Night Moves

In the beginning of the film, two of the main characters walk towards us, talking, but they're too far away for us to understand the conversation. It's a reminder of what director Kelly Reichardt did in Meek's Cutoff, where the important discussions about the future of the settlers only took place between men, so that their wives (and the audience with them) were only partial to fragments of them. In Night Moves, it serves the same purpose: we don't really know where we're going, and so spend a good part of the film trying to orient ourselves to figure out what kind of story this is, while the characters of course already know, at least for now. 

Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) and Dena (Dakota Fanning), whose relationship doesn't seem to fit any conventional mould (hence more loss of orientation, early on) drive around Oregon, seemingly following a plan that was set in place before the film starts following them. They buy a boat, assuming fake identities and paying cash. They take the boat into the woods, where one of Josh's friends lives - Harmon (Peter Saarsgard), a former Marine, with whom he seems closer than with Dena, even though their shared history is never explored. When they start to discuss the purchase of big amounts of fertilizer, the nature of their plan and the film become apparent - we are seeing three eco-terrorists preparing an attack, meticulously moving towards the execution of their plot: blowing up a dam with a self-made bomb in the boat that Josh and Dena purchased earlier. 

There's not much in terms of explanation of their motivation, and the three of them spend barely any time discussing their goals (the closest they ever come is Josh's explanation that they are trying to get people to think). In an earlier scene, following the screening of a documentary on how pollution and climate change affect the environment, that film director speaks out that the idea of a grand plan to find a solution to all these problems is part of that problem, that many smaller plans would serve better - the change in Josh's face upon hearing that statement only makes sense later, since he has his own grand plan, and a conviction that this is the only thing that will affect change. Dena, from a wealthy family and in a position to finance the operation, which makes her suspicious, seems the most politicized amongst the three, while Harmon, with his knowledge of explosives, maybe values the chaos of it most of all.  

Like all of Reichardt's other films, Night Moves thrives on the place it is set in, the landscape it covers. It moves slowly, with barely any dialogue, and yet, or because of the fact, there is a constant feeling of suspense and thrill as the three start running into obstacles. The seller of the needed fertilizer becomes one when he threatens to stick to the law, and Dena's bargaining with him, her ability to come up with a believable story, is one of the surprisingly exciting moments of the film, especially with the added confusion of rooting for a character to be able to purchase something that will be turned into a bomb later. A stranger in the woods, right before they start to execute the main part of their plan, is too talkative and they struggle to get rid of them, and then, at a pivotal moment, a stranger's busted tire almost ruins everything. It's a big plan that required small steps to be executed, and is almost thwarted by even smaller everyday occurrences that neither of them could have expected. 

The success of their venture is only the halfway point of the film, and the turning point of the story. Everything so far was planned, everything after the explosion (they only hear it, driving away from the scene) isn't, and as we follow Josh into the agrarian co-op he works and lives in, things start to fall apart almost immediately. Rather than making people think about the environmental cost of energy, all they've achieved is set off an alert because a camper was lost in the fall-out of the explosion. His attempts to grasp the situation, to cope with the moral aspect, fail because all he thinks about is the danger of Dena (whose guilt literally manifests itself in a rash, covering her arms and her face) going to the police. Where before there were debates about goals and ideology because everything had already been set in motion, now the ideals step in the background for the purpose of self-preservation - and the result is terrible. 

It's hard and ultimately pointless to try and say what kind of film Night Moves is - it's start somewhere, and ends up somewhere completely differently - but the haunting part of the film is how trapped the characters are, how they trap themselves in a situation that they can't escape from. Each of them has built a life of compromises - Dena works in a fancy meditation/renewal centre, Harmon lives in a trailer in the woods, Josh has the co-op (that is threatened by the authorities for tax fraud), but ultimately, their activism and ultimate coup is an expression of wanting to live in a different world. We don't know how it works out for Harmon, but it definitely fails for Dena, and Josh, the man who longingly talked about a friend who is living in the woods, completely off the grid, ends up in the most depressing places of all, as a cashier in a survivalist shop, the kind of place that cashes in on the impossible dream of freedom that he is constantly carrying around in his head. Like Alaska in Wendy and Lucy, and Oregon in Meek's Cutoff, this place in his had is an unattainable utopia.

2013, directed by Kelly Reichardt, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, Peter Sarsgaard, Alia Shawkat, Lew Temple, James Le Gros.