Meek’s Cutoff (2010) presents water as a character, a goal,
and a source of conflict. When water is abundant, the three pioneer families
treat water as a necessary resource, a character in their journey across Oregon
where they ford a river, gather and store water in communal barrels, wash
clothes and dishes, and provide sustenance for a caged canary. When it is
scarce, water transforms into an off-screen antagonist and yearned for Deus ex
Machina.
The
“lost” scratched into a dead tree forebodes the dry land beyond the river. It’s
also a real detail drawn from women’s diaries and records of Oregon Trail journeys
screenwriter Jon Raymond and Reichardt researched for the film. In the
journals, the carved “Lost” message signifies “the discovery of what might have
been gold at a time when the imperative was water.” And the super-distant shot
of the group reinforces their connection to the landscape they traverse, with the
horizon line framing them as they nearly disappear into the scrub grass.
The
three covered wagons cross in and out of on-screen space to heighten these
connections, amplified by a hat blowing across the dry plain. When their wheels
whine like the windmill at the opening of Once
Upon a Time in the West, the cry heightens the settlers’ painful thirst. As
A.O. Scott declares, the “small covered wagons look like coffins on wheels.” With
this emphasis on the desert landscape as character, the film places the action
off-center, showing the men talking at a distance, so we overhear only a few
words or revealing a late-night conversation between Emily and Solomon only
through the light of a decorative lantern.
The
film reveals the consequences of drought in small ways. When women’s faces are
shown in close-up, they look hot, dry, and dusty like the parched land they
cross. They sip water from a communal cup while their men sit in the shade of a
rocky hill. One woman quietly states, “We should have taken more at the river”
and wonders how the oxen will survive, dumping extra weight out of wagons to
help them. And they gaze into barrels, showing their despair as they seem to
see the whorls and knots of wood at the bottom.
Reichardt’s
on-location filming amplifies these responses. As she explains in a Guardian interview, “The desert is
beautiful. But it’s 110 degrees. Everything’s so unfriendly and prickly, and
the fine dust gets in the vehicle wheels…. There was a struggle to get to set
every day with all the animals, but it put everyone in the frame of mind to
think about what conditions were actually like on the Oregon Trail.” The film
is also a good way to explore the continuing conflicts over water and the land.
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