ADELAIDE FILM FESTIVAL: Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff is a slowburn, minimalist representation of the great spirit of blind hope and adventure that lead the frontier men and women into America’s brutal heartland.
Highlighted by precise performances, simmering tensions and unforgiving landscapes, this odd rarity – an arthouse western – will help broaden Reichardt’s rabid but select fanbase who consider her barebones drama Wendy and Lucy (2008) one of the great unwatched films of the last few years.
Meek’s Cutoff is most definitely a niche programmer – sparse and understated dialogue, the barest of mood music and a bleached, dusty palette brings to mind such revered but commercially-barren westerns as Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978), Robert Benton’s Bad Company (1972) and Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007).
The film begins well into an uncharted cross-country journey, undertaken in 1845 by three married couples: The stoic but frightened Thomas Gately (Paul Dano) and his young wife, Millie (Zoe Kazan); the deeply religious White brood of father William (Neal Huff), wife Glory (Shirley Henderson) and their son, Jimmy (Tommy Nelson); and the strong but silent Soloman Tetherow (Will Patton) and his young bride Emily (Michelle Williams). Leading them is Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), an ornery and boisterous hired-guide with a dark past and a hatred for the Native Americans who roam the surrounding Oregon dustbowl.
Losing faith in Meek by the hour and running low on water, the group encounters then captures a lone Cayuse Indian (Rod Rondeaux) whom they first distrust but soon rely on to lead them to water. Meek’s desire to kill the 'savage’ and Emily’s humanitarian treatment of their captive creates the central conflict that drives the film’s slender narrative, which amounts to little more than a chronicling of the group’s daily wagon-train grind. (Reichardt indulges in one too many extended shots of 'three wagons and a dusty backdrop’.)
The strength of the film is in the character interplay and the performances of a wonderful cast, working with the literate, pitch-perfect words of Jonathan Raymond’s script. Reichardt and Raymond seem in simpatico (he wrote both Wendy and Lucy and her acclaimed Old Joy, 2006). Their melding of talents has inspired Williams, Patton, Dano and especially Greenwood (unrecognisable under a wild beard-and-hair combo and blessed with the biggest slice of the film’s dialogue) to awards-worthy performances.
Some of the Reichardt’s choices, though, are bewildering. A frustratingly obtuse ending and the decision to shoot in the antiquated 1:33 screen ratio are hardly the most audience-friendly devices. (The box-like screen format does not allow for vast and distracting Dances with Wolves-like vistas.) But they ultimately work in conveying the ongoing drama of the party’s existence and the personal hardships each of the group suffers.
Above all else, Meek’s Cutoff reflects a perilous and dangerous journey and looks to have been a particularly arduous shoot. Taking on the appearance of the earth that surrounds them hints at the fate of the pioneers, as they seek to conquer the merciless land; it is, in fact, the fearsome natural elements that are consuming them. Despite a sun-reddened, dirt-smeared visage that grows worse as the film progresses, Williams may have never radiated more onscreen beauty, shedding the actress and her character of even the barest of civilised pretensions. Rondeaux’s largely-silent performance as the Cayuse reflects a spirit at one with the endless tablelands, of being aware of the doomed plight of these white men.
The final frames might not offer the traditional narrative-driven ending that mainstream audiences expect, but it certainly indicates that to stay with these adventurers for even a few moments longer would have proven particularly harrowing.
