Meek’s Cutoff
Meek's Cutoff
Format: Cinema
Date: 15 April 2011
Distributor: Soda Pictures
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Writer: Jonathan Raymond
Cast: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano
USA 2010
104 mins
Decidedly non-yeeha Western tale from Kelly Reichardt, the director of Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy. We’re in Oregon in 1845, following a tiny wagon train as shaggy guide Stephen Meek leads it astray while attempting to cross the Cascade Mountains. Bruce Greenwood is Meek, and indie stalwarts Shirley Henderson, Paul Dano, Will Patton and Michelle Williams are among the increasingly paranoid and disgruntled travellers, as water runs low and notional Indians lurk in the shadows. It feels absolutely authentic: Reichart does an impressive job of creating the sounds, sights and textures of life on the trail, the feeling of isolation and peril, and slowly builds real and involving characters out of the figures in this vast landscape. But I’m not sure she guides us to a satisfactory destination.
Mark Stafford
