The natural world has never been the most hospitable place for Kelly Reichardt’s characters. In Meek’s Cutoff, a group of 19th century settlers nearly lose their lives while traveling west across the scorching Oregon desert. In Wendy and Lucy, when Wendy is forced to sleep in the woods after her car breaks down on the way to Alaska, she wakes up in the middle of the night to a deranged man talking to himself right by her side.
Reichardt’s characters have also tended to be defined by their rootlessness, whether it’s the pioneers or Wendy searching for new homes across the country, the runaway lovers in River of Grass fleeing past lives in Florida, or nomadic Kurt aimlessly wandering the streets of Portland at the end of Old Joy.
So it ought to be immediately suspicious that Night Moves, Reichardt’s ultimately unsatisfying new film, portrays nature at first as a calm refuge and emphasizes the peaceful homes that its characters inhabit. Reichardt keenly observes these spaces — the spa that Dena (Dakota Fanning) works at, the idyllic farm where Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) lives — to the point that when Josh and Dena purchase a boat together, Reichardt has Josh enter the seller’s home and, in a quick pan around his dining room and living room, lets us briefly relish in the comfort of his suburban life.
It’s all very quiet, very still, a standard mood for Reichardt that in this case slowly turns to dread as Dena, Josh and a third partner in crime, Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), set in motion a plan to load Josh and Dena’s boat with explosives and blow up a nearby dam in an act of consciousness-raising eco-terrorism.