''Meek's Cutoff'' is a 2010 American Western film directed by Kelly Reichardt. The film was shown in competition at the

67th Venice International Film Festival The 67th annual Venice International Film Festival held in Venice, Italy, took place from 1 to 11 September 2010. American film director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino was the head of the Jury. The opening film of the festival was Darren Aro ...

. The story is loosely based on a historical incident on the

Oregon Trail The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kans ...

in 1845, in which frontier guide

Stephen Meek Stephen Hall L. Meek (July 4, 1807 – January 8, 1889) was a fur trapper and guide in the American west, most notably a guide on a large wagon train that used a trail known as the Meek Cutoff. A native of Virginia, both he and his younger brot ...

led a wagon train on an ill-fated journey through the Oregon desert along the route later known as the

Meek Cutoff Meek Cutoff was a horse trail road that branched off the Oregon Trail in northeastern Oregon and was used as an alternate emigrant route to the Willamette Valley in the mid-19th century. The road was named for frontiersman Stephen Meek, who wa ...

in the western United States. The film is formatted in the

Academy ratio The Academy ratio of 1.375:1 (abbreviated as 1.37:1) is an aspect ratio of a frame of 35 mm film when used with 4-perf pulldown.Monaco, James. ''How to Read a Film: The Art, Technology, Language, History and Theory of Film and Media''. Re ...

(1.37:1), a standard used in many classic Westerns.

Plot

A small group of settlers travelling across the Oregon High Desert in 1845 suspect that their guide,

, may not know the area well enough to plot a safe and certain route. A journey that was supposed to take two weeks, via what became known as the

, stretches into five. With no clear sense of where they are going, tensions rise as water and food run low. The wives look on, unable to participate in the decision making, as their husbands discuss how long they should continue to follow Meek. The dynamics of power shift when they capture a lone native and hold him in the hope he will lead them to a source of water, despite Meek's wish to kill him at once. Meek argues that the native cannot be trusted, but the group by now have no confidence in Meek. Later, when Meek prepares to shoot the native, Mrs. Tetherow intervenes. In the end, after the group encounters the positive sign of a tree, Meek submits to majority opinion. The fate of the group is left ambiguous as the native continues to walk on.

Cast

* Michelle Williams as Emily Tetherow * Bruce Greenwood as

Shirley Henderson Shirley Henderson (born 24 November 1965) is a Scottish actress. Her accolades include two Scottish BAFTAs, a VFCC Award and an Olivier Award, as well as BAFTA, BIFA, London Critics' Circle, Chlotrudis, Gotham, and Canadian Screen Award ...

as Glory White * Tommy Nelson as Jimmy White *

Neal Huff Neal Huff is an American actor from New York City. In April 2018, he performed as Willie Oban in the Broadway revival of ''The Iceman Cometh''. In December 2018, Huff began performing in ''To Kill a Mockingbird'', adapted for stage by Aaron Sor ...

as William White *

Paul Dano Paul Franklin Dano (; born June 19, 1984) is an American actor. He began his career on Broadway before making his film debut in ''The Newcomers'' (2000). He won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance for his role in '' L.I.E.' ...

as Thomas Gately * Zoe Kazan as Millie Gately *

Will Patton William Rankin Patton (born June 14, 1954) is an American actor and audiobook narrator. He starred as Colonel Dan Weaver in the TNT science fiction series '' Falling Skies''. He also appeared in the films '' Remember the Titans'', ''Armageddon' ...

as Solomon Tetherow * Rod Rondeaux as The Indian

Critical reception

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Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

gave the film an 86% approval rating based on reviews from 130 critics, with an average score of 7.5/10. It reported the consensus, "Moving at a contemplative speed unseen in most westerns, ''Meek's Cutoff'' is an effective, intense journey of terror and survival in the untamed frontier." At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 85 based on 36 reviews.

References

External links

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''Meek's Cutoff ''
at

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Meeks Cutoff 2010 films 2010 independent films 2010 Western (genre) films American Western (genre) films Films directed by Kelly Reichardt Films set in 1845 Films shot in Oregon 2010 drama films Films set in Oregon 2010s English-language films 2010s American films

Plot

Cast

Critical reception

See also

References

External links