Wendy and Lucy, directed by Kelly Reichardt, is a seemingly simple story of a girl, Wendy (played by Michelle Williams), and her dog, Lucy (played by herself). The companions are headed to Alaska to look for summer work (I know, I know, sounds like the sequel to Into the Wild) but get stuck in a small town in Oregon when Wendy's ?88 Honda Accord breaks down. While stranded, Wendy is arrested for petty thievery, Lucy is lost for a very long 48 hours, and the repairs needed to fix Wendy's car are exceedingly more money than Wendy has. Though Wendy and Lucy are reconnected towards the end of the film, we get the strong sense that life is not about to get any easier for them; Wendy's only at the beginning, or maybe the middle, of making difficult decisions in the face of an unrelenting world.

The skeleton of the story is an easy re-cap, but the profundity of what Kelly Reichardt creates in this film left both me and my husband quiet on our long drive back to the suburbs.

Reichardt addresses themes in Wendy and Lucy that stretch our own ideas of relational comfort and human obligation and press into the culture of individualism in the United States. The primary (human) character with whom Wendy interacts is a security guard at the Walgreen's where Wendy's car is stranded. Each time Wendy returns to her car after her excursions around town, she's also returning to the security guard. With Wendy's edginess and the guard's quiet steadiness, their interactions are jolty but reveal a guarded tenderness in each of them. Wendy is forced to rely on the guard's generosity and availability. The guard mans his post, but his care for Wendy is, though somewhat conflicted, very evident. As Reichardt says in an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air," the security guard is wrestling with the tough questions that come when we avail ourselves to help someone in need: "How deep do I wanna get into this? How can I get out of it if I want to? What's my obligation to her? What's the right amount to give?" Reichardt's decision to withhold any background of Wendy's character forces us to see her with the eyes of a local. We, the audience, have no inside scoop as to where she came from (beyond Indiana), or any idea of her family circumstances. We find ourselves in the same place as the security guard - perhaps squirming a little in our seats as we watch Wendy and wonder what to do with her.

In Wendy and Lucy, we get a good picture of a growing alternative culture in our country, depicted here as vagabonds, basically, or gutter punk kids. Wendy feels a measure of discomfort when she encounters a group of these unemployed train hoppers in the woods, but she's not so unlike these wanderers - maybe a cousin to them - and given the evolution of her circumstances, she herself is forced to jump trains for transportation. Wendy is a searcher - perhaps a more ambitious searcher for actually looking for work - and her spirit is not as unfamiliar to my generation as it may be to the generation of my parents. I'm not selling my belongings and heading west, but I know this girl Wendy, and even at my now steady job, I wrestle and search; I don't know how to settle. I appreciate Reichardt's honest and vivid depiction of this struggle.

Despite the nearness of this film - the ways it connects with us so intimately and provides such an apt picture of a growing demographic in our country - Wendy and Lucy remains unique and unconventional. Like other films I'm really growing to value, Wendy and Lucy doesn't follow typical story structure - at least not strongly. There is a build of discord in Wendy's experience - there is growing sadness - but no cathartic release. Wendy finds Lucy again - which would, in any Hollywood, be the happy ending - but by the time this occurs, Wendy is facing the reality that she can no longer afford to keep her companion. She vows to come back for Lucy but must at this juncture move on.

We may not be used to movies like this one: it's slow - a word that carries a negative connotation in our culture. It doesn't make our hearts pound; even in lighter moments, it doesn't make us laugh. Something happens in us as we watch that is much different than that and deeper, and when we first view a film of this ilk, we may not like how we feel. At face value, to one who is fed on the rapid-fire editing of Hollywood, a film like Wendy and Lucy might be considered uneventful, even boring. The camera is often still, letting whatever would naturally happen in the frame happen, and giving it the time to. Wendy and Lucy is, very simply, a slice of someone's life. Its poignancy doesn't bring immediate tears or fright or laughter. It may never evoke words from you or grand expression. Rather, if you let it be, it just is, and it may make you think about - even feel connected to - someone you've never met.

I liken the experience of watching a film like Wendy and Lucy to exercising the discipline of solitude. It's hard to be alone sometimes. It's hard to be still and quiet. One must recalibrate to be able to sit and to be and to see, which takes time and practice. Sometimes it's a long process before one can resist the temptation to move on to the next thing. Sometimes the discomfort is part of the recalibrating; it can be needed.

One word of caution if you watch this film: Try to withhold criticism - of people, of actions, of words, of choices. Just wait. I say this because I had a hard time withholding some criticism myself, and I'd like your experience to be even more rich and beneficial than mine was. If you're conscious of this, you'll find how often you do draw premature conclusions and make assumptions. It's the easiest thing in the world, especially with our evangelical minds, to make immediate moral assessments. And that can often be a good thing. But if you watch this movie, just hold off for a little while. While interpretation is necessary, I think we can really jump the gun on it: we can judge and assess without ever really seeing a full and clear picture. During the time that we spend jumping to our own conclusions about something or someone, we're very much taking time away from actually seeing. People are never as simple as we deem them.

I'd love to dialogue about this movie or others that have sparked your interest or thought in these ways. Look it up online to find where it might be playing near you, and go see it!

Sarah Scherf is editorial coordinator for PreachingToday.com.