Movie Meek 39;s Cutoff

[Author Metcalfe]

Ratherher films offer an immersion into the specific details of the daily lives of her characters, where we sort of live along with them in a often slowly growing sense of the tension, and because of our immersion into the specific daily detail, we gradually feel the emotions that run just below the surface.

We should note though that in spite of the resistance to a big tale with a huge cast, as would have been historically appropriate if she were trying, merely, to replicate the actual event, Reichardt is a stickler for small, historically accurate, details.

And in pre-production, she and the cast and crew spent several weeks in the Oregon desert, learning how to do all of the things settlers of the time would have done: they all learned to handle cattle, the women learned to knit and do daily tasks (Source: -west-the-making-of-meeks-cutoff ). And for the duration of the shooting, Reichardt essentially refused to let the cast wash their clothing.

Something I want to do then, is take us through a few of the generic Western tropes and think about how Reichardt is rejecting those tropes and the assumptions that underpin them and creating a new vision of the West, a new vision of ourselves and our history, perhaps, as Americans.

In her film, then, we will get a sense of its vastness at the same time we feel a sense of claustrophobia with the characters, who, of course, cannot really enjoy the vastness if they do not know where they are going.

The other men on the wagon train, too, we might consider as foils of the man of the classic Western: though the decision making falls to them, and they do hold frequent discussions about what to do, they are more frequently defined by their indecision, insecurity, and doubt than rugged self-determinism.

Our association with Williams (who is the closest thing to a protagonist in an ensemble cast), puts us, then, not with a heroic, mythic male character, but more with a fallible human, a woman, specifically, who is quietly taking in everything she sees, and, when she does need to take action, she is ready to do so because she has the lay of the land, via those quiet observations.

And the conflict or confrontation, while it is there, is embedded more in a growing tension, and embedded in petty but dangerous outbursts from people who are tired and confused or too arrogant to admit defeat, rather than, in heroic battles or shows of strength.

. . . where the protagonist and antagonists have been clearly defined and where we as viewers are itching for a fight; where our hero will finally win a victory, both physical and symbolic, over the the space he inhabits, and where we are left with that heroic figure, riding off into the sunset.

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