The Criterion Channel Presents: Meek's Cutoff (2010)

Before making her great indie hit Certain Women, Kelly Reichardt directed a little-known western that’s never had a Criterion release in spite of its current availability on the Criterion Channel. Anyway, it’s called Meek’s Cutoff and it’s pretty good. It’s based on the true story of how Stephen Meek (here played by an unrecognizable Bruce Greenwood) disastrously led a wagon train through the Oregon desert on what was planned to be a two-week journey that ballooned into longer than five. However the film, in addition to stripping the trains’ company down to three couples and a child, centres the focus on the women, specifically Michelle Williams’ Emily Tetherow. And Reichardt is really serious about that female point of view, in some scenes framing the men (Neal Huff, Paul Dano, and Will Patton) and Meek in the background, talking and arguing amongst themselves in half-audible dialogue, while the wives (Williams, Shirley Henderson, and Zoe Kazan) aren’t permitted to contribute, their fates solely in the hands of their husbands. In fact, the women characters don’t often speak at all unless with their husbands, not even socializing much with each other as one might expect. This might be the first western I’ve seen to really acknowledge the history of the old west and what living in it meant for women, illustrating well their forced passivity. Yet the movie also shows the resilience embedded through this kind of life, particularly in how Emily copes with the whole ordeal. She also shows great strength of conviction when she comes to the defence of a Cayuse (Rod Rondeaux) they capture along the way, subtly demonstrating her far superior empathy and leadership skills in a manner that feels completely organic.

Reichardt’s minimalist style serves her well here. The sound mixing, which often renders some voices incoherent, dull costuming, and use of what seems to be natural lighting creates an authentic atmosphere of meandering aimlessly through a vast wilderness, with a tone of melancholy gradually turning to despair like a much less tedious version of what Gus Van Sant tried to evoke in Gerry. The mood has a wistful mellowness to it and the cinematography is utterly engrossing. There’s a real beauty to how the film is composed. In what might be one of my favourite uses of double exposure in a movie ever, Reichardt slowly transitions from one landscape shot to another by overlapping them with such grace that it’s downright awe-inspiring to watch. Moments like this alone make Meek’s Cutoff, a fascinating, illuminating feminist western worth watching for any fan of contemplative indie movies.

Criterion Recommendation: Holy Motors (2012)

Few movies of the past decade are as uniquely captivating as Leos Carax’s bizarre and fascinating Holy Motors, a film about art, identity, and cinema itself. Ambiguous even in its premise, it follows a man called Mr. Oscar (Denis Lavant), a kind of actor, as he plays a wild variety of characters through a twenty-four hour period in Paris. A movie that demands to be dissected, it is gloomy yet joyous, absurd yet deep, incomprehensible yet transparent, fragmented yet whole. Its cast includes both distinguished French luminaries Michel Piccoli and Édith Scob (in a great nod to Eyes Without a Face), and international superstars Kylie Minogue and Eva Mendes, the latter of whom called the film “the coolest, most creative thing I’ve ever done”. It’s a marvellously strange, surreal, sensational, provocative, and brilliant work of art that deserves a place in the Criterion Collection for its awesome accordion interlude alone.

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