Movie of the month: Wanda (dir. Barbara Loden, 1970)

Image caption: Wikipedia In rural Pennsylvania, an unhappy housewife named Wanda (Barabara Loden) leaves her husband and children to take to the road. Her wanderings are listless and involve her jumping from man to man for protection. She eventually encounters a middle-aged robber named Norman (Michael Higgins). The two become lovers. Wanda now assists Norman with his robberies and other tasks, but her life is hardly exciting or any more fulfilling than it was before. When I first saw Barbara Loden’s Wanda, I was unsure what to make of it. My significant other and I kept encountering mentions of the film on various film YouTube channels and podcasts. Go on Criterion Channel and you’ll find various filmmakers and critics vouching for it as one of the greatest movies of all time. After watching it, my first response was, “It’s good, but not THAT good.” But over the next few days, the film kept haunting me. My opinion went from meh to masterpiece. Sometimes that’s how great films creep…