NEWS OF ATHENS’ CINEMA SCENE
Wagons West: The director Kelly Reichardt and
her screenwriting partner, Jon Raymond, are
interested in frontiers. In their first two fea
tures together, Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and
Lucy (2008), protagonists venture into remote
or unknown physical territories, where less
tangible boundaries are reached, as well:
the outer limits of a rekindled male friend
ship in the former, and Great Recession-era
America's economic precipice in the latter.
So, it's appropriate that, for their latest col
laboration, they have chosen to work within
the genre that is singularly best suited for the
exploration of such themes: the western. It's
fortunate, too: Meek's Cutoff, like any great
western should be, is a richly (though not bla
tantly) symbolic work of American historical
fiction that seriously examines the means and
ends of our civilization.
The story is simple; even minimal: a tiny
group of settlers is being led across a bar
ren Oregon plain by Stephen Meek, a grizzled
frontiersman whose expertise as a guide has
become gravely in doubt. The members of the
wagon train, desperately short of water, cap
ture a lone Indian and must decide whether
to entrust him—whose language they don't
understand and whose motivations are a
mystery—or Meek with their survival. The pri
mal democracy necessitated by the situation
gives rise to a subtle but definite shift in the
dynamics of power in the group, along racial
and gender lines alike.
It's a revisionist western, to be sure, but
not in the manner of the violent, perverse
and aggressively ambivalent films made by
Peckinpah, Leone, Eastwood and others in
the 1960s and 70s. Rather, as the 1.33:1
ratio of the frame seems meant to suggest,
Reichardt's film can be seen as rejecting those
films' advances in favor of a direct, though
still entirely modem, response to the genre as
established by the likes of Walsh, Ford, Hawks,
Mann and Boetticher.
It isn't as if there were any psychologi
cal complexity or moral ambiguity lacking in
that. Meek's vicious mistrust of the Indian, for
instance, unmistakably echoes the virulence
of John Wayne's Ethan Edwards in Ford's The
Searchers, a film in which an old, implacable
and brutally simple societal order is replaced
by one that prioritizes the messy, imperfect
but (once) treasured American values of com
passion and compromise. But the questions
that remain at the end of Meek's Cutoff— Why
are our enemies our enemies? Who are we
following? Will we survive?—point to a level
of pertinence that brings it beyond historical
relevance and into the arena of current politi
cal urgency.
Finally, it can't be overlooked that the per
spective in Meek's Cutoff is decidedly female,
with most of the action centered on the char
acter played by Michelle Williams, a young
settler wife who gradually steps into a leader
ship role on the caravan. That's notable in and
of itself—Google "feminist western" and see
what you find. In fact, someone's going to
have to remind me of the last western to be
directed by a woman; I can't think of a single
one. Anyone?
Long-Awaited Update: The application by the
Athens Film Arts Institute, the non-profit
educational entity associated with Cine,
for 501(c)3 tax-exempt status has been
approved. The AFAI
board will now begin
fundraising in prepa
ration for its assump
tion of management
and programming
responsibilities at the
downtown theater,
beginning in 2012. •
Brigitta Hangartner,
Cine's founder and
executive direc
tor, will serve as an
officer on the AFAI
board, but will no
longer be in charge of
the theater's day-to-
day operations. It's
not yet clear exactly
how all the details of
the new arrangement
will shake out, but
Hangartner's excited. "After almost 10 years
of creating and launching Cine," she says, "I
am ready to move on to a nrw project and feel
very good about handing over the manage
ment of Cine to AFAI."
The AFAI's next event will be the Summer
Classic Film Series, which will run for six
weeks beginning July 8. The films are being
chosen by local film and music folks, who will
each introduce a Friday evening screening of
the film they select. I'm doing one, as are
Pam Kohn, Richard Neupert, Patterson Hood,
Tony Eubanks and Sanni Baumgartner. The film
selections haven't been finalized, but I'll keep
you posted—this should be really good.
As for Now: Woody Allen's new film, Midnight
in Paris, which looks like his best is years, is
scheduled to open at Cine this Friday, June
10, as is Rubber, a low-budget horror film
that's gotten ecstatic reviews from folks who
are into that sort of thing. It's about a tire
that kills people by blowing up their heads. If
sword-slashings are more your bag, you'll be
rewarded a week later when 13 Assassins, a
magnificently bloody new samurai epic from
the redoubtable Japanese director Takashi
Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer, Sukiyaki
Western Django), is scheduled to open. Go to
www.athenscine.com for more info.
Last, Never Least: The next iFilms screening
at the ACC Library will be Best Worst Movie,
a documentary tribute to Troll 2, at 7 p.m.
Thursday, June 16. Check www.clarke.public.
lib.ga.us to learn more.
Dave Marr film@flagpole.com
Meek's Cutoff, the new film by Kelly Reichardt starring Michelle Williams (right), is
playing at Cine.
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