Meek's Cutoff (2011)

Very best movie i ever watch

Simply A Masterpiece

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The movie starts out real slow. We watch the mundane tasks of the pioneers as they load water, wash dishes, grind meal...There is no introduction of characters. In fact they remain fairly plain. We hear and watch much of the important conversation from a distance catching bits and pieces. 3 devout families have hired Steven Meek, a slightly crusty man, to guide them to Oregon. He takes them into a high plains desert where they wander for weeks.The men suspect Mr. Meek is deliberately attempting to get them lost as Oregon is an area in flux and may go to the English, depending on how many Americans settle there...or not. There is an Indian that pops up from time to time. Steven scares everyone with his Indian stories. Eventually they encounter the Indian and you think the story will pick up, but surprise! It doesn't.The movie ends abruptly. From Meek's words, the film appears to be some sort of metaphor for life and fate as to what path to follow and who to trust, although for the life of me I can't really figure out what it is. The movie won all kinds of awards and I haven't figured that one out either. It was extremely boring. The dialogue was boring. The drama was boring. The people were boring. After a while, the scenery got boring. The squeak of the wagon wheel drove me crazy. Why anyone would waste their time watching this film is beyond me. It isn't accurate history. It is not art and it is not entertaining.

I am so sick and tired of film makers who either don't know how to write and shoot a complete script, are too lazy to write and shoot a complete script or think that wasting my time with an incomplete story is somehow "artistic." The real life history of the Ridge family blazing the Meek Cutoff has PLENTY of material from which to construct a complete story.Failing to end your story is not art: it is a fraudulent abduction of my time and waste of your crew's hard work. (And trust me, making this film was hard work.) And the sad part is that I actually enjoyed the setup. Yes, it's slow and ponderous, which captures the essence of pioneer travel in the 1840's and really immerses you in the isolation and uncertainty of what these people went through.Would have been a great movie if they had bothered to finish the damn thing.

It seems to me to be a story about a woman in the nineteenth century coming into a position of authority. At the beginning of the movie the women stand apart while the men make the decisions out of earshot. In the final scene the Michelle William's character realizes that the responsibility in a life and death decision has become hers and she cannot be sure she is right until she has committed the lives of the entire party. The situation has evolved at a pace much as it would in real life. I found it fascinating and the movie is beautiful. The pace is hard to take and so is the sound but they both make sense in terms of what the movie is doing.

My! If all movies were like that, I would spend my time sitting on the sofa and watch them. Fortunately there are only a few such gems which makes me walk, bike, work and do other things with my life. What an excellent portrayal of the pioneer experience as it probably really was unlike saccharine Technicolor productions with actors in clean clothes, with full makeup, high ethics, civilized, never tired and always with superb leader of John Wayne type who get them precisely to green pastures against all the odds such as lack of directions and maps, heat, Indians with unknown motives, conflicts among pioneers and diminishing slowly amount of water and food. Our movie is nothing like that. It is about a few confused people led by even more clueless pseudo leader who all got lost somewhere in the plains of Dakota. And unlike in a typical Western it is not men with their guns who may save them from death but one woman who takes upon herself the role of a leader in the face of a total failure of others pioneers. In her new role as reluctant guide she is inspired by an Indian - another delicious exception from your Western genre. The fact that we don't quite know what he says and what would come from this strange connection between him and heroine played by excellent Michelle Williams - sounds truthful compared with other movies where everybody illogically speak English and communicates in a few seconds. Please do more of this kind of movies. We are sophisticated viewers and want to know how things really are and were. We don't need to be fed with honey. Let us see the truth.