Director Kelly Reichardt won me over with “Wendy and Lucy.” In “Meek’s Cutoff” she pairs up with the writer of “Wendy and Lucy”, Jonathan Raymond to create a script that’s based on letters and journal entries of women traveling down the Oregon trail in the mid-1800′s. A kind of Western from a woman’s perspective. It tells the story from the point of view of the women whose impact on any major decisions was usually confined to the private hours of the night.
The film opens with a group of travelers who are led astray by a man who claims he knows the fastest way to get them to California. They suspect that they may be lost and are forced to trust in another questionable alternative or lose by going without water. In one of the interviews Reichardt said that the pacing of short stories is more conducive to film adaptation– that she cannot imagine making a film out of a book. Like in “Wendy and Lucy,” she’s interested in embellishing an emotional state and she’s not afraid to take her time on a moment to create suspense and drag our her scenes during long takes that recreate “real time”. What Reichardt focuses on in this film and what’s really engrossing is seeing the emotional shifts and the delicate dynamic of trust that keeps or breaks up the group of travelers who are forced to make a life choice decision.
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