When discussing various forms of art, critics often use words like “sparse” and “bleak” as if they were blanket compliments that mean something is good. I’m not so certain about the validity of that stance, but I have to admit there is some sort of intellectual satisfaction that comes from watching something that is slow and difficult, yet still captivating. It’s so much harder to get somebody’s attention with silence than it is with noise, so when somebody is able to pull that feat off it seems like you’ve seen something special. I think the impasse between my opinion and those of many others comes when deciding if something that is sparse, slow, and bleak actually does manage to be captivating. Too often I hear about a film being a stark masterpiece full of small, contemplative moments, and when I end up seeing it I find it to be little other than a pretentious snoozefest. Meek’s Cutoff is not that. It’s a slow moving film that is more full of silence than dialogue, to be sure. Its scenery could more accurately be described as rugged than it could beautiful, without question. But it’s also a film that I found interesting all of the way through. I never found myself bored or squirming in my seat while watching it. Still, I’m not sure that’s enough for a film to accomplish in order for me to give it a recommendation. Though I was always interested in the themes and allegories that Meek’s Cutoff put on the table, when I think about how I was affected by it, what it was able to stir in me, I start to view it as being a little less than impressive.
Though this is a film about pioneers traveling to Oregon via western trail, Meek’s Cutoff isn’t what could be considered your typical Western. There aren’t any gunfights. There are no good guys or bad guys. There’s no spirit of manifest destiny or sense of the dogged determination that it would take to explore the western frontier. But this isn’t a movie that subverts the typical Western tropes either. It just calls them into question. Though our characters are explorers, they are never proactive or daring. They keep moving forward into the wilderness out of a sense of complacency; they can’t think of anything else to do. Though we get a heroic frontier figure as one of our main characters, it’s never clear whether any of his mythical exploits really happened or not. He is leading our wagon train of settlers, but nobody is certain into what. A journey that was supposed to take two weeks has now lasted for six, with no end in sight. And when we come into contact with an Indian on the trail, he is never clearly painted as the villain he would be in a classic Western, but he isn’t necessarily treated as a sympathetic character either. The Indian in this tale sits passive, mysterious, and silent; he could be a peaceful communer with nature or a bloodthirsty savage in equal measure. Meek’s Cutoff is a film that wallows in uncertainty.
The characters we’re following consist of six settlers, one child, one guide, and, eventually, one captured Indian. When we first meet them, they are washing their clothes and gathering drinking water in a river. For the rest of the film they’re trying, with little success, to find their next source of water. They’ve little to do but walk, conserve, and hope that they don’t die while out on the trail. Long stretches of the journey are taken in silence, when the characters do discuss matters it’s often in hushed tones, just out of our earshot. There’s some talk of getting rid of their guide, Stephen Meek, and traveling in a different direction; but it’s clear that these characters are all too weak willed and in over their heads to actually make a decision on this matter, or probably any other. The only other conflict of the film comes when they stumble across a lone Indian, who they end up taking hostage. Half of the crew wants to kill the Indian outright and eliminate any threat that he might possess, the other half think it wiser to force him to lead them to water. After some debate, the follow him to water crew have their way, and we spend the rest of the film following the stone-faced native. Whether it is toward life giving water or the certain death of ambush is never certain, and much like the characters themselves, we are forced to just wait and watch.
Unlike most Westerns that take full advantage of a widescreen presentation, Meek’s Cutoff is filmed in the significantly more square 1.33 : 1 aspect ratio; one that hasn’t been widely used in many decades. While most of these outdoor, man struggling against nature, films use a widescreen image to drown the viewer in wilderness and wide-open spaces; the smaller frame here keeps us immediately engaged with the characters. We never explicitly see everything that surrounds them, but we get the distinct sense that it’s all a lot of nothing. This sort of approach could be used to craft a more intimate film, one that’s more concerned about the emotions and reactions of the characters than telling a grand story, but Meek’s Cutoff doesn’t go that route either. Instead of using close-ups, which might showcase the film’s performances, what we get here is mostly medium and wide shots. The presentation gives us a detached feel, one of a voyeur existing outside the story.
And in accordance with the very un-cinematic way that the film’s performances are filmed, we are also never explicitly targeted by it’s drama. The characters often discuss the life and death nature of their journey, but we are never made to feel the stakes. Mention is periodically made of their depleted water supply, but we’re never explicitly shown how much they have left. We get one scene of a man passing out due to dehydration, but he is then quickly nursed back to health by drinking some water. There are even several scenes where characters discuss their need for water as they’re drinking water. If they hadn’t kept reminding me through dialogue that these travelers were in danger of running out, I might have thought they had an endless supply. And this is where the film started to do less for me than it should have. I can appreciate using a subtle touch to present your material rather than beating your viewer over the head with cheesy reminders of the story’s inherent drama; but when no attempt is made at creating a sensory experience whatsoever, telling a man vs. nature story starts to seem like a strange fit for your technique. When comparing this film’s casual approach to dehydration with the frantic, stylized way that Danny Boyle did everything he could to make you feel his character’s thirst in 127 Hours, I have to face facts that Boyle’s film had me licking dry lips and praying for James Franco’s character to find water while watching it, and Meek’s Cutoff left me sitting in my theater chair unengaged and quite comfortable. Give me a close up of somebody’s dried out face, a shot of the blazing sun, a shot of the last remnants of water slopping around at the bottom of a barrel; something! Just telling me over and over again that the stakes of the trip I’m watching are dire will not cut it.
The character of Emily, played by Michelle Williams, is the only one in the film that really gets any sort of arc. While everyone else stands around hemming and hawing, refusing to take action, Emily actually seems to have some opinions. The men of the group whisper behind the scenes that it might be best to remove Meek from his leadership position, but it’s only Emily that verbalizes everyone’s feelings to the man’s face. When the debate about what to do with the Indian happens, each character has an unsure preference about what they want to do, but it’s only Emily who makes a stand and demands that he not be killed. And still, to describe her as proactive would be a bit of a stretch. As a woman she is left to travel at the back of the pack. When the men get together to have a meeting, she stands away at a distance, struggling to hear what they’re discussing. When a decision is made to keep traveling forward under Meek’s leadership, she is given no choice but to keep walking as blank faced and unhappy as everyone else. Her standoff with Meek over the fate of the Indian is the only time anybody in this film takes a stand or picks a direction, so I suppose we can regard it as the heart of the film.
Stephen Meek is a braggadocios, animated character played by an almost unrecognizable Bruce Greenwood, who spends the entire film obscured under big beard, long hair, and ridiculous pioneer garb. His approach to the Meek character reads like the results of Johnny Depp portraying a character that was originally intended for Jeff Bridges. I could never really pin down how I felt about the performance, as it was a little bit quirkier and hammier than what I normally find to be necessary, but consequently it felt like a real breath of fresh air in a film where everything else was so understated. Meek’s bragging and storytelling all appear to stem from a feeling of insecurity. It’s as if Meek needs to be the center of attention, so he’ll talk at length to whomever will pay it to him. And if he starts to sense that he’s losing his audience, he turns to fear mongering in order to keep them in line. Meek has stories of the savagery of Indian attacks, the horrors of traveling away from their intended destination. Though he doesn’t seem to really know which way to go, none of the other members of the party do either. Meek is in charge solely because he claims knowledge. The conflict of the film comes when the Indian is introduced. He’s somebody who really does know the land, somebody who really can lead the travelers to water. Though he is kept as a prisoner, he in a way becomes the defacto leader of the group. This is a fact that isn’t lost on Meek, a man who seems to thrive on feeling in charge, and it explains his immediate and overt hostility toward the “savage”.
The nameless Indian is played by Rod Rondeaux, and though he is given little to do other than sit in silence, he performs that task extraordinarily well. The conflict of the Indian, and the dichotomy between how he is viewed by the different characters, was the thing that worked best about this film for me. These travelers know so little about Native American culture, and presumably he so little about theirs, that the two parties might as well have come across an alien for how well they are able to understand each other. Communication is nearly impossible, and empathy is hardly an option. As debate about his motivations rage around him, Rodeaux sits silent, betraying no emotion. But in his eyes you can sense an intelligence and a knowledge you don’t share. He has seen things that you’ve never seen; he knows things that you’ll never know. And whether his stone face masks the malevolent harm that he intends his captors, or a dignified acceptance of his fate as a prisoner, is anything but clear. When I think back upon this film I will most remember the image of Indian, the alien, quietly sitting in chains, the prisoner of those that have no conception of what to do with him. The foreign object of debate amongst a lost and desperate people.
