Meek's Cutoff (2010) and Drought

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.