"Wanda"

Towards the end of “Wanda”, a soldier picking up the titular character in a bar observes: “You don’t have to say nothin’. I’m talkin’ and talkin’ and talkin’ and you just sittin’ there.”

That is an accurate summary of Wanda as a character, cruel as it may be, and one of the many things that make her and the film so special. In today’s contemporary screenwriting doctrine, where the protagonist has to have a clearly established goal, know what it is and why they want to obtain it, Wanda Goronski (writer-director Barbara Loden) is a refreshing anomaly. Passive to the point of apathy, barely saying more than a few words, rarely taking any action of her own volition and constantly the object of external forces’ actions, Wanda does not appear to have any desires or goals but the more problematic truth is that she simply does not know what she wants and thus cannot do much of anything.

The film’s opening fifteen minutes are like a challenge towards the audience. In most films, you will at least get some basic information of who the protagonist is, what they want and why they want it. That information will almost invariably be provided by actions and words, as convention holds that it is through these two things that we define ourselves. By contrast, Wanda Goronski is consistently defined by her inaction: She wakes up on a sofa, surrounded by screaming babies in diapers, all of whom are taken care of by the first young woman to appear in the film. Before Wanda emerges from underneath her sheet, we initially assume the aforementioned character to be her but it is quickly apparent that it is in fact her sister. Waking up is the only substantial action Wanda actually commits in this scene. We do not see her help her sister and brother-in-law with the babies nor interact with her family in any way. In her next scene, we see her ask money from an old anthracite worker. He complains but gives some to her nonetheless.

Afterwards, we see a man in court with children. We learn that this is Wanda’s husband, that the children are hers and that they are finalizing their divorce. Wanda is defined this time not only by her inaction but also by her absence, as she is late. When she finally arrives, she does not even cast one glance at her children, avoids her husband’s gaze and when confronted by the judge with the claim that she deserted him and their children, she has nothing to say. The distant framing, which progresses from full-body to midriff as she gets closer to the mostly off-screen judge’s stand, completely depersonalizes her and denies the audience any emotional cues the way close-ups or alternating points of view might. The only emotions she conveys, and even then quite reservedly, are discomfort and impatience. Parting with her husband and children appears to be no bigger a deal to her than if she were selling some of her jewelry in a pawnshop.

Having separated from her family and lost her job in a similarly matter-of-fact manner, Wanda is balanced from man to man, used and tossed aside with as little care as she displays towards herself or anything. She looks at window displays of clothes she’ll never be able to afford, watches an Italian film in a mostly-empty film theatre only to have the contents of her purse stolen off-screen, and finally stumbles into a tavern. At this point, it’s obvious why Loden chose to give her character that particular name.

This is where the bare bones of a plot start working: The place contains only one man, standing nervously behind the bar and clearly annoyed with her presence. He insists they’re closed but allows her to go to the toilet. After wetting her face, she comes out asking for a towel. The man looks down, the camera follows his gaze and, in one of the film’s many instances of dark humour, we see the real bartender lying unconscious on the floor with a towel in his mouth. The other man, Norman Dennis (Michael Higgins) is exposed as a robber.

From this point on, the film takes a curious and unexpected turn as Wanda and Mr. Dennis begin what can be technically described as a relationship, but without a single hint of affection or sexual chemistry to be found between them. Although they share a hotel bed and their state of undress clearly indicates sexual activity has taken place, their exchanges with each other remain as awkward and uncomfortable as they were when Wanda unexpectedly caught him mid-robbery, only now with additional psychological abuse. Frightened, frustrated and ignorant of how to properly cope with his situation, Mr. Dennis desperately clings to what little grasp he has over the situation by treating Wanda like a slave, ordering her to get burgers but forgetting to immediately give her money to do so, snapping at her for forgetting that he didn’t want onions in his and forcing her to remove them from it. But this mistreatment – rather than making Mr. Dennis a villain in order to create an instinctive emotional response from the viewer and allow them to make an easy distinction between abuser and victim – only further exposes their common disarray.

The film essentially adopts a “lovers-on-the-run” plot that became popular in the 1970s after Arthur Penn’s groundbreaking 1967 “Bonnie And Clyde”. But much like John Cassavetes did with the gangster-noir in his 1976 film “The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie”, Barbara Loden only keeps the skeletal structure after having stripped it of everything that made “Bonnie And Clyde” exciting and romantic. Bonnie and Clyde may have been immature adult-children, but audiences were still encouraged to like them and identify with them as tragic victims. Wanda and Mr. Dennis, by contrast, are as unexciting and uncharismatic as regular people can be. Indeed, were Mr. Dennis more intelligent and self-confident, he might use his “normality” to be a more successful criminal, as he looks less like a thug and more like an accountant. Everything about the film is deliberately anti-dramatic, from the characters’ lack of charisma and decisiveness to the slow and lengthy panning shots and minimal, mundane dialogue.

And throughout most of the film, Wanda remains passively at the service of other characters. It is quite telling that the only action she took that resulted in a major turn of events was walking in the wrong bar and the wrong time. She’s almost like an Alfred Hitchcock protagonist, except even they quickly regain control of their lives and, more importantly, make it their priority to do so. It is only at the very end that Wanda makes a first step towards self-agency, after a poorly thought-out bank robbery liberates her from Mr. Dennis’s grip. The soldier mentioned at the beginning of the review picks her up and sexually assaults her in his car. Initially offering no resistance as he conceals her from the shot with his body, she suddenly starts screaming and fighting him off. Running away from his car, she collapses in the woods and sobs. The final scene – set in a music bar, surrounded by friends of a woman who noticed her alone in front of her house – appears to negate this development by Wanda’s lack of action, but her friendly, musical surroundings (in a film otherwise devoid of music) provide at least a glimpse of hope for her future.

Before making this film in 1970, Barbara Loden had acted in a few films by her husband Elia Kazan and modelled for magazines, but was otherwise a relative unknown in comparison to fellow actor-turned-independent filmmaker John Cassavetes. It is perhaps that lack of prestige that enabled her to cast herself in the lead role without glamorizing herself in the slightest, something that many good actors-turned-directors have great trouble doing, even in good performances such as Clint Eastwood in his 1992 masterpiece “Unforgiven” or Mel Gibson in his otherwise mediocre 1993 debut “The Man Without A Face”. Delivering little emotion, completely lacking in any self-consciousness and always seeming barely aware of the presence of her own camera, Barbara Loden’s performance is the reflection of the rest of her film: Personal, humble, sincere, original and setting an example that many filmmakers ought to follow.