Meek’s Cutoff is a minimalist, austere western that appears to have been an absolute chore for the production team to film. Seriously. There’s absolutely no trace of present day life in this rocky, dusty, slow-burn item from super-smart filmmaker Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Night Moves), which is likely to appeal mainly to those of us who still have something resembling an attention span. Set in the 1840’s and loosely based on real events, the script by Jonathan… Raymond concerns six pioneer settlers who end up getting lost with their befuddled guide, and as a result, risk death via starvation and/or dehydration. Sounds like a happy and light little film, yes? This is a harsh, brutal piece of cinema, all of it necessary and desperate and foreboding and ugly-beautiful. The fact that the guide, a perfectly hard-headed Bruce Greenwood, totally out to lunch and without any sense of direction, is as much of a mess as he is, lends the film a strange sense of black comedy. And the way that Reichardt continually reinforces the fact that all of the women in the party are intentionally being kept out of the plans and decision making, only hearing the particulars from a distance and at low audio levels, amps up the stress on the part of the viewer.
Michelle Williams is reliably excellent as the conscience of the film, the only member of the group willing and able to go up against Greenwood when absolutely necessary, and the entire piece has a sly feminist underpinning that separates it from modern entries in this extremely durable genre. There are a few more twists to the story that I won’t spoil, but I’ll add that the supporting cast, including Will Patton, Shirley Henderson, Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, and Rod Rondeaux is totally ace across the board. Christopher Blauvelt’s smart and compact 1.33:1 cinematography subverts the traditional expectations of this milieu, instead opting for intimate compositions with an almost exclusive use of natural light, while Reichardt served as her own precise and judicious editor. Released in 2010 to great critical acclaim after premiering at the Venice Film Festival, Meek’s Cutoff is a formally challenging movie that proudly announces itself as one of a kind and is yet another unique, under the radar gem worth catching up with.
Podcasting Them Softly 