control, stalls, shifts, slides and is never sentimentalized by the filmmaker and actors. It isn’t really necessarily a part of the Cassavetes tradition but more a part of the unvarnished documentarian aesthetic favored by filmmakers from Lionel Rogosin to Frederick Wiseman. When we eliminate the emotional catharsis but not the small emotions that bubble up in tiny ripples on the surface of our faces and in miniscule body linguistics we get to experience so much more than simple catharsis.

Great exposition, House of Leaves. This movie is now officially on my watchlist.

PS:

Bump.

Great film. The scene where she is fired from her piece work job and just tossed out on her own would make a Tea Bagger proud.

Just a great film. Much more a socio-political tragedy than Cassavetes.

Buuump.

@ Roger the more “Cassavetes-esque” films
Been smoking Johnny lately? I didn’t see any connection to Cassavetes.

It just kind of dragged.
I would suggest you are looking at something protag-wise without many male signposts.
The men were jerks, and she was stupid not to see it right? isn’t that the way we feel?
The feminist view is that she is a victim and, because of a male dominated environment, can’t change things.
The film wasn’t boring to me – it was a wonderful, if trite, film. Wanda is not on the threshhold of anything tangible or even intangible – she is adrift, and in the end she stops drifting, stops being.
You see the irony there? She is nothing and on the cusp of nothing and yet is enough of something to stop being?

In that state of vulnerability, people rush in to lay claim; take possession:

Marguerite Duras (creepily) says we are watching Loden’s ineffable aura – that she captured on film her real self. Duras asked Loden’s husband Elia Kazan and he said his wife was an actress and acting is what we are seeing.
Assuming Duras can tell an aura when she sees one, what does that mean to us?
What is the point of looking at someone’s aura?

It is an over reaction to call any first film an absolute masterpiece, as this dumbs down the notion of craft. Wanda, 400 Blows, The Whole Shooting Match, Black Peter
– their personal, gritty flavor gives us an emotional movement and makes them favorites, but masterpieces?
Don’t think so…

I’m uncomfortable with the word “masterpiece” in most contexts—it’s always subjective and hyperbolic—even more so when describing a director’s first film, and especially more so when that’s their only film. Truth is we have no idea what Barbara Loden’s potential was because she died having made only Wanda.

Obviously it’s a film I love, not because it’s perfect but because I admire its subtlety—it accomplishes quite a bit without using the main narrative to cram it down our throat, many examples of which I cited above.

I haven’t seen enough Cassavettes to comment on the comparison, though I have seen Faces and found it remarkable.

…allowed to live for a time with a woman who’s life….. we eliminate the emotional catharsis but not the small emotions that bubble up in tiny ripples on the surface of our faces and in miniscule body linguistics.

Is that a definition of aura? could be, huh?

who’s life careens out of her control, stalls, shifts, slides and is never sentimentalized by the filmmaker and actors

If I remember correctly there are points of sentimentality in the film. The part I don’t remember is this: careens out of her control, stalls, shifts, slides

She is directionless in a way that there is nothing to stall, shift, or slide away from, to, or against. As for control, Wanda is an imposition.

who’s life careens out of her control

What struck me about the film is that Wanda, unlike a typical protagonist, seems completely disinterested in controlling her life. Things are falling apart around her and she hardly seems to notice, much less care.

Which are the points of sentimentality, Robert? I’m not challenging you, I just don’t recall….

Barbara Loden is an intriguing figure, one I have a great amount of respect for and Wanda is one of my favorites Certainly a movie I plan on revisiting many times.

Excellent work, House of Leaves, thank you for this.

‘What struck me about the film is that Wanda, unlike a typical protagonist, seems completely disinterested in controlling her life. Things are falling apart around her and she hardly seems to notice, much less care.’
I definitely agree with this, that’s what fascinated me the first time I watched it.

Wanda has been one of my favourite films for a long time. Thank you for your perspective on it, House, this was very illuminating. I hope, too, that this serves as a way for more people to discover Barbara Loden and Wanda.

@Caoimhi​n
“Roger, we are in groovy accord on this. Cassavetes, at moments, does quite interesting things with editing and camera. Not being the most exact shooter, his approach was lose, intuitive, jazz-like. Nonetheless, he often made wonderful discoveries. Same goes for editing. The way he would submit his material to constant recutting also allowed for providential effects.”

Absolutely. His affinity for jazz definitely shows in his editing process. During those really intense moments, his shot sequencing has such a spectacular musicality to it, somewhere between consonant harmony and dissonant noise.

@ Mike Spence
“How about the filmmaker’s that influenced him such as Morris Engel? His work, like Cassavetes, and Loden’s makes the details more important than the destination, but it’s more gentle in tone than Cassavetes and in spirit than Loden’s.”

Having only seen one Engel film (Little Fugitive) I’m not sure what I can really provide in terms of an answer to that. However, Engel also seemed to use moments in Little Fugitive where the film broke into more conceptual, cathartic territory, brought on by the way he mixed sound with arrangements of images into montage sequences. I remember one scene in particular that took place when the kid first made it to the boardwalk alone, and the voice of the carney on the speaker was juxtaposed over a series of quickly changing images providing the overwhelming, chaotic feeling feeling of a young boy being independently exposed to so much at once.

“I think that what you see as dragging is the essence of why these kinds of films, while uniquely different in many ways, all provide the greatest rewards for a viewer. Loden won’t give you the emotional catharsis you seek because she’s giving you something else. With Wanda we are allowed to live for a time with a woman who’s life careens out of her control, stalls, shifts, slides and is never sentimentalized by the filmmaker and actors. It isn’t really necessarily a part of the Cassavetes tradition but more a part of the unvarnished documentarian aesthetic favored by filmmakers from Lionel Rogosin to Frederick Wiseman. When we eliminate the emotional catharsis but not the small emotions that bubble up in tiny ripples on the surface of our faces and in miniscule body linguistics we get to experience so much more than simple catharsis.”

I think one of the things John Cassavetes is most widely recognized for is his style of blending a documentary aesthetic with fictional character studies not unlike Barbara Loden’s Wanda. I’m not exactly sure how one could make a case for why a film that seems like it drags to some is in actuality the most rewarding type of film for a viewer. This is by no means is the first film I’d seen where the small emotions experienced throughout the picture eventually compile to encompass a statement of greater magnitude, and I personally didn’t feel it stood out anymore than the others. As I said in my original post, what makes Cassavetes stand out to me are the moments of catharsis, which I’ll have to disagree with you on designating as simple.

@ Robert
“Been smoking Johnny lately?”

Ha, no more than usual.

“I didn’t see any connection to Cassavetes.”
I should make note of the fact that this film was presented to me by various people (both random film fans as well as critics such as Richard Brody of The New Yorker), and on various websites, as a film which draws numerous comparisons to the work of John Cassavetes. I know for a fact I’m not the only person to look at it from this perspective, in fact one of the five comments left on the films page refers to it as “Cassavetes-like.” I think there are a lot of similarities between his films and this one. I almost wish I had seen this thread prior to watching the film because different external influences would have possibly lead to me to view the film with different eyes, therefore with different expectations.

I would suggest you are looking at something protag-wise without many male signposts.
The men were jerks, and she was stupid not to see it right? isn’t that the way we feel?
The feminist view is that she is a victim and, because of a male dominated environment, can’t change things.
The film wasn’t boring to me – it was a wonderful, if trite, film. Wanda is not on the threshhold of anything tangible or even intangible – she is adrift, and in the end she stops drifting, stops being.
You see the irony there? She is nothing and on the cusp of nothing and yet is enough of something to stop being?

I see that you as well as others have connected with the film and trust me when I say that I didn’t ignore the obvious feminist commentary provided by the film. Nor am I ignoring the fact that many of you find the film to offer first-class insights into this type of existence. Honestly, I’m surprised the film didn’t resonate with me more being that I spent a few years more of less drifting not too far from Carbondale in the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton area. Based on my own interests in film / filmmaking, I tend to look at things from the standpoint of a story-teller (I was a fiction writing major at NYU before I switched majors) and I don’t think this is the type of movie that would attract someone like me. Why I’m not sold on sandbox narratives like the one in Wanda is that often times the voids purposely left in the story / plot could just as easily express absolutely nothing as it does everything. An intelligent mind can attach a philosophical narrative that far surpasses anything intended by the filmmaker / writer, especially when you begin to diminish plot structure, allowing the viewer’s mind to wander freely in a broader variety of directions. I thought Wanda definitely hit on some interesting topics but nothing I found particularly uncommon amongst the subjects frequently covered in artistic film, nor did I think it was presented in a way that would separate it from others. I’m not saying this is a bad style of film, just one that I don’t care for as much as ones with a stronger narrative. Don’t get me wrong, Raymond Carver is one of my favorite writers and I have just as strong an inclination towards writing where the story takes a backseat as I do more conventional work. However, what Carver does with his prose to keep the reader attentive, I don’t feel Loden did with her… whatever the cinematic version of prose is…

@ HK Which are the points of sentimentality, Robert?

Does sentimentality rear its ugly head around the theme park and his father’s?

@ Roger Ray Carney sees lots of Cassavetes in this; I just didn’t.

often times the voids purposely left in the story / plot could just as easily express absolutely nothing as it does everything

Hey, Marguerite Duras saw Loden’s ineffable aura….

There is no release from the emotional tensions in Cassavetes work. He worked against the idea of catharsis, preferring a perpetual emotional ambiguity that frustrates the characters and the viewers. I’m not sure where you’re getting this cathartic release from his work but it’s really not there, Roger.

@Robert
“Hey, Marguerite Duras saw Loden’s ineffable aura….”

Haha. Well she sees a lot of things that I don’t and I suppose that is why she is a famous genius and I am just a student, two and a half years behind in school who just moved back in with his father. :)

@Mike
“There is no release from the emotional tensions in Cassavetes work. He worked against the idea of catharsis, preferring a perpetual emotional ambiguity that frustrates the characters and the viewers. I’m not sure where you’re getting this cathartic release from his work but it’s really not there, Roger.”

Hm. I don’t think it really matters what he worked for or against. He certainly wouldn’t be the first artist to create something totally different than his original objective, and I wouldn’t jump to a conclusion assuming that just because you don’t experience it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I find that a good example of emotional release in one of Cassavetes’ films would be the scene in A Woman Under the Influence from which I shared a frame of in my original post. The entire film leads up to that moment where Mabel returns from the hospital, only to immediately break down. Nick brings her upstairs and the camera zooms in directly to their mouths as he says “I’m with you, there’s nothing you can do wrong, I just want you to be yourself” (a true change in form from the man we are introduced to during the beginning of the movie) as Mabel screams over him “I don’t know what to do” repetitively. You’ve seen the movie so I don’t need to explain the rest of the scene. At that powerful instant, I think it was Cassavetes’ intention for all of the distress created by the film to be alleviated in the most honest way possible, by displaying the two companions acknowledging what can’t be changed, and essentially saying that it is OK. I thought that was the very definition of emotional release.

Robert:
You may be right… That was not the impression I got, but I don’t remember it well enough to explain why not. (I could be remembering it wrong, too.) That’s something I will be sure to look for the next time I watch i, and this thread has made me want to watch it again very soon.

@Roger

I think you get into trouble with Cassavetes, or any great artist when you use phrases like “The entire film leads up to that moment where…” In his work every moment counts. Just because a scene like the spaghetti meal scene happens early doesn’t make it less important than the others. In fact, i would say more than any scene, every moment counts. Nick’s sadly hilarious trip to the beach with the kids is as important as Mabel’s moments. Others may argue that the whole film centers around Mabel’s decision to cheat on Nick but Cassavetes was absolutely trying to get you to stay away from this search for one most important moment or idea and to instead simply try to keep up with all the moments, big and small. The children’s party scene contains some of the best evidence that those around Mabel may have more emotional problem’s, in terms of relating without judging, than she does while some of her facial and bodily movements suggest otherwise. You can’t pin this film down to one major moment without ruining it’s flow.

There’s no leading with Cassavetes. As the tile of one of his great works suggests, there is only an endless streaming. When you get to the end of this film you must let it carry you back to the beginnings and pay attention to every moment.mabel coming home isn’t at all like Jake Lamotta punching a wall. There are two many people in Cassavetes universe who matter just as much as Mabel to reduce his work to that kind of easy understanding. Listen and look at what the children do in each scene. Note how Nick goes from tender to tense and back again. DO NOT allow yourself to miss the real caring Mabel’s dad feels but has trouble expressing or the real concern of Mabel’s harshest critics in the film for their children, despite the poor way they express it. This is more complex work than ordinary cathartic films.

I’m enjoying every turn this thread is taking so far.

Mike—I agree with you about “moments”, in fact some of the most important moments in Wanda occur in the opening minutes of the film before we even see her character. So much about the film is there in those static images of the coal mine, the house, the grandmother, and what is being said in those moments is just as important as what’s being said when the camera pans up to the trees after the rape. I’m reminded of Bartas’ films, too, as well as Joe’s, Hou’s—actually it sounds like I should see more Cassavettes.