GIVEN PIONEERS’ near-mythological status, it’s easy to forget that it would’ve sucked to be one of ’em. Sure, adorable li’l Laura Ingalls Wilder might have bonded with her loving family as they built a little house on the prairie, but also… y’know… DONNER PARTY.
That frontier life of unrelenting suckitude is excruciatingly well rendered in Meek’s Cutoff, the latest from director Kelly Reichardt and writer Jon Raymond, the duo responsible for two other Oregon-set dramas, 2006’s excellent Old Joy and 2008’s mope-tacular Wendy and Lucy. Here, Reichardt and Raymond tell the harrowing tale of several pioneers—including Solomon and Emily Tetherow (Will Patton and a great Michelle Williams), Thomas and Millie Gately (Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan), and William and Glory White (Neal Huff and Shirley Henderson)—who’re lost on the unforgiving Oregon Trail.
Well, anyone with common sense would say they’re lost, anyway, no matter how insistently their guide, Meek (an unrecognizable Bruce Greenwood), grumbles stuff like, “We’re not lost, we’re just findin’ our way.” With his vague excuses and vaguer plans, Meek—whose gruff countenance and rambling mutterings place him somewhere between Jeffrey Lebowski and one of Deadwood‘s bar toughs—would be an okay guide, if it weren’t for the fact that his tired, ill-prepared pioneers are running out of food and water. And then things get even worse when the increasingly badass Emily refuses to let Meek kill a Paiute they’ve taken as a hostage.
Patient and ominous, Meek’s Cutoff feels less like a western and more like a thriller that plays out in slow-mo. Like the journey it documents, the film is grueling and wearying, but unlike most cinematic endurance tests—Wendy and Lucy comes to mind, actually—it never gets so bogged down in life’s inherent ugliness as to celebrate it. Beautifully shot, impressively acted, and unexpectedly haunting, Meek’s Cutoff isn’t just a reminder that we’re lucky to live in Oregon in a time when we don’t have to worry about repairing wagons—it’s also a film that’ll probably turn out to be one of the best of 2011.
Now I’m going to have to find that game and play it until I die in that most awesome of ways.
Y’now how yesterday I called everyone who sees first run movies a “frothing a-hole?”
I’m going to pay 10$ to see this at Fox Tower. GO SEE IT.
@CC: UR A FORTHING ARSEFACEHOLE NOW!!!
I had the extremely good fortune to be able to attend a screening of this a few weeks back. It’s awesome. Realistically miserable, terrifically acted and really a great film. Go see it.
I’m so glad to see somebody else call out Wendy and Lucy for the unholy suckfest of misery and despair it is. When I told some people I didn’t particularly like it, they acted like I’d given Mary the finger at a Knights of Columbus dinner.
Some of my ancestors came over the Oregon Trail in 1847 and were talked into entering the “Applegate Trail,” which I believe was not much better than “Meek’s Cutoff.” Luckily for all Blogtown readers they made it through to Eugene Skinner’s place and their precious DNA reached my zygote instead of ending up in coyote shit fertilizing a sagebrush thicket next to Goose Lake.
Old Joy sucks! Top 10 worst Portland movies. Wait, are there even 10 Portland movies?