Meek’s Cutoff | Little White Lies

Meek’s Cut­off

14 Apr 2011 / Released: 15 Apr 2011

Man with long dark hair wearing jewellery and standing in desert landscape.
Man with long dark hair wearing jewellery and standing in desert landscape.
4

Anticipation.

With a top cast assembled by the director of Wendy and Lucy, this could be something very special.

3

Enjoyment.

What about that ending? Meek’s Cutoff, indeed.

3

In Retrospect.

Here’s hoping Reichardt rediscovers her golden touch.

Kel­ly Reichardt’s bold­ness in eschew­ing a sprawl­ing retelling of how the West was won should be applauded.

A small con­voy of home­stead­ers wades sin­gle file through a deep riv­er in north-east­ern Ore­gon, nav­i­gat­ing their wag­on train with the great­est care to earn safe pas­sage. Once across, they pause briefly on the parched bank to catch a breath and fill a few pails before form­ing rank and rid­ing out. They trav­el light, trust­ing that the next source of fresh water should be no more than a pinch past the next horizon.

Where oth­ers have found their for­tunes in pock­ets of this seem­ing­ly infer­tile land­scape, these would-be prospec­tors – chap­er­oned by a crusty local sage named Meek (Bruce Green­wood) – have caught the tail end of the Gold Rush in the blind hope that they might also strike it rich. As it hap­pens, it is the afore­men­tioned liq­uid life-giv­er that will prove most pre­cious on this trip.

Days pass before moth­er hen Emi­ly (Michelle Williams) spots an indige­nous scout, who’s duly cap­tured but spared from exe­cu­tion after it’s decid­ed that his region­al knowl­edge will unearth a near­by wet spot. Camp­fire pro­pa­gan­da sees tall tales of red­skin sav­ages scalp­ing in cold blood split the group, but it’s a risk they’ll have to take together.

The real Stephen Meek was an unsung cus­to­di­an of the Amer­i­can Dream; a fur trap­per by trade who guid­ed scores of emi­grants through an unchar­tered cor­ri­dor sep­a­rat­ing colonised Ore­gon and the remain­ing Indi­an Ter­ri­to­ries. Bruce Greenwood’s won­der­ful­ly immer­sive per­for­mance empha­sis­es the cal­lous, prag­mat­ic tem­pera­ment that kept Meek a hair’s breadth ahead of the flock, but direc­tor Kel­ly Reichardt’s readi­ness to paint him as an uncouth pan­to vil­lain under­mines both char­ac­ter and actor.

Indeed, despite ini­tial deft­ness in char­ac­ter tex­tur­ing, Meek’s Cut­off reduces all three of its pro­tag­o­nis­tic cou­ples to broad clichés – rash evan­gel­i­cals, po-faced con­ser­v­a­tives, com­pas­sion­ate lib­er­als – leav­ing the film’s fad­ing enig­ma in the bound hands of their Cayuse cap­tive. Again, Reichardt’s ton­ing is so trans­par­ent that regard­less of the fact that his near-silence and solemn demeanour upholds Meek’s vicious inti­ma­tion that he is the dev­il in moc­casins, he might as well have some ancient native proverb tat­tooed across his naked torso.

There are moments – when heavy foot­steps and wag­on sighs fill the end­less, emp­ty space of the Ore­gon out­back – where Meek’s Cut­off exudes an exis­ten­tial aro­ma. This is a film that broods lengthi­ly over the insub­stan­tial­i­ty of mor­tal­i­ty and faith. Like the last specks of gold dust along this lone­some trail, how­ev­er, these moments are a false promise that some­thing illu­mi­nat­ing lies just beyond the next vale.

As Amer­i­ca con­tin­ues to lick its wounds from the sec­ond worst eco­nom­ic cri­sis in its his­to­ry, the pio­neer­ing steps that pre­ced­ed the boom cul­ture of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry are treat­ed with a fond and proud sense of nos­tal­gia. Yet while the west­ern may be firm­ly back in fash­ion, Meek’s Cut­off fits nei­ther the con­tem­po­rary or revi­sion­ist sub­genre moulds, instead stray­ing loose­ly between indie min­i­mal­ism and art­sy ennui.

Reichardt’s bold­ness in eschew­ing a sprawl­ing retelling of how the West was won should be applaud­ed, but she hasn’t yet earned the right to take this long say­ing so little.

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