Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

River of Grass Blu-ray Movie Review

Nothing Much Happened Today

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 22, 2016

Writer/director Kelly Reichardt is known for spare, observational dramas peopled by characters who are isolated by circumstance, psychology or both. Hailed as a distinctive voice of American independent cinema and winner of multiple awards from critics associations and film festivals, Reichardt is poorly represented on Blu-ray. Cinedigm released Night Moves, her 2013 attempt to meld her distinctive style with a thriller plot, and Oscilloscope Labs released Meek's Cutoff, her 2010 exploration of American pioneer hardships. Probably her most acclaimed film, 2008's Wendy and Lucy, remains missing on Blu-ray in this country, although a region-free disc is available in the U.K.

However, Reichardt's debut feature, River of Grass, presents special challenges. First seen in 1994 at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, River of Grass was a no-budget project shot on 16mm film and barely released in theaters. An indifferent DVD was released by Wellspring in 2003, and a standard-definition version was included as a bonus with The Kelly Reichardt Collection issued in England by Soda Pictures.

In 2015, Oscilloscope set out to rescue River of Grass with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. Its efforts have produced a fine Blu-ray rendition of the first effort by this provocative and challenging filmmaker.

Reichardt has famously described River of Grass as "[a] road movie without the road, a love story without the love, and a crime story without the crime". The film is narrated by its central character, a thirty-something housewife and mother named Cozy (Liza Bowman), whose flat intonation and expressionless face instantly convey her sense of detachment from the life she is living in Southern Florida. After walking out on her family one day, she encounters a loser named Lee Ray Harold (Larry Fessenden), and the pair stumble into a partnership—it would be too much to call it a "relationship"—based on their mutual need to get away somewhere, anywhere else. In the end, they go nowhere, but they share some unusual experiences along the way. Several of those experiences involve a gun that happens to belong to Cozy's father, Jimmy Ryder (Dick Russell), a crime scene detective who, in a running joke, keeps fumbling his weapon until he loses it altogether. Like Cozy and Lee Ray, Jimmy is dissatisfied with life. He was an amateur jazz musician, naming his daughter after his idol, drummer Cozy Cole, but his career never took off.

Not much happens in River of Grass. Cozy and Lee Ray drink, go swimming, check into a motel, try to sell some LPs to raise money, visit a bus terminal to cash in some ancient tickets that Lee Ray never used, and make a half-hearted attempt at robbing a convenience store. Mostly, though, they wait for something to happen, as they wander aimlessly through a desolate landscape of freeways and strip malls, a kind of no man's land between the urban density of Miami and the wilds of the Florida Everglades (the title comes from a Native American name for the region). Reichardt's talent for isolating individuals in forbidding and hostile landscapes is already evident in this first film, which could be subtitled "Snapshots of Alienation". River of Grass has been criticized for its lack of a strong narrative arc, but that absence is essential to Reichardt's distinctive approach to the depiction of aimless lives. The more conventional (and popular) approach would have followed the arc of Badlands or Bonnie and Clyde, with Cozy and Lee Ray seeking relief from boredom and frustration in an explosion of violence. But Reichardt is more interested in people who don't find such a conveniently direct outlet for their dissatisfaction, who have been so worn down that they cannot even conceive of an alternative to disenchantment. Such individuals may end up becoming outlaws, but only by accident.

River of Grass Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

River of Grass was the second film shot by cinematographer Jim Denault, who has since graduated to studio productions such as Dinner for Schmucks while remaining a staple of independent productions like Trumbo. Oscilloscope's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is the product of a lengthy restoration process detailed in the disc's extras. Under the auspices of the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the original 16mm negative was sent to FotoKem to create a new IP, which was then scanned at 2K by Modern VideoFilm Lab, followed by extensive correction for color and contrast, as well as repair of damage to the negative.

The restored Blu-ray image cannot transcend the film's budgetary limitations, but it reproduces River of Grass's version of a sun-drenched exurban wasteland with realistic colors and sufficient detail to convey the "lived-in" feel of the various spaces, all of which were real locations, often filmed without permits. Detail drops off with the light in night and indoor scenes, but the black levels appear to be true to the source. Densities and contrast are correct, and the film's natural grain pattern is finely resolved. Oscilloscope has mastered River of Grass with a generous average bitrate of 33.09 and a solid encode.

River of Grass Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

River of Grass's original mono soundtrack has been transferred from the original optical track and, after restoration, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. (Note that the disc menu mistakenly characterizes the track as "stereo", although the sound collapses to the center, as is typical of 2.0 mono tracks.) The dialogue is clear throughout, even when muttered, and the minimal sound effects play with good fidelity, if somewhat limited dynamic range (reflecting the limitations of the source). Incidental music is credited to John Hill, but more memorable are various songs heard as source music, especially "Trav'lin' Light" arranged by Hill and sung by Gail Wynters.

River of Grass Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer/Director Kelly Reichardt and Producer/Actor/Editor Larry Fessenden: Recorded in 2015, Reichardt and Fessenden reminisce about shooting the film, which neither had seen for many years. Their discussion is relaxed and entertaining, but their memories have faded, and the commentary is thin on specifics.



• Restoration Featurette (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:48): Using both text and before-and-after examples, this featurette documents the painstaking process of restoring River of Grass.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.37:1; 1:40): This is a trailer for the re-release of the film in its restored form.



• Oscillosope Trailers.
• Wendy and Lucy (currently available on DVD only)
• Meek's Cutoff



• Essay: Writer and curator Guilia D'Agnolia Valian has contributed a short essay about the film, which appears on two panels of the digipack.

River of Grass Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Not every loser has the soul of a poet, and one of Reichardt's most distinctive qualities as a filmmaker is her refusal to romanticize the forlorn existence of people like Cozy and Lee Ray. She doesn't ask you to pity her characters, or even to like them. She just reminds you that they're there. Oscilloscope's restoration is exemplary and recommended.