Meek's Cutoff

Festival favourite Kelly Reichardt's atmospheric and feminist frontier fable follows a wagon train journeying across Oregon's unyielding but beautifully captured Cascade Mountains in 1845. Led by Bruce Greenwood's arrogant mountain man Meek, the settlers are initially divided into a traditional patriarchal power dynamic, with the husbands - gruff Will Patton, hysterical Paul Dano, Neal Huff - making the decisions while the wives - feisty Michelle Williams, Zoe Kazan, Shirley Henderson - make dinner. Reichardt cleverly locks us out of the men's conversations as food and water run out and Meek's questionable authority is challenged. But when a lone Cayuse Indian (Rod Rondeaux) is captured, and adjudged a potentially useful new guide, the women find their voice, and Williams fires a pivotal rifle. Convincingly acted and sparingly scripted by Jon Raymond, this is a grim prairie tale that vividly immerses the audience in an unforgiving landscape.