Mccabe & Mrs. Miller

I obviously have no idea what is was like to live in the West, but Altman's vision seems so real, I have a hard time imagining it to be any other way. Altman's movies are very special to me, because, unlike many modern-day independent films that grasp at verisimilitude through a "gritty" portrayal of reality (which often just seems to me like lack of imagination), Altman's movies actually sort of achieve this believability. At the same time, they are mythical enough to fascinate. Though the dialogue is "realistic" it rings much more true than the dialogue in, say, a mumblecore film. It is more like verite, but fictional. Roger Ebert puts it better than me in his Great Movies essay on the film: "All of the characters know each other, and the camera will not stare at first one and then another, like an earnest dog, but is at home in their company." As in real life, scenes are filled with overlapping, often inaudible chatter. But, as Ebert notes, "sometimes all that matters is the tone of a room."

Meek's Cutoff

Meek's Cutoff has generated some buzz lately, for being that movie you have to see and pretend to enjoy whether or not you have any actual desire to do so. It's certainly a divisive movie. Complaints were audible as the viewers in my theater exited the film. Of course, also audible were awe, veneration, and theory-generation along the lines of "were they actually dead the whole time?" I thought this theory was a bit silly when I overheard it, but this line of thinking eventually led to my own conclusions. I understand what, I think, this person was trying to communicate. Meek's Cutoff approaches fantasy. It takes place in a mythical, intermediate space in which new things become possible. Really, the movie is about the settlers negotiating this new space. The premise of Meek's Cutoff is loosely based on a real historical anecdote, which, in a way, adds to its mythos. In the film, a fur trapper named Meek claims to know an alternate route around the Blue Ridge Mountains. Taking him at his word, a group of settlers follows him. They become hopelessly lost, and lost they remain.