"When researching MEEK'S CUTOFF we were reading a lot of diaries from the period. Of course, the women were the diary keepers and the diaries offer such a specific take on the history. It's a very different tone and point of view than what we see in the Hollywood Western.
"You get the idea of the daily labor and the monotony of that labor. I very much had in mind NANOOK OF THE NORTH when I was thinking about making MEEK'S. Build the igloo, catch the fish, make the fire... or in our case, set up the tent, build the fire, search for water. The other thing you get from the diaries is the loneliness women felt. I remember one woman writing that she was keeping a diary in case her husband should ever want to know her. On the one hand you're never really alone and have no privacy on the trail and yet you’re incredibly isolated, too. The exceptions seemed to be the friendships the women formed with each other.
"You also get the sense that the diaries are the only thing besides the weather that mark the passing of time. The journey seems trance-like with each long day bleeding into the next. These are some of the things we tried to get across. The stillness, the silence and the super unforgiving and dynamic landscape. The harsh conditions of shooting in this place with oxen and period wagons really forced us into this other pace.
"Everything takes time. Nothing is accessible or at your fingertips. Everything is a struggle. Time becomes a very different thing."
American landscapes and narratives of the road are themes that run throughout Kelly Reichardt’s work. MEEK'S CUTOFF, shot on the dry plains of Oregon’s high desert, offers a vision of the earliest days of American frontier culture. WENDY AND LUCY, filmed along the railroad tracks that surround an Oregon suburb, reveals the limits and depths of people’s duty to each other in tough times. Reichardt's film OLD JOY is an exploration of contemporary liberal masculinity, set in the tamed wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.
Both films are available to buy here.
Her first feature, RIVER OF GRASS was shot in her hometown of Dade County, Florida. Sun-drenched highways, bus stations and dilapidated motels were the denatured setting for this lovers-on-the-run story. Reichardt is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College.
