Minimalist director Kelly Reichardt has a certain predilection for wanderers in Oregon. In her film Old Joy (2006), two friends share a quiet hike through the Cascade mountains—weekend warriors fighting through a fog of regrets on their way to a secret hot spring. Her following picture, Wendy and Lucy (2008), is the agonizing story of a destitute young woman and her dog who are left stranded in Oregon when their car breaks down en route to a job at an Alaskan fishery. These films do not romanticize the Western landscape. Rather, Reichardt manipulates the highways, deserts, forests, and mountains to form restricting, claustrophobic spaces in the great outdoors. No other director so ably draws feelings of tension and constraint from endless expanses of land.
Reichardt’s new film, Meek’s Cutoff, is a testament to her unique vision of the Western landscape. A stripped-down Western, Meek’s Cutoff follows the path of three families traveling on the Oregon Trail in 1845. Their guide, Stephen Meek, may have misled them, and the film begins after they have already spent weeks wandering a foreboding path through the Oregon desert. Their journey is plagued by distrust and suspicion, and as their
circumstances grow dire, the tension slowly builds to a frightening and agonizing conclusion.
circumstances grow dire, the tension slowly builds to a frightening and agonizing conclusion.
Meek’s Cutoff is a bold and visionary film, and its point of view and execution are unlike anything in the rest of the American Western canon. The most obvious distinction is the fact that the story is told from the perspective of the women. While most films about the settlement of the west focus on the conversations of the men designing the journey, Reichardt positions her cameras with the women. When the men walk a few paces away to discuss their route, the camera remains with the women who are left holding the ropes of the wagons and cattle. We can hear only snippets of the conversations in soft whispers, privy to only as much information as if we were also standing there helplessly watching our husbands decide our fate.
In keeping with the women’s perspective, Reichardt shot Meek’s Cutoff in the square 4:3 aspect ratio instead of the usual widescreen sweeping format of classic mid-century Westerns. Speaking with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air (April 14, 2011), Reichardt explained, "I felt like the square [aspect ratio] gave you an idea of the closed view that the women have because of their bonnets. You'd be traveling in this big community where you'd never have privacy. But also, it's a really lonely journey. And I think cutting out the peripheral, it does leave you with the idea that something could be there that you don't know about — and so it offers that kind of tension."
The square frame pulls a claustrophobic feeling out of a seemingly endless desert, a directorial achievement which perfectly communicates the feeling of the film. Although the settlers are walking through endless open space, their fear limits their view, tethering them to their isolation and desperation, insulating them from the usual feeling of freedom that such sweeping vistas provoke.
Overall, Meek’s Cutoff challenges the romanticism usually associated with the settlement of the American west. Reichardt realistically portrays themes which, while mentioned in historical texts, have rarely made the silver screen: xenophobia, violence, hysteria, and the dehumanization of indigenous populations are all handled without sentimentality. John Ford and Sergio Leone it’s not. Reichardt intelligently and bravely resists the standards of her predecessors in order to forge a new genre: an honest Western which considers the frightening truths of our American history and the women who have been disregarded as its footnotes.
Meek’s Cutoff is now in theaters.
Cast: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Rod Rondeaux, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson, Neal Huff, Tommy Nelson
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Screenwriter: Jon Raymond
