Meek's Cutoff

We had 18 feedback forms and achieved an average rating of 47%. Not one of our highest scores.

Well I thought the silent passages in the film were very atmospheric and helped to underline the bleakness of the landscape - and after The Great White Silence last time I wasn't worried. And when huge passages of dialogue were also silent I thought how clever of the director to use it to underline the women's exclusion from the men's discussions. Very feminist.

Unfortunately, we had a problem with the sound - it seems that some of the soundtrack wasn't coming through. After the sound was fully restored it didn't make a lot of difference for me as I was only getting 50% of their mumblings. The Indian, however, enunciated his speech with Shakespearean clarity, but as I don't speak Native American that wasn't a lot of help. For what it's worth, my researches on the internet showed that even American audiences found the dialogue unintelligible. Also large passages of the film were intentionally without dialogue and filmed with obscured lighting.

The film portrayed real events on the Oregon trail and the characters were real people. There's a fascinating Wikipedia entry here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meek_Cutoff

For those of you who wanted a better ending you will be interested to know that some - but not all - of the travellers made it to the end of the trail. The odious Meek (who may not have been quite so bad as portrayed) also survived. The Native American was a real character who received blankets in exchange for his help but I don't know if he survived or if the manner of his joining the party was accurately depicted.

 Here's a link to the IMDB entry:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1518812/
And here's a four-star review from Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/apr/14/meeks-cutoff-review

 And here are the comments from yourselves:

B	Shame about the soundtrack – intriguing ending – atmospheric
B	Felt let down but amazing realistic atmosphere.
B
B/C	Enjoyed it! Real shame about the sound and visual problems!
C	An endurance test!
C	Left hanging
C	Strongly contemplative, mysterious, slow, atmospheric, inconclusive. Sweeping photography, indistinct sound (even when working). Disappointing ending.
C	Atmospheric. Rather drawn out – too dark at times. Couldn't make out speech much of the time.
D	Oh Dear! Not something I would recommend – slow and aimless and unsatisfactory ending.
D
E	Get feeling of being there, but too slow moving not enough happening and no decent ending. Night scenes indecipherable.
E	An understanding of the bleakness of the American West was portrayed early on and then I felt there was a lack of interest to engage the audience for the most part.
E	Hmm?!
E	Very slow and story not helped by dark night shots and poor projection (second)
E	Slightly weird. Poor dialogue.
E	Typical American
	Difficult to judge. My hearing is not good so heard very little of the dialogue. I usually like moody atmospheric films but found myself longing for the end. When it came – "What was the point?"
	Boring. Some of the dialogue was difficult to hear.