If Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy established director Kelly Reichardt as one of America’s most distinctive cinematic voices, Meek’s Cutoff marks a giant leap forward. But even working in entirely new terrain, Reichardt builds on themes from her earlier work, creating a film of enormous resonance, grace and power.

It is 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, and a wagon team of three families has hired the mountain man Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Emily and Soloman Tetherow (Michelle Williams and Will Patton), Millie and Thomas Gately (Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano) and Glory and William White (Shirley Henderson and Neal Huff) trudge alongside covered wagons loaded with belongings, which range from a dwindling food supply to grandfather clocks. They travel with an air of caution and determination, repressing their fears of the unknown ahead.

Claiming to know a shortcut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path across the high plain desert, only to become lost in the salty, flat rock and sage. Their confidence in Meek shaken, and battered by hunger and thirst, the travellers start to challenge each other as they are confronted by a series of life or death choices. Teetering on the edge of desperation, they encounter a Native American local who will prove to be either their undoing or their salvation.

Although a period film is a departure for Reichardt, it allows her to continue to examine her favourite themes: man’s interaction with nature, the exploration of both inner and outer landscapes and the impact of choices made under great duress. Along with remarkable, nuanced performances, Reichardt beautifully utilizes the sparse, almost Biblical landscape to create a story that has profound contemporary resonance. The settlers must change the way they think and feel about their physical environment, their possessions and the traditional roles of women and the country’s native people.

With her finely tuned sense of detail and her ability to draw meaning from the smallest gesture, Reichardt confirms her place as one of the most fiercely talented filmmakers of her age.

Jane Schoettle TIFF

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The playlist Best Films of 2011 so far (in June):

”Meek’s Cutoff”—The defining reaction to Kelly Reichardt’s meditative Western, shot in good ol’ 4:3 aspect ratio like in the old days (square, not widescreen), might be best articulated in a recent debate by The New York Times magazine vs. The New York Times movie critics. Former Vulture writer Dan Kois took to the NYT mag to write a sort of apology of sorts for finding slow, meditative art films, well, boring; vegetables you should eat, rather than want to eat. The Grey Lady’s estimable critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis then wrote a piece which was titled, “In Defense of Slow & Boring.” Who was right? Well, both of them. Kois is correct in assessing that the slow-moving experience of “Meek’s Cutoff” can be soporific to a certain viewer, but perhaps what he’s missing, which Dargis and Scott so eloquently articulate, is the resonance and value the picture has; a haunting and spellbounding quality that lingers in the mind, far, far long after the picture is gone; a bewitching quality most films don’t possess these days (which makes the “this is dull” assessment a little unimaginative and lazy). So while it’s easy to be short-sighted and write off “Meek’s Cutoff”—Reichardt’s 4th micro-minimalist excursion, this one about an ill-fated journey through the Oregon Trail in 1845 starring Michelle Williams, Zoe Kazan, Bruce Greenwood and Paul Dano—as a lethargic, formalist exercise, this cultural vegetable is not only beautiful and austere, it’s dreamy and oblique like, say, the early films of Alain Resnais. And while that may not be for everyone, we still think you’re definitely missing out.