There are numerous moments in Kelly Reichardt’s austere 2010 western Meek’s Cutoff, when the caravan of travelers trudge hopelessly forward across the barren, parched landscape, that I found myself feeling a real sense of kinship with their ordeal. Mostly the hopeless trudgery.
In the year 1845, three small families have become lost on the Oregon Trail, led astray by their hired guide, a loud, arrogant shrub of a man named Stephen Meek, played with terrible cartoonishness by Bruce Greenwood. He has consistently convinced them that a water lay over the next hill or around the next bend, and that they will soon reach the Willamette Valley, where success seeps up out of the ground and riches rain from the sky. But just as it soon grows increasingly obvious that his boasting is all for show, it also becomes clear that the movie is simultaneously wandering almost as aimlessly as those forsaken travelers.
While the bleak aesthetic and slow pace befit the subject matter, the themes are squeezed into tight spaces and never really develop. The film has a strong feminist leaning, and Reichardt makes some interesting technical choices to further the idea that we are experiencing this ordeal from a woman’s perspective. Her use of the boxy 1.33:1 aspect ratio visually replicates the peripheral limitations of bonnets that the women wear. Also, whenever the men are planning out their next move, the audio mix muffles down to a just barely audible level, leaving the women aware of what is about to happen but outside any equal place to offer suggestions.
At times the film appears on the cusp of finding a glimmer of redemption. Apart from a few beautifully composed scenes, hope exists mostly in the person of Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams). Tough and pragmatic, her actions and personal growth are the focal point of the story arc, but much of her symbolic influence is given counterpoint, if not altogether squelched, by the remaining two female characters, quietly subservient Glory (Shirley Henderson) and hysterically paranoid Millie (Zoe Kazan).
There are other possible readings to consider, including the ever-popular “they’re in hell/purgatory” argument, as well as underlying commentaries on ongoing socio-political issues ranging from racism to religion to the attitudes of recent figures. But ultimately the failing of Meek’s Cutoff is that it plants a few seeds but never waters them, and will likely leave the viewer thirsting in more ways than one.
2012-1-5 jmm #2
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