Meek’s Cutoff
Essay by Brian Eggert | January 27, 2020
Kelly Reichardt’s films focus on the searching, inward experiences of her characters. But none more so than her first true Western, Meek’s Cutoff, whose theme is etched in the opening shots. One of seven settlers bound for the West carves “LOST” into a dried-out fallen tree, and therein, he engraves Reichardt’s subversion of the most American genre. The conventional Western reassures moral convictions against an untamable wilderness, whereas Reichardt concentrates on unromantic tasks, avoids defining her characters through easily recognizable tropes, and resists narrative closure. She embraces the rhythm of everyday activities, from the tedium of travel to simple, menial tasks and processes, and her approach forgoes Western standards, such as rowdy chases, heroes and villains, and shootouts.
Instead, Reichardt uses long takes and intentionally paced shots of a meandering voyage to Oregon, which replace the majesty and masculinity of the Western with something alternative. The film’s perspective is unquestionably feminist, though never polemical in how it depicts the lack of power among nineteenth-century frontier women. Drawing from an actual event, Meek’s Cutoff concerns itself with an austere and natural portrait of reality. Reichardt explores, through her exacted narrative and form, a feeling of emotional isolation that emerges when confronted by a patriarchal community’s false sense of security. Her willingness to question the certainty of masculine Westerns also supplies an investigation of reality, our incomplete view of it, and the limits of true knowledge, resulting in a haunting film about people finally resigning themselves to the chaos of the universe.
The film takes its name from the Oregon Trail shortcut, the Meek Cutoff, a route known primarily for the Lost Wagon Train of 1845. Histories and diaries from the time recount real-life fur trapper and frontiersman Stephen Meek, who led a party of over 1,000 settlers in some 200 covered wagons, driving several thousand head of cattle across a seemingly more direct route to the Promised Land. Meek claimed the alternate path, then untested by any wagon train, would save them 150 miles. From Fort Boise, Meek would take the party over the Blue Mountains and then deliver them straight into the Willamette Valley. The proposition sounded appealing since many feared the widespread reports of Cayuse tribe attacks on the main Oregon Trail. But after clearing the mountains, the train became aware that Meek did not recognize the territory, today known as the Oregon High Desert. Having trapped there a decade earlier, Meek remembered lakes; unbeknownst to him, they had since dried up in the droughts. Unsure where to go, he sent out scouts who came back with no clear direction to salvation. With grass and water in short supply, the emigrants and their livestock suffered. After some disputes in the camp, the group split into two parties, one following Meek, and the other taking an alternate route. Though the train eventually came back together farther down the trail, twenty-three people died along the way. Many blamed Meek for their losses. To paraphrase the diary of one survivor, it was a bad cutoff for all that took it.
Reichardt provides no exposition to establish the events in her film besides the immediate setting, Oregon in 1845, communicated by a single title card. Everything else must be gleaned through observation; even the dialogue is barely heard over the sounds of Conestoga wagons plodding along through barren country. Three couples head westward across punishing terrain, shepherded by their grizzled guide, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), an almost comical braggart wrapped in tasseled leather and chock full of tall tales about his adventures taming the Wild West. What we know about the families comes from their present journey; the film offers no backstories. Though each has their own wagon and livestock, the settlers support each other with food, water, and effort, toiling to cross rivers and carefully navigating their fragile wagons down steep hills. The God-fearing couple of William White (Neal Huff) and his pregnant wife Glory (Shirley Henderson) have brought along the only child on the journey, the adolescent Jimmy (Tommy Nelson). Thomas Gately (Paul Dano) and his fearful wife Millie (Zoe Kazan) worry about the dangers of continuing forward, despite their adrift guide. Reichardt aligns the film’s perspective with the group’s most sensible pair, Solomon Tetherow (Will Patton), a logical and well-reasoned man whose new young wife, Emily (Michelle Williams), is resourceful and, increasingly, outspoken. “We should never have left the main stem,” Emily says, regretting the decision to follow Meek’s shortcut.
If Meek’s Cutoff offers thin characterizations for its settlers, it could be that Meek, an excessive windbag, has consumed the air around them. Reichardt situates her characters in response to Meek. The settlers watch him from behind, leading the train, though he’s unsure of their exact location and does not know when they will find water again. Reichardt’s camera often adopts the women’s perspective, Emily above all, and observes Meek’s endless swagger with a critical eye. Meek is a monumental blowhard, a personality suited for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, a larger-than-life figure desperate to validate himself by spinning yarns about his legendary heroism and experience. He might also be a symbol of John Ford’s Western—someone who wholeheartedly believes the maxim of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962): “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Ever chattering about his exploits, he is committed to his own legend. He has invented it. His world is comprised of masculine heroism and a blustering ego, like one of John Wayne’s characters, or Wayne himself, in his arrogant self-certainty. He claims to be a gallant killer of Indians and boasts of his oneness with Nature (“I live with this world, not just in it”), and somehow, his confidence persists despite admitting he’s lost. By contrast, the other men in the party remain passive, following Meek on the train, unwilling to confront his authority as their guide or follow Emily’s growing dissent. Further down the line, Emily walks and listens to Meek telling his stories to Jimmy, stories only a child could believe.
Meek’s Cutoff is structured around the journey, a repetition that follows Meek’s lead by day and camps in the pitch-blackness at night. The dynamic changes when a Native American man (Rod Rondeaux) from the Cayuse tribe appears before Emily as she gathers firewood. The Indian, as he is credited, scatters, while Emily rushes back to signal the others, loading a musket and firing into the sky in a scene that shows she can handle a gun. Meek and Solomon resolve to track down the Indian and return him to camp as their prisoner, and his presence amplifies the personalities of everyone in the wagon train. Meek wants to kill him, arguing that other Cayuse will surely follow. Meanwhile, Millie’s crippling terror of his Otherness is doubtless magnified by Meek’s horror stories. “You know what I’ve seen this heathen’s brothers do? I’ve seen ‘em strip the flesh off a man while he’s still breathin’,” he warns in grandiose fashion. “I’ve seen ‘em cut a man’s eyelids off and bury him in the sand and leave him just starin’ at the sun.” Far more rational, Solomon and Emily want the Indian to lead them to water, as he must be familiar with the territory. Emily, in her prudence, recognizes that, even though they have taken him prisoner and he does not speak English, her kindness may be returned for their salvation. She fixes the Indian’s shoe and explains her shrewdness, “I want him to owe me something.” The Tetherows convince their fellow emigrants to let the Indian lead them to water, and Meek is outvoted. But will their new guide lead them to water or into a deadly trap? The film’s open-ended conclusion preserves that question.
Reichardt’s minimalism informs her narrative and visual style, from the equivocal last shot in Meek’s Cutoff to the protracted takes and even longer silences during the emigrants’ journey. In a relatively short period of time, Reichardt has made a name for herself in sparse cinema—microbudget independent productions whose subjects are resigned to mutable roles. Reichardt’s characters often subsist in a repressive environment, hesitant to speak or articulate their inner selves, prompting her audience to investigate her characters through their own projections. It’s tempting to call her perspective an exclusively feminist one, given that her protagonists are usually women, but she examines the same qualities among men as well. Her second film, Old Joy (2004), the story of two college friends on an overnight camping trip to a hot spring, their uneven impressions of their friendship, and their various insecurities, captures masculine relationships better than any picture of the twenty-first century. After her debut film, River of Grass (1994), which is set in her native Florida and follows an aimless couple on a crime spree, she shot experimental short films and attempted to develop another feature. But her breakthrough with Old Joy led to a wealth of output—Wendy and Lucy (2008), Night Moves (2013), Certain Women (2016), First Cow (2020). And with each new film, her cinema has defined her stripped-down and opaque aesthetic, leaving her audience to search for meaning.
凱莉·萊卡特（Kelly Reichardt）的電影始終關注人物内在、探索性的體驗，而在她的第一部真正意義上的西部片《米克的捷徑》中，這種主題得到了最充分的體現。影片開場便刻下了它的主題：七個向西遷徙的拓荒者之一在一根幹枯的倒木上刻下“LOST（迷失）”一詞。在這一動作中，萊卡特也刻下了她對“最美國式類型片”——西部片——的颠覆。傳統的西部片通過征服荒野來鞏固道德信念，而萊卡特則專注于不浪漫化的日常勞動，避免用可辨識的性格模闆來定義人物，并拒絕叙事的收束。她擁抱生活節奏的平凡性——從旅途的單調乏味到日常瑣碎的勞作——放棄了西部片的慣例：狂野的追逐、英雄與惡棍的對立、槍戰的高潮。
相反，萊卡特以長鏡頭和刻意緩慢的節奏，記錄一段通往俄勒岡的漂泊旅程，用女性化的、去雄性化的視角取代了西部片中那種雄壯的、男性化的宏偉。影片的立場無疑是女性主義的，然而它從不流于說教，而是通過描繪十九世紀邊疆女性的無權狀态，展現一種内斂的政治鋒芒。影片取材于真實曆史事件——“米克的捷徑”——呈現出一種冷峻、樸素的現實主義。萊卡特以精準的叙事與形式，探索在父權共同體虛假的安全感中所滋生的情感孤立。她質疑男性西部片的确定性，也由此展開對“現實”、對我們視野局限與認知邊界的反思。影片最終成為一部令人萦繞心頭的作品：關于人類如何在宇宙的混沌中學會屈從。
影片标題源自“米克的捷徑”（Meek Cutoff）——一條位于俄勒岡小徑上的捷徑路線。它因1845年的“迷失的移民車隊”（Lost Wagon Train）而聞名。根據史料與當年移民日記記載，毛皮獵人兼拓荒者斯蒂芬·米克（Stephen Meek）帶領着約1000名拓荒者、200多輛篷車和數千頭牛羊，穿越一條看似更直通“應許之地”的新路線。米克宣稱，這條未經任何車隊嘗試的路徑能節省150英裡。從博伊西堡出發，他要帶領隊伍翻越藍山山脈，直接進入威拉米特谷。這一提議聽起來頗具吸引力，因為許多移民擔心主線道上有凱尤斯（Cayuse）部族襲擊的傳聞。
然而，穿過山脈後，移民們才發現米克根本不認識這片如今稱作俄勒岡高原沙漠（Oregon High Desert）的地區。米克曾在十年前于此地捕獵，記得這裡有湖泊；但他并不知道這些湖泊早已因幹旱而幹涸。迷失方向後，他派出偵查員尋找出路，卻無人能帶來明确的希望。牧草與水源短缺，人畜皆苦不堪言。營地内部發生争執，車隊分裂為兩支：一支仍跟随米克，另一支選擇另一條路。盡管他們後來在更遠的路段重新會合，但已有二十三人死于途中。幸存者在日記中寫道，這是一條“對所有走上它的人來說都是壞的捷徑”。
萊卡特在影片中幾乎不提供任何叙事交代。除了一個“1845年俄勒岡”的字幕，觀衆必須通過觀察來理解一切；連人物的對話都常被馬車辘辘聲與荒野的風聲掩蓋。三對夫婦向西跋涉，帶領他們的是粗野的向導——斯蒂芬·米克（布魯斯·格林伍德飾），一個滿嘴誇張故事、披着流蘇皮衣的老江湖。他自稱馴服過荒原的英雄，但實際上隻是個滑稽的吹牛者。影片沒有提供人物背景，觀衆隻能從他們此刻的旅程推斷他們的關系與性格。
他們各自駕着馬車、驅趕牲畜，卻彼此依賴，共同分配食物與水源，協力涉水、謹慎地讓脆弱的篷車滑下陡坡。其中，威廉·懷特（尼爾·赫夫）和他懷孕的妻子格洛麗（雪莉·亨德森）信仰虔誠，他們的兒子吉米是隊伍中唯一的孩子。托馬斯·蓋特利（保羅·達諾）與膽怯的妻子米莉（佐伊·卡贊）擔憂繼續前行的危險，而他們的向導似乎早已迷失方向。萊卡特讓觀衆的視角與隊伍中最理智的一對夫婦——所羅門·特瑟羅（威爾·帕頓）和他機敏的新婚妻子艾米麗（米歇爾·威廉姆斯）——保持一緻。艾米麗逐漸成為隊伍中最清醒的聲音：“我們當初就不該離開主路。”她這樣說。
影片對這些拓荒者的刻畫雖簡約，卻極為精準——因為米克的誇誇其談幾乎吞噬了所有空氣。萊卡特讓每個角色都成為米克的對照物：他們都在他身後望着他，他卻始終不知道自己的位置，也不知道何時能找到水源。鏡頭常從女性視角出發，尤其是艾米麗的視線，以批判的方式注視米克那無止境的自負。米克是一個典型的“大話西部英雄”——仿佛出自巴法羅·比爾的狂野秀，一個急切地想通過編造英雄事迹來證明自己的誇張人物。他象征着約翰·福特（John Ford）式的西部神話，也許正對應《射殺自由·瓦倫斯的人》（1962）那句名言：“當傳說成了事實，就印上傳說。”他生活在一個由男性英雄主義和自我膨脹構成的世界裡，像約翰·韋恩（John Wayne）或韋恩本人那樣，以傲慢自信為榮。
他吹噓自己是印第安人的屠殺者，誇耀自己與自然合一（“我與這個世界共生，而非僅僅活在其中”），即便承認迷路，他的自信仍未動搖。相比之下，隊伍中的其他男人顯得被動而怯懦——他們不敢質疑米克的權威，也不願追随艾米麗逐漸增長的質疑之聲。而艾米麗則走在隊伍稍後的位置，靜靜聽着米克對小男孩吉米講述那些連孩子都難以置信的英雄故事。
《米克的捷徑》的結構建立在旅程的重複性之上：白天跟随米克前進，夜晚在黑暗中紮營。劇情的轉折發生在艾米麗撿柴時遇到了一名印第安男子（由凱尤斯部族的羅德·龍多飾演）。這個在片中僅被稱為“印第安人”的角色一出現便逃走，艾米麗慌忙回到營地，裝填火槍并向空中鳴槍示警——這一幕展示了她的果敢與冷靜。米克與所羅門追蹤并抓回了印第安人，将他作為俘虜帶回營地。此人的到來激化了所有人的性格：米克主張立即殺掉他，聲稱凱尤斯人會随時來襲；而米莉則被恐懼所支配，被米克的恐怖故事所感染——“你知道這些野人會怎麼幹嗎？他們會在一個人還活着的時候剝去他的皮……割掉眼皮，把他埋進沙子裡，讓他直勾勾地盯着太陽。”
與此相對，所羅門與艾米麗保持理性——他們認為印第安人熟悉地形，或許能帶領他們找到水源。艾米麗在謹慎中展現出智慧：盡管他們抓了他、語言不通，但善意或許能換來救贖。她為印第安人修補鞋子，并冷靜地說：“我希望他欠我一個人情。”最終，艾米麗與丈夫說服大家讓印第安人帶路，米克被投票否決。但這名印第安人将帶他們走向水源，還是走向死亡陷阱？——影片開放式的結尾保留了這個懸念。
萊卡特的極簡主義貫穿叙事與視覺風格：從那模棱兩可的最後一幕，到漫長的靜默與耐心的鏡頭。《米克的捷徑》在相對短的時間内，确立了萊卡特“稀薄而深刻的電影語言”：低預算、獨立制作、人物處于不穩定的社會角色之中。她的角色常被壓抑的環境包圍，猶豫着表達内心，使觀衆不得不通過投射去理解他們。稱她的視角“女性主義”固然有理，但她對男性的觀察同樣銳利。她的第二部影片《昨日歡愉》（Old Joy, 2004）——兩位老朋友前往溫泉露營、在重逢中顯露出友情的不均與不安——可謂二十一世紀最細膩的男性關系畫像之一。
在（River of Grass, 1994）之後，她拍攝了幾部實驗短片，并一度停滞于新項目開發中。直至《old joy》的成功，她迎來了創作的豐收期：《溫蒂和露西》（Wendy and Lucy, 2008）、《夜行者》（Night Moves, 2013）、《某種女人》（Certain Women, 2016）與《第一頭牛》（First Cow, 2020）。每一部新作都在強化她那簡約而暧昧的電影美學，迫使觀衆在空白與沉默之間尋找意義。
Writer Jonathan Raymond supplied the short stories on which Old Joyand Wendy and Lucy were based; he also wrote the screenplays for those films, as well as Meek’s Cutoff and other, later films directed by Reichardt. The two were introduced in the early 2000s by their mutual friend, director Todd Haynes, who not only connected fellow Portland native Raymond with his first literary agent but executive produced nearly all of Reichardt’s films. Both Reichardt and Raymond find value in silences, where nonverbal emotional and psychological cues intensify and grow more complex from their wordless expression. This similarity in their approach enriches their collaboration, as Reichardt complements the implied feelings in Raymond’s writing through ruminative imagery. The idea for Meek’s Cutoff came when the two explored the Oregon High Desert while location scouting during the production of Wendy and Lucy. They were both drawn to the terrain, and Raymond later learned of Stephen Meek’s story. They began a research process that entailed visiting the many museum exhibits about the Meek expedition, reading the actual diaries of settlers that survive from the period, and books about the subject, such as Keith Clark and Lowell Tiller’s book Terrible Trail: The Meek Cutoff, 1845. Many of the events that occur in the film—such as the emigrants finding a nugget of gold that suggests a larger mine in the area, the location of which is lost to time—happened in real life. Although, Raymond’s screenplay scales down the actual event to three families under Meek’s guidance, partly out of necessity due to the film’s $2 million budget, but also because Reichardt gravitates toward intimate stories about a select few characters.
Reichardt gives Meek’s Cutoff a distinct shape by experimenting with the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the standard Academy ratio widely used in Hollywood until the emergence of widescreen formats in the 1950s. In recent decades, narrower ratios have made a comeback among many independent filmmakers such as Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, 2009; Wuthering Heights, 2011; American Honey, 2016), Robert Eggers (The Witch, 2015; The Lighthouse, 2019), and Paul Schrader (First Reformed, 2018). These directors seem to use the ratio, or something close to it, as though today’s standard wide formats were a platform to work against, using the audience’s awareness of an older method and the unused option of widescreen to extratextual effect. Modern uses of this format often reflect the story’s period by adopting an outmoded look, represent a theme of confinement, or focus the viewer’s attention on characters within the prescribed frame. Reichardt’s work with the boxy frame in Meek’s Cutoff conveys several reactions at the same time. Cinematographer Chris Blauvelt, who has shot each of her films since Meek’s Cutoff, captures a scopic terrain despite the comparative lack of screen space by isolating characters or the entire wagon train within the frame, allowing the sky and rolling hills to drown out the settlers. Blauvelt echoes how the Academy ratio was used in Hollywood Westerns by John Ford, George Stevens, and Anthony Mann, filmmakers who captured unforgettable images from Monument Valley to the mountainous frontier of the Pacific Northwest, yet their work never felt circumscribed for lack of a panoramic view. At the same time, this visual seclusion in the never-ending landscape of Reichardt’s film intensifies the journey at hand, as if the characters proceed through a squarish tunnel. The ratio is at once immense and confining.
Reichardt’s use of the image reinforces the theme that the emigrants are prisoners in an open country. Many of her shots are stationary, as if mounted on a tripod and limited to panning right or left. When the camera moves, it does so to follow the steady progress of the wagon train. Never does she employ outwardly expressive angles or whooshing crane movements. Reichardt, serving as editor, also finds a transfixing quality in ultra-slow fade transitions between images that seem to blend together, as the figures in the forthcoming image look like ghosts passing through the previous scene. Elsewhere, Blauvelt shoots scenes in natural light, with night sequences lit only by campfires and lanterns, illuminating just a small portion of the frame. Reichardt emphasizes the use of light in several stark cuts from the pitch blackness of night to the penetrating daylight, causing the viewer to reflexively wince from the sudden switch. Behind every scene is a heightened ambient noise of the emigrants and livestock trudging along, and the persistent sound of a single squeaky wagon wheel. And though Jeff Grace has been credited with a score, only a few aching notes stretched along the last desperate minutes of the film break its many silences. Both visually and aurally, Reichardt adopts the transcendental quality of slow cinema, whose austerity forces its audience to think about the film while it unfolds, resulting in an alertness to every detail within the frame.
Reichardt told interviewer Leonard Quart that her focus was the “unheightened moment”—a stark and decidedly feminist contrast to the traditional Western’s expression of masculinity through its concentration on violence, victory, and moral certainty. Meek’s Cutoff certainty operates in a mode different than that of Ford’s similarly plotted Wagon Master (1950), another tale of settlers in a wagon train that, conversely, entails a romantic subplot, a shootout at the climax, and a finale in which the party arrives at their destination. Reichardt creates an alternative to her predecessors by limiting the first half of her film to the journey’s minutiae, drawing our attention to characters who would not usually have power or occupy the center of a traditional Western. She follows as Emily gathers firewood or prepares dinner; she sits with the women as they knit and hang laundry. Her gaze is feminine, watching from a distance as the menfolk stand in a circle, their voices overheard just enough to catch their deliberation about which way to go, none of them with an ounce of certainty. Reichardt’s initial interest in process, in the work of her women characters as the men make decisions about their route, occupies the feminine perspective, and through it, the viewer recognizes how the conventional Western, and to a greater extent nineteenth-century society, excludes women.
In considering Reichardt’s feminist perspective one cannot ignore the catalyst of Emily’s emergence as the protagonist, the character of Meek. Indeed, Meek’s Cutoff might be the ultimate film about a woman rallying against one man’s refusal to admit he needs directions. Their guide rationalizes, “We’re not lost; we’re just finding our way”—a statement that recalls Kurt (Will Oldham) in Old Joy, and his insistence that he knows just how to get to the hot springs, despite being lost. Reichardt’s films often feature lost characters, from the friends in Old Joyto the titular characters of Wendy and Lucy, who are not so much lost as sidelined in their journey. The state of being lost, either geographically or existentially, allows Reichardt’s minimalism to confront her characters in their ambiguous, unreliable, and amorphous worlds. It also allows each of her films to be interpreted as a kind of Western, as each explores unknown territory. Still, though Emily is resigned to a passive role in the train, she will not be led by a fool. “I don’t blame him for not knowing,” she whispers to Solomon. “I blame him for saying he did.” Emily’s growing frustration with Meek’s apparent ignorance and arrogance distinguishes her from the typical passivity of women in Westerns. She will not listen to Meek’s yarns about the dangerous Cayuse tribe; while others are rapt by his stories, she is unimpressed. “This meant to bring me over to somethin’?” she asks him flatly. Emily is too practical and resourceful to suffer Meek’s braggadocio, and she is also determined to prevent Meek’s execution of the Indian, the party’s one hope for salvation in her mind. In the climactic scene, when Meek draws his pistol with the intent to kill the Indian, Emily points the musket at him until he concedes and lowers his weapon, shifting the power dynamic of the train. By that time, though, Meek’s fearmongering has done its work.
The film transforms into a study of humanity’s reaction to fear and uncertainty, how for some even unlikely assurances are preferable to the terrifying emptiness of the unknown. Moreover, it contains a political undercurrent that reflects how certain figures retain their power. Meek tells dubious stories about his encounters with violent Native American tribes and warns of an imminent attack, stoking paranoia while building his own mythology as a survivor and authority. His methods recall political dictators who ensure devotion by spreading panic and then supplying themselves as the solution. Though, his idiocy prompts Emily to ask, in a question asked by millions living under a similar leader, “Is he ignorant or just plain evil?” In any case, Meek has successfully convinced Millie and others of their fate. “They’re almost here!” Millie cries out with terrible certainty—in a Chicken Little type Kazan would repeat in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), though her fate is more certain in that film. And while most of the others agree that Meek’s stories have questionable merit, Reichardt nonetheless implants seeds of doubt in the viewer. Note how Millie keeps a bird in a cage for the journey that, like a canary in a gaseous coal mine, gradually dies over the course of the film, as if the settlers have entered poisonous territory. Millie also sees a conspiracy in rocks as the Indian leaves indecipherable symbols on a possible breadcrumb trail of stones, perhaps as part of his religion, perhaps as Reichardt resolves to end Meek’s Cutoff with the inconclusiveness she sustains through the entire picture. She does not justify or disprove Meek’s prejudices, nor does she vindicate or condemn Emily’s decision to trust the Indian, and therein, she avoids the moral certainty associated with traditional Westerns. At the base of a hill, the wagon train arrives at a tree, indicating the presence of water nearby. Once the group follows the Indian over the hill, there’s a chance of finding water; there’s also the chance of an ambush waiting for them. The Pacific Northwest saw many deadly encounters with the Cayuse, including the Whitman Massacre of 1847 that left thirteen settlers dead. Meek resigns himself to Emily and Solomon’s lead. “I’m taking my orders from you now,” he tells them. “This was written long before we got here,” he adds, ever the believer in myth, especially his own, even if it means he is led to his death. But Reichardt refuses to give credence to his fateful last words in the film. It’s a structure that brings to mind the way humanity puts its faith in desperate ideas in Stephen King’s novella The Mist, where an isolated group of Maine townsfolk hole-up to avoid a monster-laden fog; some blindly follow an alarmist’s prophecy, others resolve to face the unknown’s infinite haze. A persistent theme of Meek’s Cutoff, then, questions where one places their trust and why. That Reichardt and Raymond chose to end their story on an open-ended note is a stark but telling contrast to the actual incident, where the wagon train splits into two parties and both find their way.
As scholars Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour have noted, the ambiguous ending also demonstrates how Meek’s Cutoff deviates from traditional and even revisionist Westerns in its withholding of Manifest Destiny. The white expansion and settlement of North America signals progress in classical Westerns from John Ford (Stagecoach, 1939), George Stevens (Shane, 1953), and William Wyler (The Big Country, 1958)—a bringing of order to the frontier’s untamed chaos. Revisionist Westerns from Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, 1968), Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, 1992), Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, 1995), and Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight, 2015) have questioned and portrayed the corrupting nature of white expansion, but they acknowledge its inevitability. Reichardt prefers to leave that destiny in question. It’s an idea symbolized when Meek argues that “women are created on the principle of chaos” in their ability to bring new life into the world, whereas men represent “cleansing, ordering, destruction.” Meek has firmly implanted himself in the ideals of Manifest Destiny, with its obliteration of Native American tribes and assimilation of the unknown into the familiar. In part, he sees the Indian, and all Native Americans, as chaos, given the man’s inability to speak English or submit to white rule; and it’s a significant detail that Reichardt does not supply the viewer with subtitles to translate the Indian’s native dialogue. Emily and Solomon have chosen a path that deviates from Westward expansionism; they resolve not to kill the Indian and choose to embrace the unknown rather than break it.
Meek’s Cutoff is unique in its revisionism for its essential ambiguity toward Manifest Destiny. Will Meek’s masculine order through destruction overcome Emily’s feminine chaos? Or does Meek’s theory represent an attempt at bringing order to the structureless world that Reichardt implies with her final shots? Emily watches as their Native American guide walks toward the horizon, and Reichardt fades to black before disclosing the party’s fate. Will the Indian find water or will he signal other Cayuse to attack? Is the answer right over the hill, or the hill after that? Considering how Meek’s Cutoff is put together, it becomes clear that Reichardt elicits internal responses that require the viewer to contemplate uncertainty itself. By refusing to answer questions about where the settlers’ journey ends, the film investigates what drives our fear of the unknown, as well as the costs of so-called civilization. Her method is elusive, contained in long silences, a lumbering journey, and spare, if beautiful, cinematography, along with a host of natural performances. But the approach is, in Meek’s terms, also unquestionably feminist in its willingness to embrace the chaos of ambiguity. In a film that places equal value on its omissions of sight and sound as the details it brings into sharp focus, it is unshakable in its demand to be revisited and reconsidered, but never resolved.
a message or signal to his tribe. Or notice the way the Indian subtly smiles when a wagon topples over, as if he’s pleased the emigrants have met with disaster. Are these true warning signs or coincidences that aid Meek’s role as a doomsayer?
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作家喬納森·雷蒙德（Jonathan Raymond）為(Old Joy）和《溫蒂和露西》（Wendy and Lucy）提供了改編所依據的短篇小說；他也為這兩部影片以及《米克的捷徑》（Meek’s Cutoff）和此後由萊卡特執導的其他影片撰寫了劇本。兩人于2000年代初在共同好友、導演托德·海因斯（Todd Haynes）的引介下相識。海因斯不僅為同樣來自波特蘭的雷蒙德牽線找到了第一位文學經紀人，也幾乎為萊卡特的所有影片擔任了執行制片人。萊卡特與雷蒙德都看重沉默的價值：在無言之處，情感與心理線索會因無聲的表達而被放大并變得更為複雜。正因這一方法論上的相似，他們的合作更顯豐厚——萊卡特以凝思的影像來補足雷蒙德寫作中那些隐而未明的情緒。拍攝《溫蒂和露西》時，兩人赴俄勒岡高原沙漠（Oregon High Desert）勘景，由此生出《米克的捷徑》的念頭。他們都被那片地貌所吸引，雷蒙德随後得知斯蒂芬·米克（Stephen Meek）的故事。二人開始了紮實的研究：走訪關于“米克遠征”的衆多博物館展覽，研讀幸存下來的拓荒者日記，以及諸如基思·克拉克與洛厄爾·蒂勒合著的《可怖之徑：米克的捷徑，1845》（Terrible Trail: The Meek Cutoff, 1845）等書籍。片中許多情節——例如移民發現一枚金塊，由此暗示附近可能存在更大的礦脈，卻因久遠而失其所在——都在現實中确曾發生。盡管如此，雷蒙德的劇本将真實事件縮減為在米克指引下的三戶人家，一方面出于兩百萬美元制作成本的限制，另一方面也因為萊卡特一向偏好圍繞少數人物展開的親密型叙事。
萊卡特通過嘗試采用1.33:1的畫幅比（昔日好萊塢在寬銀幕興起前所廣泛使用的學院比例），為《米克的捷徑》确立了獨特的造型。近幾十年來，較窄的畫幅在獨立電影人中回潮，如安德裡亞·阿諾德（《魚缸》Fish Tank, 2009；《呼嘯山莊》Wuthering Heights, 2011；《美國甜心》American Honey, 2016）、羅伯特·艾格斯（《女巫》The Witch, 2015；《燈塔》The Lighthouse, 2019）與保羅·施拉德（《第一歸正會》First Reformed, 2018）。這些導演似乎将該比例（或相近比例）當作對當今寬畫幅規範的一種“對位”，借由觀衆對舊式方法的意識，以及對寬銀幕這一天然可用卻被“棄置”的選項的感知，制造文本之外的效果。現代對這一比例的使用，往往或是以“過時”的視覺風貌來呼應故事的時代背景，或是呈現受限/幽閉的主題，或是迫使觀衆在方整的框架内專注于人物。萊卡特在《米克的捷徑》中運用這種“盒狀”畫幅，同時喚起多重感受。自本片起便成為她禦用攝影師的克裡斯·布勞韋爾特（Chris Blauvelt）在相對狹小的畫面裡，依然拍出了具有遠眺尺度的地景：他将角色或整列篷車編隊隔離于畫框之中，讓天空與起伏的丘陵仿佛将移民吞沒。布勞韋爾特由此呼應了學院比例在約翰·福特、喬治·史蒂文斯與安東尼·曼等人之西部片中的用法——這些導演自紀念碑谷到太平洋西北的群山邊境，留下了難忘的影像，卻從不因欠缺全景式的寬銀幕而顯得局促。與此同時，在萊卡特影片那片無盡的景觀中，這種視覺上的封閉感反而強化了旅程的切身性，仿佛人物正穿越一條方形的隧道。此比例既宏闊，又桎梏。
萊卡特的影像運用進一步強化了一個主題：移民們是在“開放之地”裡的囚徒。她的大量鏡頭是靜置的，仿佛架在三腳架上，僅以左右搖移完成運動；當鏡頭移動時，也隻是為了跟随篷車隊穩步前行。她從不采用外顯的造作機位或呼嘯而過的搖臂運動。身兼剪輯的萊卡特，還在極慢的淡入淡出中捕捉到一種催眠般的質感：畫面彼此融接，使得後一幅中的人物恍若幽靈般穿越前一個場景。其他地方，布勞韋爾特以自然光拍攝；夜戲隻以營火與燈籠照明，畫面僅有一小塊區域被點亮。萊卡特通過幾次從黑夜的漆黑驟然切到日光的刺眼，強調光的效果，迫使觀衆本能地因突變而眯眼。每個場景背後，都有被放大的環境聲：移民與牲畜艱難跋涉的雜音，以及一隻吱嘎作響的車輪的持續聲。盡管傑夫·格雷斯（Jeff Grace）署名了配樂，影片的大部分時段都由沉默統治，直到最後那些絕望的分鐘裡，才響起幾記拉長的、隐痛般的音符。無論在視覺或聽覺層面，萊卡特都接近于**“緩慢電影”的超驗氣質**：其簡約迫使觀者在影片展開之時就開始思索，從而對畫面内的每一處細節保持高度敏感。
萊卡特對采訪者倫納德·誇特（Leonard Quart）表示，她關注的是“未被拔高的瞬間”（unheightened moment）——這與傳統西部片通過強調暴力、勝利與道德确定性而建構男性氣概的方式，形成了鮮明且明确的女性主義對照。《米克的捷徑》顯然與福特那部情節相似的《驿馬車隊長》（Wagon Master, 1950）不同：後者有浪漫支線、高潮槍戰，以及隊伍抵達終點的尾聲。萊卡特為其前輩提供了另一條路徑：她把影片前半段交給旅程的細枝末節，将注意力引向那些在傳統西部片中通常無權、也不居于叙事中心的人物。她跟随艾米麗拾柴、做飯；她坐在女人們身邊，看她們織毛活、晾衣物。她的凝視是女性化的：在遠處觀看男人們圍成一圈，隻讓觀衆聽見他們關于該往何處的讨論的隻言片語——卻沒有一個人握有确定答案。萊卡特最初對“流程”的興趣——當男人們決定路線時，女人們在勞作——确立了女性視角；透過這一視角，觀者得以識辨：傳統西部片，乃至更廣義上的十九世紀社會，是如何排斥女性的。
若談萊卡特的女性主義視角，就不能忽略促成艾米麗成為主角的催化劑——米克這一角色。事實上，《米克的捷徑》或許可被視為一部關于女性如何與一個拒絕承認自己需要問路的男人相抗衡的終極之作。向導米克狡辯說：“我們不是迷路了；我們隻是在找路。”這句話令人想起《舊歡如夢》中的庫爾特（Kurt，威爾·奧德漢飾），他同樣在迷路的情況下堅持自己知道去溫泉的路。萊卡特的電影常有“迷失”的角色：從《舊歡如夢》裡的朋友二人，到《溫蒂和露西》的同名人物；他們與其說迷失，不如說在旅途中被邊緣化。無論是地理意義還是存在層面上的“迷失”，都使萊卡特得以以極簡手法，去直面角色所處的模糊、不可靠、無定形的世界。這也使她的每部影片都可被視作某種“西部片”——都在探索未知的疆域。盡管艾米麗在車隊中被動，但她絕不會被愚人牽着走。“我不怪他不知道路，”她低聲對所羅門說，“我怪他明明不知道，還要說自己知道。”艾米麗對米克顯而易見的無知與傲慢愈發惱怒，這使她不同于傳統西部片裡典型的女性被動形象。她不會被米克關于危險的凱尤斯部族的誇張故事所左右；當他人被他的叙述所吸引時，她不為所動。“你說這些，是想把我帶到某個結論上嗎？”她平靜問道。艾米麗過于務實、過于能幹，不會容忍米克的吹噓；她也堅決阻止米克處決那位印第安人——在她看來，那是隊伍唯一的希望。在高潮段落，當米克拔槍欲殺印第安人時，艾米麗舉起火槍對準他，直到他讓步放下武器，車隊内部的權力結構由此發生轉移。隻是到那時，米克的恐吓叙事早已發揮了效力。
影片遂轉而成為一部關于人類如何面對恐懼與不确定的研究：對于某些人來說，即便不可能的保證也勝過未知的虛空所帶來的驚懼。此外，影片潛藏的政治脈絡，揭示了某些人物如何得以維系權力。米克講述他與暴力的印第安部族相遇的可疑故事，不斷警告即将到來的襲擊，在煽動偏執的同時，建構自己作為幸存者與權威的神話。他的方法令人聯想到某些政治獨裁者：先傳播恐慌，再把自己作為解決方案提出。艾米麗因此發出了一個生活在類似體制下的無數人都問過的問題：“他是無知，還是作惡？”無論如何，米克已成功讓米莉與他人相信他們的命運。“他們快到了！”米莉以可怕的笃定喊道——這讓人想到後來佐伊·卡贊在科恩兄弟《巴斯特·斯克魯格斯的歌謠》（The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, 2018）中演繹的“杞人憂天”式人物，盡管在那部片中她的命運更為确定。盡管大多數人都承認米克的故事言之乏據，萊卡特仍在觀者心中種下懷疑的種子。注意：米莉帶着一隻籠中鳥同行，像瓦斯礦井裡的金絲雀那般，随着影片推進逐漸死去，仿佛暗示移民們已進入有毒之地。又如，當印第安人留下難以辨識的石頭符号時，米莉在岩石中看見了陰謀；這或許是那人的宗教慣習，也或許僅是萊卡特決意以未定之論收束影片的又一象征。她既不為米克的偏見背書，也不判定艾米麗信任印第安人的選擇為對或錯，由此避開了傳統西部片所偏好的道德确定性。在山腳下，篷車隊來到一棵樹旁，這預示近處可能有水。若循印第安人越過山梁，或許就能找到水；也有可能是伏擊在前。太平洋西北确曾多次發生與凱尤斯的緻命沖突，包括1847年的惠特曼慘案（Whitman Massacre），造成十三名移民死亡。米克不得不聽命于艾米麗與所羅門：“我現在聽你們的。”他說。接着他仍不忘神話口吻：“這一切在我們來之前就寫好了。”他始終笃信神話，尤其是自己的神話——即便這意味着他将被引向死亡。然而，萊卡特拒絕為他的“臨終遺言”背書。這樣的結構，也讓人想到斯蒂芬·金中篇小說《迷霧》（The Mist）：緬因州一群鎮民為了躲避迷霧中的怪物而困守室内；有人盲目追随恐慌者的預言，有人則選擇直面未知的無垠。由此，《米克的捷徑》的一個持續主題便在于：人把信任放在何處，為什麼？雷蒙德與萊卡特選擇以開放式結尾收束故事，這與真實事件——車隊分為兩支、最終都走出困境——形成了鮮明而意味深長的對照。
正如學者凱瑟琳·富斯科（Katherine Fusco）與妮可·西摩（Nicole Seymour）所指出的，影片的模棱兩可的結尾也顯示出《米克的捷徑》與傳統乃至修正主義西部片的差異：它扣留了“天定命運”（Manifest Destiny）。在約翰·福特（《驿馬車》Stagecoach, 1939）、喬治·史蒂文斯（《原野奇俠》Shane, 1953）與威廉·惠勒（《大地驚雷》The Big Country, 1958）等人的經典西部片中，白人的擴張與定居象征着進步——是将秩序帶入未被馴服的混沌前線。修正主義西部片——如山姆·佩金帕（《日落黃沙》The Wild Bunch, 1968）、克林特·伊斯特伍德（《不可饒恕》Unforgiven, 1992）、吉姆·賈木許（《死無葬身之地》Dead Man, 1995）與昆汀·塔倫蒂諾（《八惡人》The Hateful Eight, 2015）——雖質疑并呈現白人擴張的腐蝕性，但仍或多或少承認其不可避免。萊卡特則甯願讓這種“命運”懸而未決。這一觀念在米克的言論中得到象征化：“女人是在混沌原則上被創造的”，因為她們能孕育新生命；而“男人則代表清洗、秩序與毀滅”。米克将自己牢牢鑲嵌在“天定命運”的理想中——消滅原住民部族、把未知同化為熟悉。在他看來，印第安人乃至所有原住民都是混沌，因為他們既不會說英語，也不服從白人統治；而萊卡特刻意不為印第安人的母語對白提供字幕，這一點意義尤為重大。艾米麗與所羅門選擇了一條偏離“向西擴張主義”的道路：他們決定不殺印第安人，選擇擁抱未知，而非将其摧毀。
《米克的捷徑》之所以在其修正主義立場上獨樹一幟，正是因其對“天定命運”的根本性含混。米克所代表的通過毀滅來建立的男性秩序，會否最終戰勝艾米麗所代表的女性混沌？抑或米克的理論不過是試圖為萊卡特最終鏡頭所暗示的那無結構的世界強行安上秩序？艾米麗注視着他們的原住民向導走向地平線，而萊卡特在透露車隊命運之前便漸黑收尾。那位印第安人會找到水嗎？抑或他正要向凱尤斯人發出攻擊的信号？答案是在山後，還是在再後面的一道山梁？綜合影片的建構方式可見，萊卡特意在激發觀衆對不确定性本身的内在思索。通過拒絕回答移民旅程的終點究竟何在，影片追問驅動我們懼怕未知的是什麼，以及所謂“文明”的代價何在。萊卡特的方法是飄忽的：長久的沉默、蹒跚的旅程、簡省而優美的攝影，再加上一衆自然的表演。但正如米克所言（如果借用他的對立），這種方法在本質上也無可置疑地女性主義——因為它敢于擁抱暧昧的混沌。這是一部在“看與不看”“聽與不聽”的缺省與顯現之間賦予同等價值的電影：它要求被反複回看與重新思考，但從不導向終極的解決。
