This is a powerful little film about faith and the lack of it. It is somewhat thinly disguised as a historical western. Although quite poetic in it's expression it is firmly anchored in true historical events. As far as westerns are concerned, director Reichardt certainly breaks all the rules. John Ford and Howard Hawks wouldn't like Meek 's Cutoff, but Ford would understand from the opening scene what it 's all about. It's about people of faith, the pilgrims traveling to the west with no clue about their surroundings, destination let alone destiny, pressing on against the odds pretty much on faith alone.It is a film about leadership crisis. The hired guide of the small wagon train he leads, Stephen Meek, is unsure in a landscape which has dried up since his last visit. He tries to hide his self-doubts by bragging about his past exploits but only makes things worse. The pilgrims begin to see him as a liar and a cheat. Is it a good idea to follow him deeper into the desert or should they turn back to the regular Oregon trail? As water supplies diminish the question becomes one of life and death and inevitably starts to divide the settlers.Here is a film where the characters pray a lot, read the Bible all the time and face temptations and doubts in the desert. Yet none of the reviews here I have read mention religion at all. Really no bells ringing? When the settlers capture a native American who has tracked them, they face the question of what to do with their fellow man. Will they succumb to prejudice or do the Christian thing? Yes it is a film about Christian values as well.Some reviewers complain about lack of character development. Maybe they saw a different film. Michelle Williams convinces as Mrs. Tetherow, a young wife who begins to find her voice to openly challenge Mr. Meek and his set of values. When Meek loses it and intends to kill the Indian prisoner, the viewer will be surprised to see her counter move. "I'd be careful" is a line of hers from that powerful scene that stays in my mind at least. In a film of very sparse dialogue Michelle Williams manages to communicate her thoughts with looks and expressions, great directing and acting here and I would say a lot of character development.The films changes after the capture of the Indian with even more Christian motifs and leadership challenges. Should the settlers follow the unreliable and unsympathetic Mr. Meek or the unknown Indian who doesn't speak their language but knows the land, and should they listen to a woman? Everyone, the native included, now has a lot more to fear in this alien wilderness. Oh yes, this is a film about fear, real fear of unpleasant death hanging very close.I find it very difficult to understand why so many reviewers complain so much about the abrupt ending of the film. Well I was surprised, too. Having never heard of the Meek cutoff I too expected to see what finally happened to the lost wagon train. After all, for once I was watching a western that could end in disaster, death by starvation or native attack, settlers killing the guide, guide killing the settlers, a happy end... anything. Instead you got the end credits all of a sudden! The hints in the final scenes gave some clues. The settlers seemed to have found at least the beginning of the end of the trail. But to make sure I simply looked it up after the film (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meek_Cutoff). After all, I can read. Hey, it is not a secret what happened to the wagon train, to Meek and even to the Indian after the events of the film. Yes, in real life! The film follows, limitations of a small budget withstanding, those historical events fairly faithfully after all. However, I would not look the events up before seeing the film, as history contains spoilers in this case. Some people have seen all this and yet they feel nothing happened in the film. I am sorry but I have to disagree. I was on the edge of my seat a lot and enjoyed it a lot. Few films have a sense of time and place like this. So it's slow, but if a film tells the story of folks walking with their wagons through a highland desert and the timing is realistically right the film just has to be slow. Just adapt to it, after all you are sitting comfortably and have nothing to complain about compared to the people in the desert.

It's not the traditional western with the usual villains and good cowboys, with the shooting, the saloons etc. But it's a story about the first settlers on their way to Oregon. It's nice to see the rough life they had like 150 years ago. It was for sure not a trip for the weak with the constant struggle and searching for water. The movie is nicely shot and along with the good actors it makes the movie enjoyable and realistic. If you are looking for a western with the traditional shootings then this one is not for you. There is not a lot of meaningful conversations but it all adds up to the story. I only gave it a six just because of the ending that I didn't like that much. For the rest I enjoyed the movie.

Presented in Academy ratio and operating within an immeasurable form of time and space, Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff is a Revisionist Western that examines the ways in which history has been purported. Following the titular Stephen Meek (a gruff Bruce Greenwood) as he guides a caravan of settlers through the most unforgiving reaches of the Oregon territory, Meek's Cutoff questions the reliability of the traditional West as a whole, as there is little Meek himself offers to the journey other than misguidance and racial bigotry. Rather than the valiant male hero of the Mythic West that audiences have been subjected to time and time again, Reichardt reverses the role, placing it into the hands of the more than capable and collaborative mainstay, Michelle Williams.This subversion of character allows for the story to operate centrally from the perspective of Williams' Emily Tetherow, although the men are portrayed as – strictly in appearance – still in control. Classical motifs of the Western such as villainous Native Americans, gun violence, and the heroic male are abandoned for an honest perspective of the era in which it is the err of the male which destroys rather than their courageous heroics as a saving grace. This refusal to abide by the clichés of the Mythic West, allows Reichardt to heavily scrutinize the trail in which her ensemble trudges along to have been eventually named after the moronic, fraudulent, and brutish Stephen Meek.Opening with the setting of the film's events, "Oregon 1945," yet occupying a spatial form that adheres to the lack of physical actualities – as if the characters are traveling through a rift – observed in Monte Hellman's The Shooting as well as Ben Wheatley's A Field in England. As in, while the journey's end is the character's goal (i.e., the pub in A Field in England or Kingston in The Shooting), it is irrelevant to Reichardt's objective. The characters venture endlessly, while nature itself eventually takes on its own character as an unforgiving and opposing force. This push-and-pull of man versus himself allows for nature to continuously creep upon the caravan, slowly eradicating any glimpse of hope. It is the systematic form in which nature then attempts to disband and discourage Tetherow and company that reflects the work of Hellman, as it is their humanly misgivings that allow for the absence of worriment for far more worldly and pertinent conflicts. Concluding in a sudden yet incredibly appropriate moment, Reichardt ends the film only partway through the journey. For, as the aforementioned stated, the destination never had any distinct relevance to the story. Meaning that, while the viewer yearns for the caravan to reach its end- goal, Reichardt's vision calls for a completely different experience. The removal of Stephen Meek from power and the bond formed between Emily and The Indian – women and Native Americans as two groups that have been heavily oppressed by men – is the catharsis in which Reichardt plays with. As if Meek's Cutoff serves as rectifying tale for the mistreatment of the previously stated parties, Reichardtseeks to set the record of the Old West straight, while offering an equally distant and unique, yet poetically minimalist cinematic experience at the same time.

We were very disappointed in this movie.It begins and ends without fanfare. Cinematography was excellent, we are familiar with high desert areas traveled in this movie. But the plot is pedantic, the major crisis is resolved (after fade to black).We recognized several of the actors and generally enjoy their work. I wondered how the water in the barrels could remain so clean after their days/weeks of traveling.I realized how I've changed over time. Younger I might have thought how some things might have been so cool to take part. Now I look at scenes and think, "Glad I wasn't there".