WANDA

WANDA is an ambitious film about a directionless woman.

Early in the film, Wanda, appearing dressed in white with a head full of curlers, slowly walks across a black coal processing plant in the rust belt of western Pennsylvania. For nearly two minutes, the scene unfolds in an unedited long take from a great distance away. Nothing is happening yet somehow it is completely captivating. 

Writer/director/star Barbara Loden’s WANDA (1970) is full of paradoxes like this. It feels like outsider art due to all the non actors in supporting roles, real run down locations, and an unpolished aesthetic due to a skeleton filmmaking crew of 6 people, half of which are filling multiple positions, but Loden was a working actress on stage and screen for over a decade before writing and directing WANDA.

Loden became a feminist icon in filmmaking, but she never intended WANDA to be a political statement. Although it is a story of female empowerment behind the camera, on screen, Wanda is a character with such little self worth that she barely fights back as strange men give her physical attention and then kick her to the curb before she can follow them home, as if she was a stray dog.

WANDA was made without the desire to please anyone but herself, and Loden never thought the film would find an audience. And yet it went on to win an award at the Venice film festival in 1970, is part of The Criterion Collection, and was added to the National Film Registry 47 years after its release.

Due to Barbara Loden’s heartfelt portrayal, writing and direction of a cautionary character with no aspirations, Loden became an inspiration, and that can be seen in Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS (1973), Agnes Varda’s VAGABOND (1985), and Kelly Reichardt’s WENDY AND LUCY (2008).

You may not love the film, but you must love that exists.

• by Duncan

A little mashup between The Criterion Collection and The MCU.