Still Life: Notes on Barbara Loden's Wanda

by Anna Backman Rogers

There is indeed a “miracle” in the 1970 film Wanda. This film has survived, despite decades of neglect, to emerge into the fuliginous light of an era that may just be ready to strain at grasping its harsh and brutal truths — truths that reveal the imbrication of the psychic in the social and the experiential in political structures. Barbara Loden’s film dares to suggest that the social and ethical functions of art should not necessarily be redemptive – that salvation is a cheap and spurious form of consolation that few can afford in this world. This film, made by a woman who knew all too well what it means to be defined through and by her material circumstances (and her relationships to men), and that is so relentlessly ferocious in its refusal to assuage and comfort the viewer, has always been a form of future feminism. Wanda does not brook the comforts of positivity, of aspiration, or even the luxury of selfhood.

This film, Still Life contends, is so radical in its feminist-anti-capitalist politics of refusal that we are still struggling to keep up with it. It delineates precisely how the personal is political and why this matters now more than ever. Wanda, a film about a woman who refuses to be saved or to save herself, who lacks the means and energy to alter anything in her life, who lives in a permanent state of blockage, impasse and failure is, as this publication suggests, the film of our contemporary moment.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

149 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Legere, and obviously Wanda.

Hot gossip: Pauline Kael, noted critic, said “Jane, you ignorant slut” to Wanda:

Kael denounced Wanda as being too much of an ‘ignorant slut’ to be worthy of the viewer’s time, empathy, or interest and the film itself as so minor and muted that it is impossible to gain any purchase on the film’s ‘message.’

We get some Judith Butler:

Wanda explores the notion, after Judith Butler, that it may be impossible to survive a radically unnarratable life.

I never connected this movie with Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008) before, but now that Rogers mentions it, yeah, they’re similar. “Wendy may as well be Wanda’s daughter (and perhaps we should read her as such).” I haven’t seen that many movies tbh so I pondered why I was really drawn to these two, sought them out, and thought about them afterward.

Do you find this character rebarbative because she reveals your own hypocrisy and complicity within systems that make life so unliveable for so many people?

This book is for the real Wanda-heads. Factual and analytical where Legere’s book is an autobiographical exploration of the gaps in knowledge we have about Loden. I will continue to read any and all books about Wanda. She’s my Rushmore.

[Arash · Rating 4 out of 5]

باربارا لودن علاقه‌ای به فیلم‌ساختن از جهان، آن طور که ما احتمالاً مایل به دیدنش باشیم، ندارد. علاقه‌ای به شعارهای دلگرم‌کننده ندارد. دغدغه‌اش صرفاً کاروبار واقعی جهان و، به ویژه، پیامدهایی برای زنانِ در حاشیه است که همیشه به خاطر اخلاقیات و آداب‌ورسوم جامعه سرمایه‌داری و مردسالارانه به طور مضاعف از حقوق خودشان محروم و محکوم می‌شوند. زنانی که همیشه، پیش از آن‌که بتوانند از خودشان حرف بزنند، از جانبشان حرف زده می‌شود.

• نشر خوب با ترجمه بابک کریمی و به نام واندا این کتاب رو چاپ کرده.

[Jay Hinman · Rating 3 out of 5]

When film criticism and dissection becomes too eggheaded for a mere insect like me to follow along, I can become, shall we say, a bit disengaged. It has been a primary concern of mine over the years - there are so many deep dives into the worlds of the films I love by tenured academics, and yet there are simultaneously so many impenetrable texts, written primarily for the approval of other academics. Mix in the tailor-made opportunity to do a great deal of feminist pontificating and deep textual reading, and one might seize the chance to advance a theory that Wanda, the film, was actually made fifty years ago to sate the needs of the 21st century academic. Anna Backman Rogers has clearly risen to the task.

She spends a great deal of time reiterating that Loden’s outstanding WANDA is a film of “refusal” and “negation”, which would seem to be self-evident, and then defending it against the critics of the day (like Pauline Kael) who struggled to find deeper meaning in a film about a woman abandoning her family, hitting the road, latching on to a misogynistic creep, then robbing a bank with him. Loden’s titular Wanda is depressed, weary and anesthetized to life all the way down, and honestly, my personal reading of the film doesn’t go a whole lot deeper than that, and I don’t suspect that it needs to.

I shouldn’t be so harsh and tar Backman Rogers for the sins of film studies professors compelled to publish or perish. Her shot-by-shot explanation of the film in the book’s second half is not only quite interesting, it allows us to relive this phenomenal film. I’d simply like to read more books about the films I love that don’t require the reader to be immersed in the footnote-laden, Marxist-hangover academic mire, and I suspect that book about WANDA has still yet to be written.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wanda is an extraordinary film. Scene after scene has become etched in my brain. Rogers's book has been a welcome companion for the last couple of days while I continue to reflect on Barbara Loden's unique, courageous, and resonant work.