Kelly Reichardt’s minimalist cinema-of-the-inane hits a painfully low ebb with an anti-western lacking any sign of a narrative arc. Michelle Williams returns to working with Reichardt since leading the filmmaker’s last film “Wendy and Lucy.”
Here Williams plays Emily Tetherow, an independent-minded young woman — read feminist icon — traveling near the desolate Oregon Trail with three families in 1845.
The group of thirsty emigrants hires a gregarious mountain man named Stephen Meek to guide them on a journey across the Cascade Mountains. He promises riches; they need water. Even with Meek’s guidance, the group is lost on a misbegotten journey.
Bruce Greenwood is unrecognizable as the manipulative codger Meek, whose raspy voice and quick delivery of sexist and racist ideals briefly masks his ignorance about the frontier he pretends to master. Greenwood’s fully-rounded characterization comes as a much-needed perk. Kelly Reichardt’s regular script collaborator Jon Raymond provides a series of falsely dramatic episodes that lead nowhere. For example, it’s a big deal when a stagecoach rolls unattended down an hill and crashes. A gun-stand-off is the highest dramatic pitch the story ever hits. The characters remain inaccessible.
The film’s main dramatic grist comes from a Native American Indian (wonderfully played by Rod Rondeaux) who the group take as their prisoner. Mr. Meek is only too happy to brutalize the Native American. Emily, on the other hand, does what she can to win the man’s trust. She stitches up his moccasins. The downtrodden prisoner, who doesn’t speak English, affords Emily an opportunity to express her unpopular sense of justice. She effectively upstages Meek’s racist ideas that he is want to impose on the entire group.
Reichardt’s decision to shoot the film in 4:3 aspect ratio gives it a televisual feel. There are plenty of arty landscape shots and center-dominant compositions, each ineffectual in its own way. Kelly Reichardt references Robert Altman’s “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” as an influence on “Meek’s Cutoff.” Comparison between the films does not favor “Meek’s Cutoff.” Altman’s film is a thousand times more modern. It is rich with texture and breathes with romantic tension. Different from Reichardt’s film, Altman’s movie is a character-driven story built of solid form. It doesn’t hurt that its casting includes Julie Christie opposite Warren Beatty.
“Meek’s Cuttoff” shows a young filmmaker attempting to create an illusion of narrative rigor hooked into a fairly bland allusion regarding the United States current personality crisis. Neither the director or screenwriter have any idea what they want to say. Everything is vague. They have a skeletal narrative structure and no need for any budget-busting luxuries like stage sets. There isn’t a fully developed storyline, and there aren’t enough ideas in a movie that film snobs will congratulate themselves for adoring.
Pshaw.
Rated PG. 104 mins.
