As meandering as the journey itself, this exercise in repetition emphasises its Western genre by questioning morals over xenophobia and people's expendability. Gets better the longer is sinks into your brain.

99 percent of westerns choose to be cartoonish and over-the-top to portray the time period. While I happened to miss the 1850s, Meek's Cutoff seems to give a much more realistic picture of the West. Its desolate, bleak, and lonely. Meek's Cutoff is a visual feast and a subtle delight.

the costumes are so unauthentic it kind of throws you out of the movie. and greenwood overdid it. did not buy that character.

It's a challenging film due to its slow pacing, bleakness, and incomplete narrative which leaves you gagging for a drop of sweet closure. That said, the way it represents the immense physical hardship of traversing the midwest in a very primitive time is gripping and really hits home as the film's main achievement. Gender themes come close enough to giving the film extra meaning or message, but in truth It's just a slice of real life, documentary style. The understated acting is great all round.

I've heard so many good things about this movie. I gave it a shot. Neat cinematography, good acting, but the truth is, I couldn't help but find this movie real slow.... Reeeeeeeeeeeal boring. Explores some interesting themes, but ultimately feels like Oregon Trail: The Movie.

it creates a very barren feeling atmosphere and it's a slow paced movie, but there's really nothing much in it except some great scenery. so if you want to look at the oregon high desert, here you go, but dont expect much else.

Gerry with covered wagons.

Good movie for sleeping :-D

Loved the slowly cranked-up dilemma/ethical tension. Ambience is HARSH. Bit goofy in its period-stuff, but totally worthwhile.

My Thoughts: "The movie is listed as an action/adventure. Adventure, yes. Action, where? The most action you get out of this film is watching them walk. I am not one for westerns, if you can even call it that, but I seen that Michelle Williams is in the film and I love watching her in anything. She and Paul Dano are the only reasons I didn't push stop on the remote. The story is somewhat interesting, but I have read that the story being played out in this film isn't quite exactly the correct ver

This film will likely bore the average movie-goer to death, but in all honestly, it’s nothing short of a masterpiece. It challenges conventional narrative and makes for an absolutely interesting and enthralling ride. Kelly Reichardt’s attention to detail astounds me and she has woven together an intricate story here without giving us anything in terms of a typical narrative.

It's unfortunate that the film's two greatest assets, it's langorous pace and ambiguous ending are the two things most likely to turn people off. Actually, if the film has any flaw it's in creating characters and situations that sometimes feel overly-constructed by the director to make a political or social point. Even when it's a point I agree with, the damage to the story's sense of naturalness and spontaneity is done. Whether that damage is irreparable, I'm still trying to decide.

A film of quiet desperation, hard-scrabble survival, and growing mistrust. In some ways it evokes the horror genre as the severity of the situation deepens and doubt takes hold. It manages gritty realism without resorting to overstating the harsh conditions for dramatic effect. Williams impresses me again with her thoughtful restraint. The score is wonderful, as haunting and sparse as the landscape. Reichardt is emerging as one of American cinema's most distinctive and worthwhile voices.

If a virtual masterclass in how to steadily, subtly ratchet up tension, Meek's Cutoff suggests that Kelly Reichardt's appetite for dramatic restraint might ultimately prove her undoing. Benefiting from the presence of two of America's finest young actresses (Michelle Williams and Zoe Kazan), Reichardt does little with them, preferring to craft a sparing anti-Western, in a barren environment, that beguiles and involves but could never blow you away. It's tasty stuff that doesn't quite fill you.

The slow pace and ending makes will not please mainstream fans. This is an allegory involving a dilemna between choosing "experts" that seem unreliable, but familiar, versus on the Other that may be more reliable . There is uncertainty with either choice. Here's my crazy interpretation of the film: Meek=GW Bush; Indian=Obama

A more contemplative kind of Western that feels like a blend between Jarmusch and Antonioni. At the very least the landscapes are beautiful and varied as their journey goes on. Most of the actors are just kind of there, except of course for Michelle Williams, who once again proves she's one of the best of her generation. I think it fails to establish the kind of forboding dread that would make the ending effective, and as a result the lack of resolution is far from satisfying.

Very very slow but beautifully filmed. It offers a different view of what it must have been like for settlers heading west into the unknown.

Superficially there's a lack of urgency 2 the pacing & obvious love of beautifully composed landscape shots that normally suggests ur in the realm of critically acclaimed, snooze-inducing post-modern pointlessness, but since this narrative is a literal life or death march, the dramatic tension swallows any slowness whole. The ending however, is a painfully pretentious cop-out & giant F--k you 2 the audience who've been asked 2 invest so heavily in the fate of the characters.

The very definition of quiet dignity.

I like Kelly Reichardt's films a lot, but this one, while a good concept, didn't work for me. The characters remain too distant.

A slow, slow, slooow burn that has a believable cast, wonderful rugged landscapes and a strong sense of authenticity. The doubts and fears and tediousness of being on a weeklong journey in the middle of nowhere really shine through. I was a bit annoyed at the sudden ending until I read theficionado's review, and then I felt stupid.

Many will dislike it because it is a sparse, non-narrated film with little action. Those are fine with me but when a film lacks those features it needs to fill the void with interesting characters. Unfortunately "Meek's Cutoff" doesn't do that either. Since all the English characters are one-dimentional, the most compelling role is the non-English speaking Paiute prisoner. (It's also a bit unrealistic the group could travel that far that long in 1845 and find absolutely nothing.)

Reichardt's controlled and materialist film throws a small group of settlers, their guide, and an Indian together in a search for water. The lost group is faced with the constant decision of who to trust--the paid guide, the native American, or their own impulses. As the journey continues, Reichardt admirably raises the tension, the tight confines of the camera leaving no escape from the moment. The beautiful ending is ambiguous on a narrative level--for the characters, it's crystal clear.

I read a review that said that this is an example of slow cinema. Well it is slow. Beautifully shot with magnificent landscapes. I enjoyed the cinematography immensely but found the story plodding.

I think it's good to have a structure to your narrative that leaves some room for the imagination to fill in. After all, no one likes to be spoon fed. However, I don't subscribe to the notion that narrative structure should be peeled away to such a degree that you might as well throw it out entirely. There is such a thing as "too little structure" just as there is such a thing as "too much". Does get a point for Bruce Greenwood though, quite the performance. That guy is so underutilized =(.

Okay, don't get the wrong idea here - I enjoyed the starkness and the mood and the methodical pacing of this film a lot. But does anyone else get the impression that a lot of critics are stuck in this "no ending = masterpiece" mentality?

Perhaps the most badass PG-rated pseudo-Western ever made. Slow, grueling, and tremendously satisfying--a controlled, uncompromising slice of 19th century American desperation. And it's got more drama at the edge of every frame than most hunks of so-called Oscar bait each year have front-and-center. Not for everybody, but if you're a fan of Naturalism and/or Michelle Williams, this'll be a gratifying, rewarding experience.

"An existential nightmare of maddening uncertainty,a notion only emphasized by Reichardt's commitment to ambiguity."

As anti as anti-westerns come. In addition to eschewing gunplay entirely, Reichardt deals in morally ambiguous shades of grey, framing issues of survival, sexism, and racism within a tale of man's ability to trust one another. Meek speaks not of law vs. chaos but of chaos vs. destruction, and it's all the hardscrabble cast can do to trudge on in a largely unsettled and unconquered west, with nary a speck of life to be found. Haunting and evocative, right up to the stunningly abrupt ending.

This film is like someone trying to make a dumbed-down version of a Cormac McCarthy novel. The ending isn't really my main problem, but it is a symptom of the disease: this poses many easy - and readily apparent - questions and does not endeavor to answer any of them. This isn't a difficult task. To its credit, though, the atmosphere and acting are both pitch perfect.

A movie not to be watch, but experienced...absorbed, perhaps.

It challenges patriarchy and racism, but it never risks questioning received political ideas.

A reconfiguration of stark (and transcendent) Western images into Aguirre terror, it establishes no themes to give the cut off ending its due resonance.

"Meek's Cutoff is an act of inversion, a western that reverses the genre's traditional forms and dynamics to create something new and startling, yet still familiar." - Nick Schager

The claustrophobic aspect ratio is only the first indication that Reichardt intends to mess with the prototypical Western: The mythic good vs evil, lawlessness vs order binary is transfigured into something much more complex and extraordinary. As the wagon train's moral conundrum slow-burns all the way to its apex, we're left at the point at which hopelessness transforms into something haunting and humanist, where faith in your fellow man is, no matter your hand, the only real choice you have.

It touches on some universal themes, such as Man's need for faith as guidance, and the different kinds of faith one can choose from. It's a modest, slow moving film that manages to leave you thinking about it afterwards

"Cutoff" is right; 1.33:1 is an affront to the Western and all that is cinematically holy!

Fairly stunning work leaves almost everything up to the viewer. A unique western with some pretty impressive performances.

Somehow anachronistic: moments of the dialogue, performances, as well as themes, seem rather present-day, as though the parable being hung on the Western backdrop is intended to spark high school debates. As a consequence, the alien, strangers in a strange land, "metaphysically" atmospheric quality that is admirably striven for is undermined by the viewer's perception that the filmmakers were animated by some rather more conventional and predictable preoccupations, however "inverted" the genre.

This film offers a singularly sparse and realistic view of a group of people traveling to the Oregon territory, circa 1840.While the pacing is slow and the dialogue is minimum it's the way the film makers capture the struggles these people faced in traversing this barren landscape and the interactions between them that made this film unique and compelling.

A beautiful and spare Western film that does away with action sequences and embraces brutal, uncompromising realism. The slow pacing might prove too much for some but those patient enough will be rewarded with an acutely observed depiction of racism, bigotry, trust (or mistrust), uncertainty and survival with an eerie contemporary resonance. Williams and the rest of the cast give such impressive, naturalistic performances and the ending is perfectly ambiguous. Another winner from Reichardt.

People left and right are calling this an anti-Western. I wish that movies like this were considered regular Westerns. If that were the case I would watch much more of them. The cowboy attitude and the notion that I'm just watching a bunch of grown men play dress-up puts me off of regular Westerns, especially the supposedly classic ones. There's also a smugness in the performances that drive me up the wall. Meek's Cutoff commits none of these sins.

Successful in producing an atmosphere of menace and paranoia.

A slight step back qualitatively for Reichardt, but in many ways an incredibly impressive film. She seems a much more confident filmmaker here than ever before -- a western shot in 1.33:1? No discernible ending or beginning? Or resolution? You got balls, kid. This is certainly not a film for your boorish co-workers, but oddly enough, it almost isn't a film for your snobby co-conspirators, either! Meek's Cutoff, despite its bursts of splendor, is unfulfilling. It's verite without the profundity.