The year is 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, and a wagon team of three families has hired the mountain man Stephen Meek to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Zoe Kazan Millie Gately. Check out the latest photos and bios of the cast and filmmakers of Meek's Cutoff. Articles from the Notebook. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Learn more These movies are, at first glance, simple and austere stories in which very little happens: two friends go camping in the woods; a young woman’s car breaks down on her way to Alaska; three families tramp for days in search of a new home, or at least some fresh water. Available on iTunes, Topic, Prime Video, Tubi TV, Hulu In 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, a wagon train of three families hires mountain man Stephen Meek to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. The way that world looked to them was unimaginably strange, every hill and rock loaded with portent, promise and menace. “Meek’s Cutoff” makes it clear that those earlier movies, in their way, were westerns too. It's 1845, and Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) is a boastful, rough-hewn wilderness guide who has been hired by three families who want to start new lives on the other side of Oregon's Cascade Mountains. Bruce Greenwood Stephen Meek. Settlers traveling through the Oregon desert in 1845 … Out on the Frontier, Bringing All That Baggage With Them. Meek's Cutoff. Meek is a braggart and a blowhard, a blustery, broken-down incarnation of a familiar western archetype: the frontiersman whose half-wild, half-civilized status makes him both an ideal guide and a convenient scapegoat for the genteel migrants whose society will ultimately take root in the West. Meek's Cutoff. Saddle up. Western 2011 1 hr 42 min. Director Kelly Reichardt loves a road trip, particularly one in trouble. View production, box office, & company info. “Meek’s Cutoff” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). Meek constantly tells his charges that he knows the Oregon Trail like the back of his hand, but when they veer off for a shortcut he says is foolproof, they soon find themselves in forbidding territory, without water and with Indians on the horizon. The first thing you see in “Meek’s Cutoff,” after a hand-scrawled title card placing the action in the Oregon Territory in 1845, is a small group of settlers fording a river. Was this review helpful to you? It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but now the menfolk (Will Patton, Paul Dano and Neal Huff) are debating whether to hang Meek from a wagon frame and forge ahead without him. Two old pals reunite for a camping trip in Oregon's Cascade Mountains. With Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano, Will Patton. Peggy Ahwesh on Kelly Reichardt's "Meek's Cutoff" In a chapter from the Viennale’s new book devoted to Kelly Reichardt, director Peggy Ahwesh reflects on her 2010 film. FULL SYNOPSIS. MEEK’S CUTOFF is a very slow-moving western about three pioneer families lost in the sagebrush, looking for a mountain pass into Oregon. This is a film of suggestion. I saw the film twice and still couldn't decide what it was about. Zoe Kazan Cast. Amidst turmoil and racial conflict in a Francophone African state, a white French woman fights for her coffee crop, her family and ultimately for her life. Get Movies. The white characters become guileless and simple, even unethical and meek… Directed and edited by Kelly Reichardt; written by Jon Raymond; director of photography, Christopher Blauvelt; music by Jeff Grace; production design by David Doernberg; costumes by Vicki Farrell; produced by Neil Kopp, Anish Savjani, Elizabeth Cuthrell and David Urrutia; released by Oscilloscope Laboratories. Add the first question. Chris Blauvelt Cinematography. Release Date: May 13, 2011 - Limited DVD: September 13, 2011. Reichardt and Raymond build the suspense to an excruciating level, and then the film just stops, like one those beautifully crafted, unsatisfying New Yorker short stories that seem to regard resolution as vulgar. Buy Movies. L’uomo però ha preso una scorciatoia ed ha perso la strada. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Michelle Williams ... Meek's Cutoff follows a couple of families as they follow a man named Meek who promised them he could get them to the mountains quicker then the trail. “Meek’s Cutoff” is as unsentimental and determined as Ms. Williams’s character, its absolutely believable heroine. Meek's Cutoff Related. Because the point of Meek's Cutoff isn't whether Emily and the others survive, it's that they finally consider putting their faith in a person they've regarded as savage and deceitful because of his race and culture. We are seeing the world more or less exactly as it looked to those hardy, foolish souls on screen (and almost forgetting to notice that most of them are actors we recognize from elsewhere). Director Kelly Reichardt loves a road trip, particularly one in trouble. ‘Meek’s Cutoff’ is a western, but it’s like no horse opera you’ve ever seen. And as in so many westerns, basic ethical questions arise with stark, life-and-death force. Claiming to know a short cut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path across the high plain desert, only to become lost in the dry rock and sage. Starring: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood. Most classic westerns, though, are set during the later decades of the 19th century, in a wilderness already showing signs of development, with railroads, trading posts and lawmen wearing tin stars on their vests. There's a faintly mystical quality. This film focuses on an ex-Foreign Legion officer as he recalls his once glorious life, leading troops in Djibouti. Take a look at the film and television career of Alexander Skarsgård. The bird, a wild creature confined in the midst of an open wilderness, is also a metaphor for the contradictions at the heart of that enterprise and for the predicament in which Ms. Reichardt’s characters, the women in particular, find themselves. When a Native American wanderer crosses their path, the emigrants are torn between their trust in a guide who has proven himself unreliable and a man who has always been seen as the natural enemy. Directed by: Kelly Reichardt. “Meek’s Cutoff” is built around a dialectic of freedom and constriction. 71 of 101 people found this review helpful. SH. Special features: The making of Meek's cutoff… Over the coming days, the emigrants must face the scourges of hunger, thirst and their own lack of faith in each other's instincts for survival. They have a hired guide, Meek (Bruce Greenwood), who tells a good story but sometimes doesn't seem to know where he's going.One of the women, Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams), seems to be tougher, smarter, and more practical than anyone else, and her wisdom often points the way. Directed by: Kelly Reichardt. In 1845, Meek led some 200 wagons and 1000 souls on … Some argue that he will lead them to more Indians, so should be killed; but Solomon reasons that he can be used to lead them to water and their destination.The band continues their voyage, taking 'The Indian' with them. Notebook 26 Oct 2020. Cozy, a dissatisfied housewife, meets Lee at a bar. And yet it is also recognizably the same Oregon Ms. Reichardt has explored in two previous films, “Old Joy” and “Wendy and Lucy,” both set very much in the present and both written with Jon Raymond (who is the screenwriter here and is also a writer of the “Mildred Pierce” mini-series currently on HBO). 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