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“Women Make Film” marathon reviews (6/6)

Meek’s Cutoff (2010)

Oregon has been the setting of five of Kelly Reichardt’s seven feature-length films. This run of films began with 2006’s Old Joy and has continued with First Cow (2019). But the subject of this review, Meek’s Cutoff, is the only Western of that collection. Reichardt has established a reputation of making unromanticized dramas on tight budgets and imbuing her films – in content and aesthetic – with an unmistakable feminism. That feminism might seem antithetical to the American Western, a genre long considered a bastion of masculinity, despite the occasional high-profile exception. Indeed, it results in a quiet film that destroys any notion of narrative expectation and traditional narrative and aesthetic forms. Meek’s Cutoff remains a source of vexation long after my first viewing, and has kept me engaged well after its final frame fades to black.

The film opens with a band of white pioneers trekking across the Oregon High Desert. Weeks have passed since they last encountered fresh, drinkable water. It is 1845 on the Oregon Trail, a few years before the heaviest traffic westward (which sealed the history of the American West). In Meek’s Cutoff, its white characters’ hypermasculinity – an insistence that, despite having been split from a larger wagon train, they should continue forth – may imperil entire company to a painful fate. However, the men’s perspectives are not the focus in this elusive film. There is no doubt that the movie prioritizes the perspectives of its female characters – Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams), Glory White (Shirley Henderson), and Millie Gately (Zoe Kazan) – but a “main character” (here, it’s Emily) does not emerge until more than halfway through the film. The men in the company (Will Patton as Solomon Tetherow, Neal Huff as William White, and Paul Dano as Thomas Gately), follow the guidance of fur trapper Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood). Animosity towards Meek is growing, and the men – routinely excluding their wives from the decision-making – are debating, out of earshot, what to do next. The situation is upended when they capture a member of the Cayuse tribe (Rod Rondeaux; a member of the Crow tribe) that has been following them.

Meek’s Cutoff captures the desolation of the American West in its restrained performances. There are long stretches of this movie without any dialogue or interaction between two people, leaving passages dependent on the physical and facial acting of the ensemble. Various actors’ gaits and grimaces reflect fatigue and desperation. Most obvious is the suspicion coursing through this company of pioneers – amongst themselves, towards Meek, and to and from the Indian that they capture. Every actor participated in a weeklong pioneer camp, lending authenticity in their interactions with the equipment. Examples include using ropes and chains to safely guide the covered wagons down a steep hill and an uncut (and interminable) sequence where Michelle Williams’ character attempts to load, fire, and reload a rifle. The film’s best acting moments arrive only after the introduction of Rod Rondeaux’s Cayuse character. After the pioneers force the Cayuse to guide them to a source of drinkable fresh water (the Oregon High Desert has various sources of alkaline water – consumable in limited quantities by humans, but toxic to livestock), one sees the Cayuse’s resentment, the trepidation of the women, and the barely-contained misgivings from the men. Rondeaux, speaking on rare occasions in the Crow language (the Cayuse language is extinct), is the catalyst of the film’s second half and the solid ensemble performance that eventually revolves around him.

Reichardt and cinematographer Chris Blauvelt (2013’s The Bling Ring, 2020’s Emma) make incredible use of the landscapes to contribute to the film’s tone. The Oregon High Desert is not a series of sand dunes and cactuses, but a shrub-filled prairie with no trees for shade. Shot in a 4:3 screen aspect ratio rather than a more conventional widescreen, the narrow, boxy frame suggests parched emptiness beyond the rolling hills in the background. Used mostly before the creation of the 1.375:1 Academy ratio, the dimensions in Meek’s Cutoff harken to early talkies and silent films. Whenever Meek’s Cutoff is not moving its camera (which it rarely does), the vast majority of its long and medium shots appear like something out of a silent film. Kelly Reichardt’s restrained editing allows numerous shots to linger longer than what might be comfortable for modern viewers. In addition to the film’s eerie silence, stillness abounds when the pioneers and the Indian are not trekking to destinations unknown.

Jonathan Raymond’s (2006’s Old Joy, First Cow) screenplay is based on an incident that occurred with a group of pioneers that traveled with Stephen Meek. Rather than focus on the historical basis of these events, Raymond and Reichardt focus on the mundane tasks that the women perform and the women’s reactions to development on their disastrous journey. Even without the walls of some edifice and living underneath the sky, there are clearly delineated spaces for men and women – we almost never see them intermingle unless the interaction is between a married couple or at supper. When the men gather to deliberate on what they should do next, one can feel the women’s frustration. They have internalized what the men might say if they insert themselves into such discussions. The women stay silent, largely due to societal norms ingrained in them during their lives in back east.

In their eyes, the viewer understands their disdain for Meek’s rhodomontade and the disappointment in their husbands – they obviously know no more nor less than they do about what might be the next best course of action. There are no Western heroes here, no glorified John Waynes, Jimmy Stewarts, or Gary Coopers here to cleanly resolve the conflict with a tense showdown. The screenplay of Meek’s Cutoff contains cultural and linguistic barriers (Rondeaux’s dialogue has no subtitles), no romantic themes, sparse and simple dialogue, and zero dramatic revelations. Michelle Williams, as Emily, will be the first of the women to assert any agency. When she first does so, it is amid her own deep reservations towards the Cayuse as she repairs his shoes, reasoning: “I want him to owe me something.” That she must threaten violence in the film’s climax highlights the desperation of the moment and the tensions that had been allowed to fester during the pioneers’ westward drive. Though in many ways the old American West allowed facets of feminism to flourish in ways that could not east of the Mississippi, Meek’s Cutoff shows how excluded and constrained women were in the so-called American frontier.

When planning the film, Reichardt created her film with the George W. Bush administration’s decision to wage the Iraq War in mind. Says Reichardt:

Here was the story of this braggart leading a bunch of people into the desert without a plan and becoming completely reliant on the locals who are socially different from him and who he is suspicious of. All of which seemed relevant to the moment.

Upon my first viewing of Meek’s Cutoff, the non-ending ending polarized me. But considering Reichardt’s statement (and noting that Meek’s Cutoff occurred while the Iraq War proper was in its final stages), the comparison and this narrative decision both seem suitable. The film lightly touches on the status of American Indians and the systematic extermination and displacement in the name of Manifest Destiny. But Meek’s Cutoff is, primarily, a story of its white women, not the Cayuse. Other reviewers might be harsher towards Reichardt and Raymond for not focusing on the perspective of the only non-white character in the film, but I would argue that the perspective of women in the old American West have also been marginalized (albeit not to the extent of American Indians). That the Cayuse is not necessarily an “antagonist” nor a faceless menace defies typical Western tropes. Any blather about the Cayuse being a “savage” is countered by his able to deduce the emotions of white pioneers threatening, cajoling, and gossiping about him.

As the women reclaim some authority from Stephen Meek by the film’s conclusion, the boastful masculinity espoused by Meek – through tall tales, the use of violence – is undressed for all its frailties and unearned bluster. Meek’s Cutoff has unfortunate moments of didacticism and, despite the healthy presence of an American Indian character, nevertheless otherizes the Cayuse. Yet for viewers willing to allow Reichardt’s movie to entangle their senses into its deliberate narrative, one has to be willing to abide by the film’s occasionally demanding rules.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

This is the sixth and final review on this blog relating to films that I saw as part of Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) Women Make Film marathon.