31 Movies of May, Day 11: Meek's Cutoff
May 11th viewing: Meek’s Cutoff, chosen by my trail guide who I strongly suspect may not actually have a clue what he’s doing
Year of Release: 2010
Directed by: Kelly Reichardt
Written by: Jon Raymond
Starring: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Rod Rondeaux, Shirley Henderson, Neal Huff, Tommy Nelson
Accompanying Beverage of Choice: Fallen Maple Blackberry (Berliner-style ale, 9.6% ABV) - 18th Street Brewery, Hammond, Indiana
(Support Independent Breweries - buy local when getting buzzed during quarantine)
Kelly Reichardt may simultaneously be the most and least apt filmmaker for our quarantine times.
On the one hand, Reichardt isolates her characters in a way that nearly anybody confined to their home these days can relate. The wagon train of Meek’s Cutoff may be the most literal example, with the characters cut off (no pun intended) from seemingly any civilization for hundreds of miles, but the characters of Reichardt’s other films like Wendy and Lucy, Night Moves, and Certain Women all exude a desperation for connection that highlights their isolation as well. That isolation manifests both figuratively in their inability to achieve fulfilling relationships and literally in the rural breadth of the American West they traverse in their daily lives.
But on the other hand, Reichardt’s visualization of the Northwest’s open plains feels almost sadistically tantalizing in our COVID era. Anybody who has spent their entire spring mired in the same city block, with the most exotic travel coming in a weekly trip to the grocery store, may almost envy Michelle Williams and Will Patton as they wander aimlessly across the Oregon desert with only minor hindrances like “death by dehydration” to bother them. Every summer growing up, my family would make a nine-hour drive across the flat plains of Minnesota and South Dakota to visit my grandparents, and the idea of making that sort of trip now sounds like some sort of fabulous game show prize.
To be fair, Reichardt appreciates the beauty of her settings. Her films show an obvious love of nature and are regularly infused with themes of human intrusion into the natural world. John Ford and his sweeping vistas frequently come to mind when watching Reichardt’s films, Meek’s Cutoff in particular (though the story here provides a little more nuance to the plight of indigenous peoples than Ford did).
In a way, the gorgeous horizons and rolling hills Reichardt provides heighten the lack of belonging felt by her characters. Feeling such despair while surrounded by such beauty can only emphasize the dire straits more harshly. It shows how something like enjoying a lovely sunset can really be a privilege, limited to those secure enough to mentally relax enough to appreciate it. That extra knowledge makes these types of pleasures seem even further away, for not only must We the Quarantined wait until we can securely venture outside again, but we need to recharge our minds in a way that gives us the ability to actually appreciate it.
