meek's cutoff [2010]

i watched this picture tonight at the local arthouse after work. it's one of those indie features that get a certain amount of buzz. there were maybe 15 or so people in the audience. to be fair the theater is itself quite small. oh, another thing, i was pleased to see that the movie tonight was projected in film and not, as is more common today, digital. there was a graininess to the print that heightened the harsh landscape of the oregon scrub land.

the director, kelly reichardt, i think is still developing as a filmmaker. she found a voice and a tone with this film which stars the very lovely michelle williams as a young wife in 1845 on the oregon trail with 2 other families. the meek of the title is their guide, stephen meek, who may or may not be a complete buffoon. what meek does do is get the families lost in the oregon desert and are increasingly desperate to find water.

reichardt manages to take in the wide expanse of barren scrub and make it claustrophic by carefully composing her scenes within the limited frames of say the bonnets of the women, or between the canvas shell of a wagon train as williams throws out items to lighten the wagon. this is a western, albeit a revisionist western, from the perspective of the women on the trail, particularly williams. but reichardt does not pack her narrative with action. she lets the narrative flow with the monotony of walking and working and waiting for deliverance of some kind.

williams' character is canny and she doesn't trust meek. now, i think reichardt is playing on the word meek and the name of the character to give us a clue to his character. but i might be quite wrong. we don't know what makes meek the man he is. we don't know if he's full of shit or not. what we do know is that he's as lost as the families he's been hired to guide. so when an indian appears the families take him prisoner and force him to become their guide. they don't know if they can trust the indian either. he could be leading them to water, or, as meek balefully warns, he could be leading them to his tribe to be slaughtered or taken as slaves.

we don't know. and that is a problem for many viewers. williams is a strong character with more than a twinkle of intelligence in her eye, unlike the buck-skinned, theatrical meek. she also shows the indian kindness where it counts. however, the ambiguity of his character will, i think, drive many viewers mad with frustration.

when this flick ended, and it ended as i suspected it would, there were a lot of, huh?, from the audience. to give you a hint to the ending think of the final episode of the sopranos. hope i didn't spoil it for you as i think this movie is worthy of your time. kelly reichardt is a talented filmmaker and the only thing that frustrated me was her tendency to laden her frames with portent and weighty symbols. not that i see anything wrong with artifice but as i read a review last night about a book of photographs the photographer was too much taken with the digital tools of the trade as she was learning her art. the photos were too gussied up to have any richer meanings. the same might be said of reichardt.

after the gasps of huh? most of the audience sat thru the credits and then began talking about the movie. if buzz is a measure of success than this flick is buzzing big time. i walked home in the late evening as the city was coming to life. it's still overcast and cold. the rain is expected tonight and supposed to last thru sunday. the steel grey sky seemed to match the mood of the movie as i replayed a few scenes in my head as i walked for home.