From Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010)
Fit into the modest dimensions of Reichardt’s 1.33 : 1 frame, the entire cast of characters of the film try to communicate with what is to them an alien, and, ultimately, a moral test that only the women, figured in the mise en scène in their marginalized roles, can pass.
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[...] Kelly Reichardt is an amazing filmmaker, and each of her films is better than the last. Meek’s Cutoff is certainly more ambiguous than Wendy & Lucy was, but don’t mistake its sparseness for vagueness—this is disciplined austerity that overwhelms the viewer with the film’s inescapable desolation. There is just enough here to qualify the film as a revisionist western (one cowboy, one Indian, one gun, the desert), and is probably the best and only necessary one since Unforgiven. The film’s closing images are among the most memorable this year, as a distinctly female moral agency guides the characters into an uncertain future. Click for further reading… [...]