The sun and heat reflected off the sand and rocks, creating some super-cooked air. ", PG (Smoking|Brief Language|Some Mild Violent Content), Film Science, Coming Soon. *Update from Apr. By what name was Meek's Cutoff (2010) officially released in India in English? Back to Meeks Cutoff. What I really yearned for was a trace of aesthetic modernism to go with Reichardts sociopolitical modernism, a self-aware critique in the cinematic realm to match her cultural criticismin short, some art thats more than the visual adornment or illustration of her script (by Jon Raymond, who also wrote Todd Hayness Mildred Pierce) and its messages. HD. Recently, I went along the trail route looking for a grave from the Meek's Cuttoff wagon train. The Supreme Court Declines to Dismantle Democracy. In fact, a person who has never crossed these wormwood barrens can form no idea as to what depth dust may be cut up in them by the passing of a few wagons. While this movie does have it's slow moments the scenery and acting (an all star cast) more then make up for it. It is a cold, spare western that is probably about as close to real-life as a wagon train might have been 166 years ago. Reality of the west. PG (Smoking|Brief Language|Some Mild Violent Content), Genre: [20], .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct,.mw-parser-output .geo-inline-hidden{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}435844N 1171531W / 43.97886N 117.25871W / 43.97886; -117.25871. We watch the mundane tasks of the pioneers as they load water, wash dishes, grind mealThere is no introduction of characters. There was sorrow and dismay depicted on every countenance. It's 1845 Oregon. The story does include these evocative lines, however: At last, suffering from exhaustion and lack of water, the shaman collapsed in the shade of a tall cactus. On September 11, 1845, James Field wrote in his diary: It was his intention to follow down Crooked River to the Deschutes and down it to the old road, but when he came to the marshy lake spoken of last Sunday, the company refused to follow him if he made the circuit necessary to get around it upon Crooked river again so he struck off in a westerly direction in order to get upon the main Deschutes River. 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. At one point, the settlers capture a Native American man and, despite the fact that they cannot understand his words, warily decide to let him lead them, hoping that he will take them to the water they so desperately need. One film that does a great job of revealing the mighty span of history thats implicit in a small groups westward voyage is Terrence Malicks The New World, from 2005. I cant assert definitively that the lines that Parr shared with us are the lines that made it into the final film neither Parr nor Rondeaux has seen it. Naga, my black Lab office supervisor, and I decided to go crosscountry. The wagons were taken completely apart to facilitate the dangerous crossing. [1] In his autobiography, he claims to be a relative of President James K. Polk,[2] and the claim is corroborated by his brother. If you enjoy watching films that have absolutely no conclusion to them whatsoever - then this is the movie for you. The expression on Meek's face "changed to one of complete bewilderment, as if he were seeing the country for the first time. By opting to have your ticket verified for this movie, you are allowing us to check the email address associated with your Rotten Tomatoes account against an email address associated with a Fandango ticket purchase for the same movie. 2022-04-12 16:23:58. 1 When Christopher Columbus discovered the "New World," (Cuba and the Bahamas, really) he was convinced he had landed on the coast of China. The year is 1845 and Meek is the guide for members of three families who have left the settlements on the thriving Eastern Seaboard of America and are now undertaking the last leg of their long journey, through Oregon desert. The Justice doesnt just join with the liberals on the bench when it comes to tribal rights; he often seems to lead them. You cant depend on such places to supply water. They had one son, George. To what extent he otherwise resembled the character in this moviea self-conscious embodiment of the colorful frontiersman, spinning yarns and getting hopes upI dont know. Meek is larger than life, deflecting questions about his navigation and leadership by keeping the settlers in a state of constant fear with his big . Explore the Big Waters of the Mighty Mississippi, Catch catfish with these simple fishing tips, Nine tips for fitting your hiking boots for long term comfort, Review: Choose the best elk hunting boots now, Dont forget! Your email address will not be published. I wore leather hiking shoes to insulate my feet from the high heat of the sand. All contents In some areas, the terrain looks much like it did during the mid-1800s, when settlers headed west on the Oregon Trail. The movie left me with no desire to watch any other movies of MS. Reichardts. Among the best U.S. films (if not the best) of 2010. [13], When the train reached the springs at the south fork one group turned west while the other continued north. Hundreds of thousands of people made the same westerward journey in the 19th Century. Clock ticks down on submersible's presumed air supply Titanic wreck lies in icy depths on Atlantic seabed Rescue teams from U.S., Canada, France join search 'Miracle' if passengers come out alive . Sep 20, 2011, Box Office (Gross USA): Three wayward families are traveling across the Oregon desert in 1845 led by Stephen Meek, an ignorant mountain man. Just confirm how you got your ticket. Meek's Cutoff may refer to: Meek Cutoff, a wagon trail of the 19th century Meek's Cutoff (film), a 2010 film telling the story of the party blazing the trail This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Meek's Cutoff. Be the first to contribute. You cannot imagine how we all felt. It is when the settlers lose their way that they must decide who to trust in order to survive. I stumbled across this grave unexpectedly while out hiking in the Badlands today (and man it was a hot one) and then found your site while searching online for information about the grave and Meeks Wagon Train. When faced with having to lower the wagons down a steep slope via rope one at a time I question whether it was really necessary for Reichardt to show the descent of all three. Then a Native American shows up around them, so they capture him and try to make him show them to the water. Jonathan Raymond, Release Date (Theaters): Set in 1845, this drama follows a group of settlers as they embark on a punishing journey along the Oregon Trail. According to the actual event, the native American Indian shows them the way to obtain water, but the movie doesnt even make an attempt to show the outcome that even suggests he directed the families in the right direction. [1], In 1841, Meek bought the first lot of the Oregon City, Oregon, townsite from John McLoughlin, and helped to survey the land. Meek led the wagon train southwest through the Malheur Mountains. But the film isnt just a grueling survival tale, its thought-provoking and dramatic, hinging on quintessentially American issues that still feel relevant. Addeddate. Meanwhile, their guide, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), refuses to acknowledge that they may be several weeks off-course. But the settlers had a much rougher time: .Since crossing to this side of the snake river again the road has been fearfully dusty. A good one, almost a great one. We hear and watch much of the important conversation from a distance catching bits and pieces. Meek's Cutoff: Directed by Kelly Reichardt. The movie was based own actual events in history. There is also another reported grave in the area, but it is also lost to time. Attacks by Indians were not the greatest danger; accidents and disease were. I didn't feel my patience for 90 minutes was rewarded. You're almost there! There was really high unemployment, and we were able to hire locals, like ranchers and auto-repair men.. Your AMC Ticket Confirmation# can be found in your order confirmation email. Unfortunately, what there is of characterization and hints at a plot are only window dressing for a two hour distilled view of what it was like to travel in a wagon train in the 1850s. A great movie with great acting and a great cast. Glad you found it! The desert near Bend, Oregon has been desolate, isolated and arid since time immemorial. Watch this, it's awesome. It is a film of quiet desperation, hard-scrabble survival in painstaking detail, and growing mistrust. Im guessing that in the 1840s, the area was mainly sagebrush with a few junipers in rocky areas that escaped the fires. In all my wanderings in the 33,000 acres of the Badlands, Ive never found a spring or heard of one. All rights reserved. Jon Raymonds dialogue is tinged with lyrical formality in the 19th Century manner, but in the hands of this cast it still sounds like real people talking. To a person walking in the road, it is frequently more than shoe deep, and if the wind happens to blow lengthwise of the road, it raises such a fog that you cannot see the next wagon in front. (Page 19 Terrible Trail: Meek Cutoff 1845 by Keith Clark and Lowell Tiller). [4] That party split at Fort Hall from the main party that included Joel Palmer and Sam Barlow. . Meek wanted to follow Silver Creek to the north, but they refused to follow him. The Cayuses final bit of dialogue in the film, the prayer over the collapsed Mr. White, was not translated into downriver Nez Perce. Its really hot: Big revelation there! "Everything arises in this way, opposites from their opposites." Motorists demonstrate the dangers of blind dependence on electronics, 10 tips for staying cool during an intermittent power outage/heat wave emergency. The movie starts out real slow. Paul Dano as Thomas Gately in "Meek's Cutoff. Stephen Meek: We're all just playing our parts now. A graduate says thanks . 13 Granted, Meek's Cutoff's long-takes do not have an average shot length (ASL) of the films of Bla Tarr for example, where the ASL in Stntang (Satantango, Bla Tarr, 1994) is approximately 2.5 minutes and A Torini L (The Turin Horse, Bla Tarr, 2011) has an ASL of over five minutes. I reached out to Reichardt for comment, but she declined to help sort out a mystery shed prefer to remain unsolved. Judging by the portion of the script Parr shared with mewhich includes only the Cayuses linesit seems that he might be willing to lead the group to water and not to their doom. - Plato. Director: Kelly Reichardt. [16] The deaths and other circumstances created resentment towards Meek and led to the often used phrase "Meek deserted them in the desert,"[17] despite his having stayed with his emigrants throughout most of the journey. There is an excellent book: Terrible Trail: Meek Cutoff 1845 by Keith Clark and Lowell Tiller, that is well worth reading. April 1, 2011. Of course, the dialogue Parr shared doesnt solve the films enigmatic ending we still dont know whether the settlers will find water or survive their harrowing journey. [3] He was educated in the local public schools in Virginia before beginning work for William Sublette in 1827. Even if he did say something more definitive, theres no reason we should necessarily believe his wordswe hardly believe everything (or possibly anything) Stephen Meek says. Meek's Cutoff is directed by Kelly Reichardt and written by Jonathan Raymond. 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. From the first two laborious shots of a wagon train crossing a river, you can easily guess what you're in forbut if you've seen the trailer, you might be hoping for more. Set in the 1840s, Kelly Reichardt's film concerns a small party of families led by a hired guide named Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), who has promised to take them on a time-saving "cutoff" to the end of the Oregon Trail. I am almost sure they exist. But in the script we saw, he seems at that moment to be reciting a myth about a vision a Cayuse shaman had long ago, which led to his tribes discovery of horses. Youre no help at all. This site may mark the final resting place of a child who died on the trail in 1845. I cant imagine how people unfamiliar with the area felt! 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. As water and food became scarcer, and the confidence in their guidegrew thinner, the emigrants stood against Meek (Bruce Greenwood). In the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, mountain guide Stephen Meek leads three families west through the desert. Every single shot of this film is what you'd call art. I'm sure that it would never appear that the mountains are getting any closer. It was in the upper 90s in town, and in the desert it felt much hotter. Surprisingly filmed with a 1.33 : 1 ratio, a rare artistic decision taken also by extremely underrated filmmaker Andrea Arnold (think of her equally underrated masterpiece Wuthering Heights [2011]), the screen is filled to its top capacity to showcase spectacular imagery of desolate landscapes, inert in essence, but that mirror the character's psychological state, and in that sense they become significantly alive. Go back, we could not and we knew not what was before us. We had men out in every direction in search of water. "But it's 110 degrees. There, after a near-two-hour nightmare of raw survivalism brought to these shores by John Smith and his fellow adventurers, Pocahontas goes to England and there, at last, gets a sense of the motivating principle and inspiring vision behind the crude settlements. We often heard the phrase "like watching paint dry" and that was just about it for me. Who are these people? 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 continued south along the Silvies River and out into the lakebed, where they turned west. I also loved Michelle Williams, as always. Never send a man to do a woman's job, or he'll bring "destruction" to the western formula (I am thinking violence, bullets and action stars) instead of the "chaotic" perspective of a woman's contemplative persona, which is described in the following paragraphs. This still might be just a dream. All rights reserved. The tree in the end meant the Indian led them to water. More than artistic vision. Meek, who reflexively despises Indians, advises killing the man on the spot; Mr. Tetherow (Will Patton) overrules him, on the grounds that the captive could lead them to water. I generally avoid the desert until the cooler months, but wanted to partially experience the area as the wagon train people might have. But somehow he comes to ebullient life behind the long beard and buckskinshis Stephen Meek resembles the prototype of the American reactionary hustler, selling shortcuts to wealth with a side dish of racial terror. Greenwood turns in a very good performance, in that he is extremely unlikeable, but I think it is fair to say that this film is stolen by the two performances of Michelle Williams and Shirley Henderson, both very well suited to their roles. And, in particular, the movies open-ended ending (which leaves key elements of the story in doubt) serves a pair of ideological purposes, one anti-triumphalist (were the group seen arriving at their destination, the westward expansion of whites into Indian territory would come off as a sort of moral victory) and the other, in effect, PC (if they were led by the Indian into an ambush, or in a direction that led them farther from water and into destruction, it would depict the one non-white in the movie as a villain). Bruce Greenwood is also good and Paul Dano has a role, but he's nothing too special in it. The Oregon Trail The traditional Oregon Trail turned northwest where present-day Vale, Oregon stands today. Download this printable hiking checklist. Best information, a curator said, is that the site marks the final resting place of a child. Starring: Michelle WilliamsBruce GreenwoodWill Patton. Meek's Cutoff is a historical drama film written by Jonathan Raymond and directed by Kelly Reichardt. Camp fever and other ailments began to overcome large numbers, especially the children and elders. The two groups reunited north of where the Crooked River empties into the Deschutes and, deflecting from their original westward purpose, followed the river to the Columbia and rejoined the Oregon Trail at The Dalles. Oregon, as we know, is now pretty well inhabited. For what was meant to be a two week journey, has now turned into five, and the settlers have this horrible feeling that Meek is lost. Likewise, as I discovered watching Meek's Cutoff, we already knew the ending. The party followed the Malheur River for the first two days but were then forced into the hill country. Heres what I learned about the trail during our short trek: Its dusty: The only dust on my trail is what Naga or I kicked up. He took a shortcut, but it seems like anything but a shortcut. [19] The blazing of the Meek Cutoff led to later wagon roads and the settlement of the eastern and central regions of Oregon. Cinemark What director Kelly Reichardt shows us is that boredom and stark realism. The Herrens reported that if they had remained at their campsite they could have filled a blue bucket with gold nuggets. I've been through the area around Burns, Oregon where this was filmed (there are wild horses to be photographed in the area - as well as lots of petroglyphs and dinosaur footprints) and was sure glad I had a vehicle that was capable of 70mph, for some of the vistas indeed did seem endless. In order to reach a ridge west of the North Fork of the Malheur River, the emigrants were forced to climb a steep, narrow ravine choked with boulders. Someone dug a grave, then the body was laid to rest while hymns were sung and a short service was held. Kelly Reichardt's western 'Meek's Cutoff' is dour, unmelodramatic, realistic, claustrophobic, and ultimately unresolved. I dont know. Not sure why thats not obvious. It takes its. [1] The Meeks would reside at Linn City, Oregon, until 1848.[1]. So now some of them are questioning Meek. Well the film finished and i had none of the answers so what was the point of the film? This sort of film makes me wonder whether the critics actually saw the film before telling us it was "worthy" of our viewing. It's sure to be praised for its presumed artistic qualities, but I watch Westerns for their brio and sense of fun, never as art. [11] The emigrants immediately left for Buck Creek but from this point on they were no longer following Meek. Last evening a child of E. Packwood, of Illinois, which had been ill a few days died suddenlyThe child was buried in the dry wormwood (a variety of sage barrens), and as we left camp the wagons filed over the grave, leaving no trace of its situation. A fur trapper and guide in the American Old West, Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier, Chapter 35, History of Oregon (Bancroft)/Volume 1/Chapter 19, Deschutes & Ochoco National Forests - Heritage - History, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stephen_Meek&oldid=1148361851, Members of the Provisional Government of Oregon, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from December 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0, This page was last edited on 5 April 2023, at 18:33.
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