Ryan McNeil
It’s crazy to think that there’s anything left to say in the western genre. After all, the style has been around since the very earliest of films…and all its fairy tales have all been told.
But just when you thought you’ve seen all there is to see from men in white hats and men in black hats, along comes MEEK’S CUTOFF to tell you something new.
MEEK’S CUTOFF is the story of a band of settlers moving across the Oregon High Desert in the late 19th century. Their guide, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) has taken them on a route that has more than doubled the estimate travel time, leaving supplies and morale a tad low.
The men; Solomon, Thomas and William (Will Patton, Paul Dano and Tommy Nelson) aren’t sure just how much more rope they should give their trusty guide. The women; Emily, Glory, and Millie (Michelle Williams, Shirley Henderson,and Zoe Kazan) can only hang back and try to deal with their unrest while tending to the camp and their families.
Right about the time things seem like they can’t possibly get more uncertain, the pilgrims run into a lone native man. Thus to all the questions they already have, two more are added:
Can this person possibly help us? And even if he can, should we trust him?
Fair warning: MEEK’S CUTOFF isn’t for everybody. If your typical western film is a slow burn, then MEEKS’S CUTOFF is the glowing ember left when the flames die. It will require attention, patience and grace – and that might not be what you are looking for in a film. But if you are interested in such things at the cinemas, then read on.
This is a film about the unease of a journey. Think about any trip you’ve taken where you and a fellow traveller have disagreed on the route. Take that feeling of tension and complicate it with unfamiliarity, power dynamics, and a survival struggle and you have this movie. We step into a setting where the men lead the migration and the women follow well behind. They know the stakes just as well as the men do – probably even better – but when decisions are made they are made well away from the women’s earshot.
There’s not much in this world as frustrating as being out of the loop, and when “the loop” is deciding on matter of life and death, frustration can turn to anger or panic in a hurry…and right on cue, we notice that Emily is angry, and Glory is panicked. It’s a sad, tense state of affairs and one that was likely far too common back then. There’s a reason why military officers don’t want their soldiers to see them wrestle with a decision – because doubt breeds dissent. The hitch is that in this case, the dissent coming from Emily and Glory is deserved. Their officers – the men – really don’t know what they’re doing, and it’s putting everybody’s lives in jeopardy.
Something that makes MEEK’S CUTOFF so memorable is the way it juxtaposes the vastness and the claustrophobia of the frontier. The film includes some wonderfully composed photography that sticks with you like a bright purple flower pushing up through the dead, grey plains. It impressively captures that duality that comes with a pilgrimage across the frontier: the way ot seems to go on forever in every direction, but also seems to close in on you and feel like there’s no escape.
The temptation with such visuals is to spread them out, making the vistas spread as wide as our eyeline can handle. But in a daring move, director Kelly Reighardt has shot this film with a tight “square” 4:3 aspect ratio…evoking the line of sight the women on this journey would experience with their bonnets on. The lovely side effect of course, is that the women’s line of sight is so limited, and yet they can see what’s going on far clearer than their men.
I say “they” when I should really be saying “she”…as in Michelle Williams. Her work as Emily is bold, and continues a wonderful run she’s been on in recent years. She brings a toughness that we see from the very start – a sort of intuition that they other women in the caravan don’t have. So when time comes to make a stand, it comes as no surprise that she’s the one to stand up, speak up, and do so without hysterics or drama.
MEEK’S CUTOFF doesn’t want to dazzle us with the sexiness of a western so much as it wants to intimidate us with the logistics of a western. It wants us to consider the harsh realities of traversing the unknown terrain, and putting our faith into the unknown. If the typical western includes the jacked heart rate of a gunslinger pointing his pistol at you, MEEK’S CUTOFF delivers the unsettling dream of the gunslinger merely resting his hand on the holster.
Note: I’m reviewing and rating this film based on a bad screening experience. The only showing I could find of MEEK’S CUTOFF was projected far too dim; so much so that the nighttime scenes were pitch black images dotted by splashes of firelight. Were I able to experience it properly, my enjoyment and opinion of the film could easily change for the better – MH