Movie Review: Meek's Cutoff (2011)

Meek's Cutoff (2011)

Directed By:
Kelly Reichardt

Starring:
Michelle Williams: Emily Tetherow
Bruce Greenwood: Stephen Meek
Will Patton: Solomon Tetherow
Zoe Kazan: Millie Gately
Paul Dano: Thomas Gately
Shirley Henderson: Glory White
Neal Huff: William White
Rod Rondeaux: The Indian

Rating:

The Dude Abides

If you're around my age and went to a school with a computer lab, odds are you had a go at The Oregon Trail, an "educational" game where you set off for Oregon with your oxen, your shotgun, your family, your wagon, your family hope chest, your clothes and a few barrels of salted pork. The game doesn't really teach you all that much, other than that leaving for Oregon a month before winter is disastrous and that the family hope chest is a thing best left behind, but I suspect that, for my generation, hunting and fording rivers and random deaths from dysentery are the enduring images of life on the Oregon Trail, much like our enduring images of the Old West come from movies where the hero can take on a pack of twenty desperadoes without a scratch, and an Indian ambush was waiting for the wagon train come sundown. All of this is to say that Meek's Cutoff is neither a stereotypical portrayal of the Oregon Trail, nor a stereotypical western. Folks clamoring for an old-style shootout on horseback, a circling of wagons or a barroom brawl are set to be disappointed, as Meek's Cutoff is a film with plenty of time on it's hands, but no time for any of that old nonsense. It's got issues, and continuing old, ingrained myths isn't one of them.

Meek's Cutoff does its best to be an accurate representation of what life was like on a wagon train headed to Oregon. At the center of this particular train is Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), a shady-looking frontiersman who was hired by the group because he said he could get them to Oregon in two weeks time. Mr. Meek knows a hell of a lot about a hell of a lot--for instance, the market for fur in Oregon is all but saturated, but there are still riches galore just waiting to be plucked from the ground--but he doesn't seem to know where the hell he's going. He promises a two week journey. Considering the space of a typical wagon and the need to travel light in order to move quickly, the group might be forgiven for only taking enough water for a two week journey. But it's week five, and out in the Oregon High Desert, there's not much water to be found. So the group is torn between two paths: Trusting Meek and carrying on, or beginning a desperate search for water.

Where the film really takes off from the traditional western is in the attention it pays to women, who, while usually the recipient of a cursory hat tip and “Ma’am,” are the ones who do the real work of the wagon train--not just cooking and cleaning, but leading the oxen and, when the men have gone off to look for food and water, protecting camp. Meek’s Cutoff centers on Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams) in particular, who does most of the philosophical heavy lifting while the husbands of the group—Solomon Tetherow (Will Patton), Thomas Gately (Paul Dano) and William White (Neal Huff)—squabble over hanging Meek for his transgressions.

A typical western would be tempted to follow the men riding away from the camp on horseback or having their discussions on Meek's fate, but Emily's really the only member of the group with a level head. She's also the only person in the caravan at least half aware of the group’s predicament—they’re alone in a desert with dwindling supplies of food and water, they’ve been led there by a man claiming to know a shortcut, and that man has gotten them lost. When they capture an Indian (Rod Rondeaux) and squabble about killing him, she puts all that aside and tasks the Indian with finding them water. This is an unpopular decision with Meek and a few others in the group, and it serves to alienate her from the wagon train--but they're all alienated to begin with, and that's a problem, she seems to realize, that won't go away by slaughtering one Indian.

Ultimately, the film is unconcerned with the group’s arguments, the search for water, or Meek’s shortcut. Things of real consequence happen in this movie, but less in service of a plot and more to demonstrate the hopeless reality of their situation. These people are strangers in a strange land—the conditions are unlivable and the only person they encounter they tie up like a dog and can’t understand. Eventually Meek finds himself reduced from the group’s pathfinder to a pathetic tagalong, spewing proverbs and nonsense about Indians and water and pathfinding, and that’s the fate of most of the characters here—to be reduced by their circumstance, to know that their future plans in Oregon have, perhaps permanently, been derailed, and to know that survival, while still a remote possibility, is uncertain at best. Under those circumstances, what’s left to cling to? Emily chooses the Indian, and the group chooses her.

Meek’s Cutoff is a somber film, but man is it beautiful. The film is shot like an old, pre-1950s western, and in many shots, the landscape seems like it’s about to swallow the wagon train whole. Deserts sweep out in every direction, hills seem impossible to lead a wagon down, and mountains jut out from the horizon. At one point, Meek says something to the effect that Hell is for the mountains. It’s just as well that they’re off in the distance—these men and women are on the outskirts of existence.