Meek's Cutoff

Kelly Reichardt's (Old Joy - SFF 2006, Wendy and Lucy) elegiac revisioning of the American Western is a rare beauty to behold. Three families, led by an untrustworthy scout, deviate from the Oregon Trail in search of a shortcut - only to find themselves hopelessly lost, without water and in conflict over a captured Native American. Echoing the 1970s reappraisal of the genre by filmmakers like Peckinpah, Aldrich, and Altman, and eschewing the more strident feminist approach of Maggie Greenwald's compelling The Ballad of Little Jo, Reichardt reframes the pioneer mythology through the delicately curtailed perspectives of the bonneted women (Michelle Williams, Shirley Henderson and Zoe Kazan). They are excluded from decision-making; their experience is alternately terrifying and mundane. Breathtaking and meticulous in its attention to both historical and geographical detail (Chris Blauvelt's evocative cinematography casts the rocky, sage-strewn landscape as a breathing character), the film subtly resonates with current American politics and hints at an alternative future.

This film is classified PG.