(2008) A spare, sparse, contemplative film, almost a documentary of loneliness from director/editor Kelly Reichardt, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jon Raymond, adapted from the latter's short story, "Train Choir."

With only a hummed tune (composed by Will Oldman, who has the role of Icky, a kid from Alaska, who riffs on worked in Ketchikan) for a soundtrack and rumbling freight trains in the background, Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) and her yellow-gold mix-breed Lucy arrive in Wilsonville, Oregon, south of Portland on Interstate-5 as it crosses the Willamette River, having departed Muncie, Indiana, where her sister and brother-in-law reside, on their way to meet a ferry for passage north to Alaska.

Sleeping in her car in the Walgreens parking lot, she's awakened in the morning by an elderly security guard (Walter Dalton), alerting her to the fact that overnight parking isn't permitted; but when she turns the key in the ignition of her 1988 Accord, it won't start. After he helps her push the vehicle to the street curb, she finds she's out of dog food. In Jack's grocery she shoplifts a pastry and a can of Iambs for Lucy (her ledger indicates she has $525 remaining, probably just enough for the ferry fare), whom she's left tied up in front of the store.

Newsweek's film critic Ramin Setoodah makes much of her pausing to look at a tabloid photograph of Jennifer Aniston: "For the first time, it's not Michelle Williams the actress on the screen. It's Michelle Williams the celebrity, face to face with a kind of cracked mirror of her own fame." If not for my having read the article in advance of watching the film, I wouldn't have noticed the poignancy of the moment.

A young employee stops her when she exits the store; she's arrested, fingerprinted, and finally released after paying a $50 fine. By the time she returns for Lucy, the dog's gone. Another night in her car, a visit to the pound (no luck), and a discussion of car repairs at a garage with Bill (Will Patton), an auto mechanic, leave moody, indecisive, foolish Wendy depressed; the security guard offers his sympathy (without an address or phone she can't apply for a job) and cell phone (a number the pound can contact in case Lucy's found).

Putting up posters "I'm lost" for Lucy, they speak for the young girl without a lifeline back in Indiana. Why did she leave her home? Why is she going to Alaska?

Taking her belongings from her car before its towed into the garage, she leaves an article of clothing at the spot where she'd lost Lucy (the scent may bring the dog back) and beds down in the woods where she's disturbed awake by a homeless man (producer Larry Fessenden), who scares her but doesn't touch her.

On the third day she waits for the security guard at Walgreens, who's late because it's his day off; he tells her the pound left a message on his cell phone for her and hands her six dollars. Her Accord needs its engine rebuilt, which Bill honestly says would cost more than the car's worth. Provided with the address of someone who had found Lucy and taken her home, Wendy watches an elderly man drive away from the house before going to the backyard to be reunite with her pet.

Faced with a dilemma, trapped by circumstances beyond her control, Wendy makes her loneliest decision before hopping a freight train.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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