Meek's Cutoff (2011)

From my favorite movies..

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Slow, meaningless, little dialog, and less acting. I'd pass on this one.

I said it all in my summary. Unfortunately, I have to write ten lines of text to have a bona fide review. That's more lines than the characters had in the movie. I'm sure walking to Oregon was really boring. At least the director brought that out in the movie. You have to give him credit for doing it in a creative way. I'd rather walk to Oregon than watch this movie again. While I was a bit annoyed that it just ended without any resolution, in retrospect, I'm just glad it ended. If only that Indian had put the settlers out of their misery at the end. At least then it would have had an interesting ending. I mean, an ending.

It's 1845 Oregon. Three families Tetherows (Michelle Williams, Will Patton), Gatelys (Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano), and Whites (Shirley Henderson, Neal Huff, Tommy Nelson) are led by the mountain man Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) who claims to know a short cut across a high plain desert. They struggle as their water supplies dwindle. When the group captures an Indian, the group is torn about what to do with him.This is a slow pace movie with long uncut scenes. The style is minimalist. Kelly Reichardt is usually an indie director. That's what this is. It's nine actors and a crew out in the wilderness making a western indie. This is like a waking dream where we are waiting for something dire to happen. The acting is mostly reserved with a steady quiet tone. However I must object to the ending, and rate the movie lower because of it. It is not a proper ending.

It seems to me to be a story about a woman in the nineteenth century coming into a position of authority. At the beginning of the movie the women stand apart while the men make the decisions out of earshot. In the final scene the Michelle William's character realizes that the responsibility in a life and death decision has become hers and she cannot be sure she is right until she has committed the lives of the entire party. The situation has evolved at a pace much as it would in real life. I found it fascinating and the movie is beautiful. The pace is hard to take and so is the sound but they both make sense in terms of what the movie is doing.