MEEK'S CUTOFF

Open discussion by David Cairns, Susan Doll, Steve Elworth, and Therese Grisham (moderator)

From La Furia Umana, no. 9, July 2011 (www.lafuriaumana.it)

Therese Grisham: I'd like disappoint, or frustrate, Chicago. What do you make disappointed, if that was to start with the ending of the film, since it seemed to the audience I saw the film with at the Music Box in of the ending? Why do you think audiences were your experience?

Susan Doll: I have mixed feelings about the ending, partly based on the audience I saw it with, and partly based on the other Reichardt film I have seen, Wendy and Lucy.

I think many cinephiles are attracted to unhappy endings, and I am no exception. (I define a happy ending in my class as: 1. an ending that is emotionally satisfying; 2. an ending in which there is no doubt about the conclusion, and all the loose ends are tied up.) It forces you to think about the themes and issues in the film, because the "problem" wasn't fixed by the narrative. It's a way to engage the viewer after the film is over, forcing them to be more active viewers, rather than passive ones. This particular ending made you go back and revisit all the major events, especially those with the Indian, and see them differently.

Also, it offers a different twist on the major conflict of the western: civilization vs. the wilderness. Traditionally in westerns, the coming of civilization at the expense of the wilderness is inevitable. Here, with the Indian walking off onto the plains (both symbols of the wilderness), that inevitability is undermined, even subverted.

So, there was a lot I liked about the ending. However two things bothered me about it. The first is the way it undermines the values/ideals represented by Michelle Williams's character, Emily Tetherow. To me, she is presented as a strong, smart character who is reaching some sort of enlightenment regarding Indians. The fact that it is a woman (who represents civilization) who is reaching out to understand an Indian (the wilderness) puts a whole different spin on the theme civilization vs. wilderness. Instead of guns and male dominance to bring civilization by destroying the wilderness, here we have female understanding and compassion that suggest a chance at coexistence. But with the very open ending, there is no validation of the value/ideals she represents.

I felt the same way about the end of Wendy and Lucy, where Wendy (Michelle Williams) was worse off than at the beginning of the film, even though she found her dog. I know the point of the film was to show the difficulties of single, working-class women who have been failed by social institutions, but somehow I felt the relentless trials and tribulations weakened her because she became more pathetic than sympathetic.

Finally, I saw the film at the Sarasota Film Festival, and the film was attended by an older, mainstream audience who love seeing indie films. The city's residents really support the festival and most of the showings were filled. They really wanted to like this film, but, not being hip cinephiles, most of the audience was dumbfounded by the ending. They tried really hard to understand but they had no tools for doing so. Here was an audience who wanted to be supportive, and they left frustrated and empty-handed. The ending did not provoke them, it made them feel dumb. I felt bad for them, and to some extent, I thought they got jerked around by a filmmaker who was trying too hard to provoke.

So, those are my mixed feelings about the ending.

David Cairns: It just recently occurred to me that one of the many possible meanings of the film's title is the point at which the narrative of Meek and his fellow travelers is abruptly cut off.

To me, the whole film is about what we can't knowlost in the desert without a reliable guide, the dilemma is, which direction to take? Emily Tetherow takes the view that there's a reason to favor one choice over another, which makes her become the strongest of the pioneers in the film. She's not necessarily right, but by committing to a positive decision rather than yielding to panic or recrimination, she has a chance of leading them to safety.

This theme explains a few things: why so much of the dialogue to begin with is hard to hear, because the key conversations about the direction to take are held between the male figures, with the women, who don't get asked for a vote, listening in from the sidelines -- and why the film is shot in Academy Ratio where most filmmakers, given the setting of the prairie, would instinctively ask for the widest possible frame. The confines of the square aspect ratio, found in very early westerns, deliberately deprive us of the big picture, as if we were viewing the action from the confines of the women's bonnets.

The ending seems so much a part of that strategy of restricting the audience's

knowledge that I don't see how it could be up for discussion. It differs a little in effect from John Sayles' Limbo, which is similarly open-ended, but stops at a moment of crisis: that film provoked gasps from the audience I saw it with. This one clearly did leave some viewers with a sense of frustration, but I don't think it's arrogant of the filmmakers to occasionally shoot over the heads of the audience: not understanding stuff is what drives us to get smarter as kids, and it should be the same for adults. Two viewers behind me had a hushed conversation about the gold found in the desert: What did they find? :I don't know. Apparently, they really did need that spelled out with the word gold or a big close-up of a glinting nugget. But ladling on the exposition would spoil it for the rest of us, so I'm for ambiguity in this case.

One result of all this subtlety is that it makes the film's possible contemporary political resonance (cf Donald Rumsfeld's (What we don't know we don't know) seem maybe too obvious to be worth pursuing far, but I'd be interested in what everyone else thinks about that.

TG: I'll direct my comments first to Suzi's. I believe that emotionally satisfying is a debatable term, and depends very much on the type of cinema we have gotten used to. From the earliest days, Hollywood cinema has insisted on leaving us with few, if any, questions about what happened next. We know. Rick gives up Ilse because he has become a better man, and Captain Renault joins forces with him, therefore becoming a better man. This is classical Hollywood stuff. We are not prepared for real open endings, which I can't by any stretch call unhappy. Reichardt is committed to open endings, in which we are engaged beyond the film. In the case of Wendy and Lucy, as well as Meek's Cutoff, I think there is a lot of detail to direct us about how to engagewhether or not we are justified in being optimistic or pessimistic about the various antagonists. In Wendy and Lucy, to my mind, we have to be pessimistic. Alaska is no longer that last frontier, which the American West once was thought to be, for one thing, and our economic situation does not justify believing that some kind of miraculous recovery for those who live on the edge, shown in many details of the film and not just for the protagonist, will occur. In Meek's Cutoff, on the other hand, there is much internal evidence for optimism. For one thing, the American western doesn't always show the Indian as a symbol of the wilderness. I'm thinking here of John Ford's The Searchers, which calls into question both sides of the equation, civilization and the wilderness, partly because of the savagery of the white man, and partly because of the highly developed culture of the Indians. I can't read Meek's Cutoff as an encounter of these two terms. The Indian speaks, writes, performs a ritual over the sick man, much like a religious ceremony, which the travelers can think of nothing in their cultural lexicon to replace it with, and so on. It is the meeting of two almost mutually unintelligible cultures, and that's where our own fears come into play. I was as much afraid for the Indian as I was for the families, if not more. Speaking of which, the families exhibit a whole array of responses to the Indian.

White's family is the most fearful, and an equation is drawn between how rigidly Christian they are and their level of fear. Emily Tetherow and her husband (played by Will Patton) are more inclined to openness and trust, if at first for no other reason than that Meek is untrustworthy, a blustering trapper cum medicine show impresario. Emily's trust grows as she reaches out to the Indian. We can't read

him the same ways we can read the travelers, in essence simply because what he says remains untranslated for us and if we are unfamiliar with any of the cultural history pertaining to his nation, we won't know much else about his gestures, expressions, and actions, either. So essentially, we are positioned with the white people, specifically Emily's perspective. As you say, Suzi, Emily is strong and smart. So there is also internal evidence that the hope she represents is a good choiceshe's not the protagonist for nothing! What is left open in the film is whether or not the Indian is an antagonist. The land certainly is, and the breakdown of existential supports. This breakdown, starting with Meek, who cuts the travelers off in the first place from their goal, throws them back on having to trust, if they will, a cipher. We have choices to make as audience members, and in this sense, the film calls up history, as well as film history and the history of the western genre. We have to inform ourselves, we have to be active in deciphering many aspects of this film which are withheld from our ability to consume it more or less easily. To me, this is brilliant and a breath of fresh air. It reminds me a little of Italian Neorealist cinema, but it takes the open ending further. The open ending, in terms of its history, has never had a favorable reception, not in post-WW 2 Italy and not here. Not in Germany in the 70snowhere, in fact, where Hollywood film dominated the market. In addition, I don't believe that most audiences want to be challenged this much or this directly. I was astonished at how many people decided after watching Meek's Cutoff that things would not turn out OK (forget for the moment that the film ends). It seems it's very difficult to sit with the fact that there are more questions than answers; yet, the important part for me is the challenge to learn moreabout the Cayuse Indians, especially.

The last four shots of the film are crucial, I think. First, we look from Emily's POV at the green leaves of the tree (in itself significant), then from her POV, in a racking focus, through the leaves at the Indian. Suddenly, we can no longer read her expression, even though there is a reaction shot! Finally, the camera shifts from her POV to ours, as we watch the Indian walk away. Beautiful. What will we make of it? That's frustrating to many, I know, but exhilarating to me. Movies can be propaganda, as everyone from Lenin on knows, or they can make people really get to work, get active, learn, and think.

David, I agree with your observations, and Suzi, with your comments on why you liked the film. One last thing: I like the fact that the title can be read in various ways. As you say, David, as the narrative being cut off; also the more obvious, which is that the point at which the travelers become lost is Meek's responsibility; and last, that, as you imply, Suzi, Meek (as a sign of patriarchal power) is cut off from leading the party.

SD: Just to clarify a couple of things about where I am coming from with my definitions. The theme of civilization vs. the wilderness is the standard for interpreting westerns, which derives from Jim Kitses' structural approach of the 1970s. In this model, the Indians ALWAYS represent the wildernerss; the pioneers/settlers, and especially pioneering women, ALWAYS represent civilization. It's HOW they represent those things that gives a particular western its socio-political mean. In this case, the Indian is more civilized than the pioneering men, which is an

observation heavy with meaning right out of the gate. In terms of happy and unhappy endings, I don't mean the terms to be personal. They are objective descriptions, which I take from one of my mentors, Douglas Gomery. Happy = emotionally satisfying; all threads tied up; closure. Unhappy = when that doesn't happen. It doesn't refer to whether specific viewers are particularly happy or unhappy about the ending. And emotionally satisfying is like emotional closure. In other words, the intent of the ending was to pair up the leading male and female to suggest union, which traditional popular storytelling has defined as a goal that implies closure. It doesn't mean that you or I might personally find such an ending emotionally satisfying. Obviously, if someone doesn't care for Hollywood films, he or she will not be satisfied at the happy ending or the perfect union of the male and female, but the point is that the story has provided a closure that convention dictates is a desired one. In that regard, Casablanca tweaks the conventional happy ending because Rick doesn't get Ilse; instead he gets Louie, but there's a good reason for it. He's sacrificing his happiness for the greater good, which is also satisfying in a different wayno matter how many female viewers at the time didn't want things to go that way. And, the reason why a majority of American movie-goers like happy endings is because subtextually they suggest that our social institutions are valid and work for us. If it's a cop drama, law & order keeps us safe; if it's a medical drama, our medical community heals us; if it's a war film, our military and sense of patriotism protect us. And, the clinch of the male and female at the end of any genre implies marriage, another institute that defines our society. The "clinch" (an actual term used in the old days to mean that the male and female leads will get together in the end) signifies in one image that our social institutions are intact and we are all safe. Small wonder that viewers find comfort in that. I don't mind happy endings, and I admire the economy of storytelling such an ending implies. It's not the Euro. tradition but it's an American pop culture tradition, which I understand. Not all happy endings are bad. But, having said that, it doesn't mean that all movies should have them, andI think those that don't have them resonate more strongly when the power of the happy ending is fully understood and not just maligned for being traditional. So, these terms and the key western theme is more objective than they might seem on the surface.

DC: But clearly, a happy ending requires central characters who are happy and whose central dilemma has worked out in a satisfactory way for them, with a cheerful prognosis for the future, allowing those audience members who care about them to feel happy too. Subjectively, a happy ending could be said to fail if the audience didn't feel glad for the characters.

I think there's a big difference between a tragic or downbeat ending and an unresolved one, however. There is, or is supposed to be, a different kind of emotional catharsis in tragedy which one would have to call satisfying, in its way. Sadly, commercial cinema is afraid of tragic endings and absolutely terrified of unresolved ones.

My partner felt at the end of Meek's Cutoff that things were going to be OK. I

felt that there was room for doubt, but that Emily asserting herself was positive and that her decision to trust the Indian was the best one she could have made in the circumstances. I found that emotionally satisfaction.

My partner also thought that Meek's Cutoff was the point at the end where he denied any further responsibility for the party, admitting that the Indian was now leading them. I think both her interpretations are fair enough, which is part of the beauty of open endings: greater room for interpretation. SD: My main points were that while I liked the ending for previously stated reasons, the mainstream but movie-loving audience I saw it with who were really trying to be supportive of the film didn't get it. These were some of the same people who had seen several festival films with unresolved or bitter endings and didn't have a problem with those. So, I could understand how they felt frustrated and let down by the film. I am not sure Reichardt is a master at the unresolved ending, because she tends to sacrifice her characters for this sort of ending in a way that makes me like her films less by the time I get to the end of them. For me, the ending undercut its potential as a revisionist western, at least if you are using the old-school structuralist approach (civilization vs. wildderness), which I do like quite a bit.

TG: Let's respond to David's comment about links that the film makes to contemporary politics? I think we can construe politics in the broadest possible senses, including gender and perhaps even more importantly, to the ways we view and receive the other, embodied by the encounter between the white travelers and the Cayuse Indian. This is not unrelated to Rumsfeld's (nearly incomprehensible) statement about unknown unknowns which we don't know that we don't know, since that articulates (!) a mentality that is hegemonic, in our government policies as well as media. Of course, the media includes film.

DC: My discomfort with reading the film as a political allegory, even though I brought it up and do think it is defensible, is it seems to diminish the film. But basically, Americans lost in the desert works for me as a metaphor for the current embroilments in the Middle East, and what makes it powerful is the fact that we simply don't know what the right course is, because we don't know where any course will lead us. We don't understand the thought processes of the natives. Or, to bend the Indian character in another direction, the dignified, non-white man seems preferable to the blowhard cowboy, but we don't know for sure where his course will take us.

You see why I'm a little uncomfortable with the above: it starts to sound a bit corny and naff. But if the reading holds up even slightly, then it reinforces the need for an open ending.

SD: Meek is not a blowhard cowboy but a blowhard trailblazer. In western lore and

literature, which surely Reichardt is tapping into, there is a difference in the two archetypes. The trailblazers came first, opening up the wilderness to future traffic and commerce: In truth, some devastated game populations, spread diseases to Indians, or led the military in expeditions to destroy Indians. In the lore and lit, they claim a "true" understanding of the wilderness that later generations of westerners do not have, because the trailblazers had known it in its pure state. In the lore and lit, there is a romanticism about the trailblazer because of this, which obviously, Meek's Cutoff deconstructs. And the date, 1845, is right in the heyday of the U.S. government's propaganda touting the idea of Manifest Destiny. I think both details actually make stronger David's idea that this could easily be read as a metaphor about US involvement in the Middle East. I don't think that is corny but a reasonable and interesting interpretation. And, I don't think it ever diminishes a film to see it as art that works on different levels.

TG: In essence, while Meek is an experienced guide, and dresses accordingly in a costume that mirrors that of the Indian and of trappers, his bombast and selfimportance overshadow his knowledge, aligning him with a medicine-show performer rather than with a trailblazer. And in fact, this is why the party stops trusting him. The exposition of the film shows us this right away, in the word LOST scratched on a log. So already, we are disposed against him, even though we also think he might be right about other things besides the trail. So he is an ambiguous character, and one who produces the discomfort of ambivalence in viewers.

The structure of Meek's Cutoff puts viewers in a position to think about how we view the (racialized) other, and I believe this is the main point of the film. The restricted narration, the aspect ratio, and the open ending are all there to put us into this position. If we contrast how gender is presented to us with how the Cayuse is presented, we can easily see that the film aligns itself with the women characters, Emily in particular, through POV and reaction shots, the clarity of dialogue, and a focus through cut-ins on women's work. This is already unusual for a western. But the way we are presented with the Cayuse is completely different. The most obvious element of difference is that his dialogue remains untranslated. This also goes for his gestures and behavior, which are ambiguous throughout. When he throws the dish on the ground after Emily offers him his first meal, from her own, does he mean this aggressively or is this a daily ritual after meals that the Cayuse practice? What is the meaning of sprinkling dust over Mr. White? What does his song mean? Is it a song for the dead, a healing song, what? What does his writing, scratched on a rock face, mean? And so forth. Each traveler in the film projects his or her own meanings onto him, whether they are in the shape of hopes or fears. Essentially, this film is about an encounter with the other, by definition unknown. And as viewers, we are made to occupy the view of the white people encountering this other culture in the person of the Cayuse Indian. So, the film throws us back on ourselves (in community dialogue, I hope) to re-think our givens, the interpretations of various others, depending on the era (at one time Russians, now Muslims), we are bombarded with in print, on television, in film. How will we approach someone who is unknown to us, who has a different culture and a different language? Even though the Cayuse has no POV shots, we, or I should say, I, read fear on his face, and confusion. So I don't side with the travelers

as much as I try to get away from their view, with the exception of Emily's. Often, they look sinister to me, and I fear for and sympathize with the Indian. Of course after reading some of his dialogue in translation, I feel that even more strongly. The rhetoric of the manifold dangers of the other is very strong in our political discourse, oriented toward manufacturing consent for warmongering, and this film is one of the few contemporary voices, if I can say that, which speaks out against it, asking us to think and not just accept these givens. Last, the film, because it throws us back onto our preconceived notions and to think about where we got them and why we have them, is very much a meta-western, recalling to us all the cliches we have taken away with us from a lifetime of watching westerns, or if we haven't watched them personally, the cliches that are littered throughout popular culture, which are reiterated in the genrethe biggest genre of American film, in terms of how many films were made, in classical Hollywood and throughout Hollywood history. The images of the other, including the Mexican, but most obviously the Indian, neither differentiated in these films, are deeply embedded in our cultural imagination. When I was in high school, there was nothing in our history books to gainsay these images. Thank goodness that has changed. In Europe, it was and is a different story regarding American Indiansin books, songs, and film. Especially in former East Germany, influenced by Karl May, though there is plenty to criticize there, too. As a meta-western, the film invokes genre conventions as cliches, and does so to move beyond them and say something else.

Is it true that we are aligned with civilization, at first, and the Indian with the wilderness? Does this opposition hold up?

Steve Elworth: If the film is a western and not another of Reichhardt's exploration of gender relations is a Northwest landscape, it is a particular kind of western. First, I want to stress that it does not occur in the mythical postCivil War moment in which most canonical westerns take place. As Therese implies, it occurs in a different and concrete historical moment, 1845 and the relation to Manifest Destiny. The continent belonged to the white man and the others will just have to get out of the way. But is it simply that the Indian is the past, Meek is the present and not a part of civilization and the settlers the future? Not exactly, and this is the trouble of dealing with the film through the structural tools of the 1970s. Civilization and the wilderness may be fine for the films that Kitses dealt with. But not this one. Meek's Cutoff is based on an earlier historical period and it uses a more recent historical model. The historical model, as Therese has pointed out, is that of an encounter. The Euro-Americans have weapons and the Native American have skills, but neither group is seen as being right. This model comes from such sources as the work of Patricia Limerick, a feminist historian. Why would a feminist historian re-write western history? This is an interesting question and related to the reason Reichardt made this film. If the old stories placed the others (women, Natives) on the periphery, it is time to make them the center of the discourse. What did women do and how were they treated? What did Native Americans do and how were they treated? These are some of the questions at the center of the film, which is about an historically bound encounter with an other. The man with Indian skills, the man between, Meek, is still the loner, but his charisma is missing. The other men have trouble taking on the more virile Meek. As Susan points out, Meek is a trailblazer

mountain man and a blow-hard. Meek believes in his own myth but cannot get anyone else to believe in it. The only way he can show his skills is to treat the Native American, whom he can't talk with, as an other.

The three women become central not only by their skills being focused on in closeup, but by being interested in family and the future and not the myth of Manifest Destiny. The encounter between the previously repressed others becomes central in the film. This encounter is related to the landscape and to the dominant white male power. The encounter in different types of the Northwest landscape is central to Reichardt's last three films. The encounters are between people, people and animals, and of course, between people and the landscape, with gender roles being crucial. Reichardt is also interested in removing the myth around her protagonist: the heroic aura is something that is cut out off from Meek.

The fact that we cannot understand the Indian's language as crucial to the film has been discussed. The Native American is an other whom we cannot understand. We come to know him particularly through Emily Tetherow as her gaze is moves from the lost Meek to the man whom he wants to destroy. We cannot understand why the Indian breaks the plate, or the prayer he says over Mr. White, but we can understand the significance of the man and his culture. The settlers may not be able to communicate with the Native American, but they know he has a civilization and a culture. He speaks, he has a written language, he has a religion. Meek may reject all these, but the film does not. The fact that, by definition, others are unknown is related to the film's openness in structure including its ending. ( I think the model of open and closed endings is useful to understanding this film. It is important to know that many traditional Hollywood films actually fall between closed and open endings, such as is figured through the painting/whitewashing of Thorvald's apartment at the end of Rear Window} This open nature, which encourages audiences to think is also related to the fact that the film begins in the middle of the journey. The film's open ending and openness in general is related to what Therese calls the film's status as a meta- western, which questions what it represents. I think Reichardt's work in general, through its use of a landscape that is even more important than the characters, is related to its meta-textual thrust. Her films are about encounters with others and not with a quasitheological sublime (She is very much unlike Terence Malick on this point.)

Lastly, for now, I want to mention how the DVD of Wendy and Lucy comes with avantgarde films from her colleagues at Bard College. It is interesting to compare Reichardt's films with these. Particularly the films of Peter Hutton lie between narrative and documentary, and concrete and abstract, as a point of comparison to the different visual languages Reichardt uses.

DC: I second most of Steve's thoughts. I felt somehow that applying theories honed on classical western wouldn't work on this film, which didn't seem interested in being a western at all, although I hadn't thought of the significance of its being set in an earlier period. I guess some films which I do think of as westerns had used the wagon trails as a subject, but this one isn't interested in the solution of problems through violent action, which is dismissed as unproductive, which

separates it from virtually every classical western ever.

The contemporary spin I put on the story should be seen as one possible reading: I think forcing the film into an allegory where each character and plot point stands for something else would be counterproductive. At the surface level, the characters all work fine as just who they appear to be, with functioning fictional psychologies and motivations, and I enjoy the story from that perspective. Squinting a little, I can bring the allegory into focus, and again, I can see the film as a commentary on the western genre, a meta-western, as Therese says. And there are probably other layers too.

SD: I dont think there is a singular interpretation for Meeks Cutoff, or that any one of us can figure out exactly what Reichardt had in mind when she made the film. I think various interpretations based on different approaches can exist simultaneously, without contradicting each other. That proves the richness of a filmnot one interpretation that everyone more or less agrees on. I think the discussion detailing how the film puts the viewer into a position of ruminating on the other was enlightening, and I enjoyed reading Therese and Steves thoughts along those lines. When I was watching the film two months ago, I noticed that the Indian was being depicted only from the perspective of the pioneer, and the concept of the other crossed my mind. My thoughts and interests drifted in a different direction while I was watching the film, but I was glad that Therese and Steve expanded my observation into a nicely articulated interpretation.

Watching the film with the theme civilization vs. the wilderness in mind allowed me to think about images, characters, and events and put them into a schema that I could think about later. It helped me notice and focus on details that I might not have otherwise. For example, I noticed the earthy, warm colors of the landscape right away, which were echoed in costumes and other objects, and they just screamed hot and dry, making obvious how hostile and harsh the landscape was. I realized right away that the setting was entirely the wilderness, which is not conventional for a western. The frontier is the place where the forces of civilization butt up against the virgin wilderness, and typically there is a frontier depicted in western films. In wagon train storylines, the wagon train is akin to the frontier. But, in this film, there is no wagon train, only three wagons, so the pioneers are absolutely in the wilderness, with no frontier in sight, making them seem more vulnerable and desperate. When the one wagon is destroyed (by the landscape, so to speak), that idea was reinforced for me.

I also came to the conclusion that Meek was not a heroic westerner, though I would argue that he is not the protagonist. The story unfolds from Emilys perspective, apparent in the early POVs, so she is the protagonist. If the western hero displays characteristics of both civilization and the wilderness, then Meek seems to embody the worst of both sides. His dirty rawhide costume and overgrown facial hair, which only get dirtier, do not make for a positive impression of wilderness. In westerns, attention is paid to good grooming as a signifier of virtue for true western heroes (remember My Darling Clementine?). I think at one point Meek talks about hunting the beaver to near extinction for the fur trading

companies, so, for me, he was tainted by the corporate corruption of the civilized world. Hunting beaver was his previous method for making a living; now he leads wagon trains. If he has the same selfish, thoughtless attitude toward this job as he did when he hunted wildlife to near extinction, then that throws his civilized side into a bad light.

If the western figure is not heroic, then I wondered who will step into that position. I started to see Emily in that role, and I liked the idea of a pioneering woman emerging in that capacity. Western convention pegs the pioneer woman as a passive representative of civilization; often she is the reason the western hero helps the civilized forces survive in and then tame or conquer the wilderness. I began to think that maybe Emily and the Indian would represent an alternative to taming, conquering, or any of those other white, patriarchal words. Perhaps they would settle a different kind of frontier, one achieved through coexistence or integration, which, to me, made the character of Emily as potentially mythic as the traditional western hero. That is the reason that I thought the ending undermined the strength of Emilys characterit did not make her mythic, though I could probably make an argument for her as growing from a passive representation of civilization to an active western protagonist. After all, Emily is the only character to shoot a gunthe traditional tool for surviving or even taming the wilderness. As a matter of fact, some of the promotional art shows her in a low angle aiming the gun like she knows how to use it. Conventionally, women in westerns abhor guns, or are afraid of them, or are ignorant of them. Significantly, she uses it against Meek, which I would posit as the moment that she takes the role of heroic westerner away from him. But, she represents a different kind of western hero, given her relationship with the Indian.

Another icon of the western, which is an icon of the wilderness, is the cowboy hat, and again, its an image or object that is often called out in dialogue, framing, color, etc. The cowboy hat is noticeably absent in this movie, but another type of hat is given a lot of visual attention. The bonnets that the women wear are very noticeablethey become an important icon of their identity as women. Somehow the focus on the hat went along with the Emilys ascendance as a new version of the western hero. I had it worked out more articulately when I first saw the film, which was two months ago. So, some details have faded for me, and I apologize that I dont have the advantage of a recent viewing.

Another image that I stood out to me and that I found quite poignant because of the civilization vs. wilderness theme was the bird in the cage. A delicate bird in a flimsy wooden cage (civilization) would likely succumb to the harshness of the dry, arid landscape and its predators (wilderness). Theres the theme for you represented in one image. There was something about the fragility of the bird in the cage swinging wildly in the back of the wagon that reminded me of the danger of this trekand the potential cost. Seeing it early in the film made me equate the bird with the pioneers.

I got a lot out of the film by using the theme of civilization vs. the wilderness

as a strategy to focus on while viewing it. Obviously, I dont see it as an oldschool model fit only for classic westerns. I learned it while in graduate school at Northwestern in the 1980s when the revisionist western dominated discussions of the genre, so it is not an antiquated methodology fit only for politically incorrect classical westerns. And, I dont think the fact that the time frame for Meeks Cutoff is 1845 makes any difference to the theme, just as it doesnt for discussions of classic films featuring trailblazers or gold rush stories (Northwest Passage; Barbary Coast).

I still enjoy watching and teaching classic westerns, though some of them are difficult to watch because of their conservative, conventional subtexts in which the other is eradicated for the sake of civilization.

DC: I certainly don't feel hostile to the classic western per se. I've written on it and taught it and enjoy many examples of it. I just wasn't convinced that Meek's Cutoff was intended or could be properly appreciated through that particular lens. But your latest comments do show a number of aspects of the film which conform to western mythology and can be illuminated by it.

I agree that the film's celebration of its heroine's strength stops short of transforming her into a new, alternative western myth. I only differ in that I don't see that as a failing. My suspicion would be that the film is trying to get at a more authentic picture of what the pioneering days felt like: printing "facts" rather than "legend". Somewhat undercutting the lead's assertion of her strength by denying her the conventional happy ending is possibly part of that strategy. We're forced to judge her actions on their immediate merits, without regard to whether or not they ultimately lead to the party's salvation. Since, as you say, she and the Indian appeal more to our sensibilities than Meek, we side with her and are able to judge her a more wise and heroic figure than Meek.

TG: I sent you two links, one from Slate magazine on the Cayuse Indians and the related Nez Pierce, with some of the linguistic background of the film and one from the Oregon Historic Trails Fund which gives the history of Meek's party. I want to focus on the history and screenwriter Jon Raymond's choices for where to begin and end the film. (Note*: Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy reworks a short story by Portland-based Raymond, and Raymond wrote, with Todd Haynes, the screenplay for Haynes' series, Mildred Pierce, based on Cain's depression-era novel and not a remake of the classical Hollywood film. The trio often work together).

Clearly, Raymond decided to write only about a slice of this history, beginning when twenty-three families had already died on this voyage. We begin with the remnants of the wagon train. Raymond decides to end before the Cayuse Indians are known to have helped the travelers, who in history did eventually find water and reach their goal. For me, these choices lend support to what I find to be the main point and challenge of the film, which is on how we view the other.

Does the knowledge, even as briefly stated on the Oregon Trails web site, change the way you apprehend the film? And, do you think other audience members from the viewers you saw the film with, for example, will avail themselves of this knowledge? Do you think Reichardt and Raymond's refusal to discuss what the Cayuse says and also the nature of the ending is therefore justified, since this information is within easy reach? DC: I like how viewers who really want answers can refer to the historical record and obtain more closure than the film provides. However, the film is not a historical document, so it's not necessarily the case that the fate of the real Stephen Meek and his homesteaders will correspond to that of the fictional versions in the film. I see their destiny as still open to question, although of course the idea of them being helped by the Indian's fellow tribesmen is very sweet.

SD: As for looking for extra-textual information to round out an appreciation for a film, I personally dont find it useful, though others find some comfort in it. As David says, the film is not a historical document, so I dont care what the Cayuse really said or what happened to the real Stephen Meek. As a matter of fact, mainstream viewers and bad movie reviewers often use that information as a way to criticize a filmthat is, if its not the historical truth, then thats a strike against the movie.

TG: Speaking of multiple meanings, film critic Ann Hornaday, in a recent essay in the Washington Post quotes Todd Haynes,who suggests that Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy can be read as failed road movies, by which he means that the characters on the road become mired somewhere, great consequence. As Steve points out, in these films, as well as in Meek's Cutoff, they are mired in various locations in the Pacific Northwest(http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/director-kellyreichardt-on-meeks-cutoff-and-making-movies-herway/2011/05/08/AFOl0K7G_story.html). Is there value in looking at the film from this critical perspective?

SE: I like Meek's Cutoff because its condition of meta-ness allows it to combine contradictory models of the western and road film with the feminist gaze. I think it is important that the film does not follow such films as The Quick and the Dead in creating the myth of the phallic woman gunfighter. The importance of the moment that she points the gun at Meek is that she is using the master's tools against the master to protect the other. I love Susan's point about the women's bonnets, which are both an image of modesty (not allowing us to see the women's hair) and utilitarian (protecting the women from the elements).

To bring the road movie into play, one must be aware that earlier westerns, from Ford's The Iron Horse to Walsh's Big Trail, combine the western with the trope of the journey. In these films, the struggle of the people from point to another combines at least two layers: the historical epic events of the journey, building the railroad the wagon train, and the revenge plot with the hero finally being able to avenge the murder of a family member. With the film's close, the

historical event is achieved, the hero takes his vengeance, and a new couple, aligned with the new historical family is created. In later journey westerns, this breaks down, as in Ford's Wagon Master, in which the specific rituals that the party takes part in become more important than the narrative journey. With the use of music on the soundtrack, the film becomes almost a musical, though closure is formed with the destruction of the villains, who are not allowed into the promised land. The film is located in a mythic past. In the post-World War II period, the non-western road film becomes a narrative of fragments in which any kind of traditional closure is disallowed. Instead of being part of a mythic journey valorized as American history, the protagonists can be murderous wanderers with no mythic, binding love. In Malick's Badlands, the journey stops as we view stereopticon slides with a voiceover meditation on life, death, and the nature of photography and filmic narrative.

Another filmmaker working on the fringes, Jim Jarmusch, also makes films of journeys interrupted and with no sense of achievement. I don't think that Meek's Cutoff can be read completely under the rubric of the later road film any more than it can be read in relation to the post-war western. The film does share the road film's sense of being lost in a landscape of detritus, the high desert of Oregon.

Finally, why not bring the historical events of this earlier period into our discussion? We aren't prevented, either, from discussing how the film's sense of allegory also works with the road movie trope. In this film, the idea of a celebratory ending such as in Wagon Master is impossible, as would be an ending of the emigrants being slaughtered by Indians. The film begins and ends in the middle, which is something it shares with Wendy and Lucy.

DC: One could call the film an anti-mythic western, or a case of using the road movie to disarm the western. Or maintain that it's not interested in being a western at all.

It might also be worth bringing in John Sayles' Limbo, a more conventional story but with a similar ending. Sayles defended the lack of resolution by saying it wasn't important to his story what happened next, that the emotional journey had been completed and therefore the film was over. In this light, we could argue that when Emily takes power from Meek and puts it in the hands of the Indian, and even Meek acknowledges that this has happened, she has completed her journey from subservient wife to self-determining, active heroine.

If there is any problem reading her as heroic in the light of the open ending, it may be because audiences, and particularly American audiences, may like to be able to classify characters as winners or losers. While certain attitudes and behaviors are, in the right circumstances, conducive to success, it has always seemed to me that such divisions ignore the real role played by

chance/fate/providence in human affairs. In other words, the Emily has taken the best possible choice in the circumstances, and defended her decision courageously, that doesn't guarantee her a happy outcome. To me, classifying her as a loser if her party die of thirst, or as a winner if they reach the promised land, is meaninglessit doesn't say anything about her innate qualities as a person. Ending the film where they do, Reichardt and Raymond force us to judge her on her actions and intentions, not their outcome.

Of course, I sympathize with those whose role is to bring films to an audience. Audiences always have and probably always will prefer happy endings to sad ones, and closed endings to open ones. There's no inherent intellectual superiority to the less popular endings, I think, except that they do always force an audience to think, whereas a happy ending can nearly always simply be accepted. Not that it necessarily should be.

SD: The commonly held notion for the road movie is that it is a metaphor for an internal journey of the main character(s). Sometimes the journey leads to personal growth or revelatory change; sometimes it can be the path to destruction by an increasingly crazy psychopath (as in Badlands, which Steve mentions). And, director Todd Haynes, who makes the road-movie comparison in the article sent by Therese, states that in Reichardt's films the journeys are disrupted literally and figuratively. Also, I detected that by the end of the article, the author suggests some connection between Reichardt's personality/life and her penchant for disrupted road movies. Well, okay. I can understand the author's desire to tie together the threads of her article; but, I am not all that interested in this idea.

If you consider Meek's Cutoff with Reichardt's other films, the road-movie angle is stronger. However, I am not sure how well Meek's Cutoff works as a road movie on its own, even as a failed one. I certainly don't think Meek's Cutoff is more interested in being a road movie than a western. I think it is very much about the western, as we have all been discussing. Of course this movie is a journey, and one in which Emily experiences personal change, but as Steve points out, the wagon train plot is a common one in the genre, as are other plots. Does that mean that other wagon train, cattle drive, or stagecoach movies are also road movies? Or, do the western and road-movie genres merely share some characteristics?

I thought of an entirely different western when the road-movie question was put to us-- not a western film but a western TV series. I am probably the oldest person in this group, so none of you will likely remember Wagon Train, a TV series about a group of westerners who lead pioneers across the Plains. Each week, it was a new group of pioneers, but the wagon master, the cook, and the hired guns remained the same. While, I remember this series fairly well, I have not seen it in a while. So, I caution that I am merely thinking out loud.

Two things about Wagon Train seem relevant to this discussion. First, it made heavy use of the road-as-a-metaphor idea, with guest stars experiencing personal growth or learning something about themselves during the hour-long episode. (My favorite involved someone who may have been John Wilkes Booth traveling under an assumed name and how the other members of the wagon train were too quick to rush to judgment.) If ever there was a solid pairing of the western and the road movie, then Wagon Train was it.

However, something else about the series struck me, because of everyone's interest in the way Meek's Cutoff is structuredthat is, it began and ended in the middle of the journey. Most of the episodes of Wagon Train began in the middle of the journey and concluded before the journey ended. While viewers knew that the regulars would always survive the journey, it was not a given that the guest stars would even make it to the end of an episode. And, for those guest characters who did, there was sometimes the hint that they might not make it in the Wild West. Of course, the main story thread of each episode was wrapped up, so I am not saying that there were any open endings, but there was something incomplete about the show in general because of its premise and the fates of some of the characters like being on an endless, unknown journey with no guarantees at the end.

I guess my point in bringing up Wagon Train is this: The whole idea behind a meta-western like Meek's Cutoff is to make viewers notice/think about the conventions of the genre, how they are used, and what they mean. It also stirred me to look at something as conventional as a western TV series to find the unconventional.

TG: First, I appreciate the details you gave earlier, Suzi, on how the classic western model worked for you in watching the film. And its clear to me that Reichardt does evoke this model, among others. I appreciate Steves distinctions here as well. I would say, however, that the structure of a television series is essentially different from the structure of a theatrical film. For one thing, commercial breaks are built in to its narrative. So is the question of whether an audience will return the following week to watch the next episode, and so on.

For me, the film is also a failed road movie, in the sense that the fact of becoming lost, or mired, gives rise to radical processes of change. I still see the film above all as an encounterfinally, between others, as those excluded from history as the subjects of and subjects in history. The idea of a failed road movie casts more light on this encounter.

It isn't the road, in its literal and metaphorical dimensions, that is the germane thing, but the inability to stay on the road. This takes the form, in Meek's Cutoff, of wandering without a real sense of where one is, or where the road is, and this situation then foregrounds Emily and the Cayuse. Suddenly, they have to become central to the narrative and no longer can dwell on its periphery. This is

quite literally the case with the Indian, who has been a distant onlooker until this point. And Emily seizes centrality when Meek fails. That's when transformations occur. And not to beat a dead horse, I just want to refer to the openness of the ending again in this context. I feel the ending has to be this way in the film's logic, because the question of whether or not the other, then, will enter our discourses, and the stories we tell, most obviously in film, is still open. I think Wendy and Lucy's ending functions similarly. Living on the edge and having to sacrifice what is dearest to usour affective ties for a dubious promise of moneyis increasingly the norm in American life. Will we acknowledge it? Talk about it? Chip away at the myths that bind us in servitude?

Back to Meek's Cutoff: That transformation in history has not yet taken place. We have women's narratives from the Oregon Trail, but they haven't affected the way we think of this history widely. What do we know about the Cayuse and Nez Pierce? Not much; certainly our histories don't offer them as central, speaking subjects. Meek's Cutoff features these untimely figures, without turning them into mythic ones. Emily cannot and should not be made into a mythic figure, which would perhaps simply replace the mythic figures we already have. Any mythic position entails its others.

I called the film a meta-western. It has all the signs and symbols of a variety of westerns, and thinks them through pretty profoundly, without adhering to any of them. But, I also will go further, and call this a meta-film, because to me, it also reflects on what it is to make films and to watch them, to receive and apprehend them, and it engages with viewers by using well-known genre and cinematic devices in unusual ways which do not yet belong to the American film lexicon.

Thanks to everyone for insightful and stimulating commentary. Our discussion has opened the way for me to think about the richness of this particular film, and has deepened my initial thoughts considerably.

* - Posted by Nina Shen Rastogi (Apr 18, 2011) http://www.slate.com/ - http://www.oregonhistorictrailsfund.org/trails/showtrail.php?id=7

Biographies:

David Cairns is a filmmaker and writer residing in Edinburgh. He has written articles for The Believer and Electric Sheep Magazine, and liner notes for Criterion and Masters of Cinema. His blog, Shadowplay,

is at dcairns.wordpress.com Susan Doll, who holds a Ph.D. in film studies from Northwestern University, works at Facets Multi-Media in Chicago, serving as the editorial director for the DVD label as well as Facets primary writer and researcher. She also teaches film studies at Oakton Community College and blogs for the Turner Classic Movies blogsite. She has written extensively on film and popular culture for a variety of publications and authored several books, most notably on Elvis Presley: Elvis for Dummies, The Films of Elvis Presley, Elvis: Forever in the Groove, and Elvis Album.

Steve Elworth has taught and written about film, television, and popular music. He lives in New York City, and plans to establish a blog.

Therese Grisham has a Ph.D from the University of Washington in Seattle. She taught American film and literature at the University of Dresden in Germany, and now lives in Chicago, where she teaches cinema studies and philosophical issues in film at DePaul University and Columbia College. She frequently teaches genres, directors, and movements in the Film School at Facets Multi-Media. Her publications, in Screen, Wide Angle, and other journals, focus on experimental films and how they rework historiographies.