Kelly Reichardt
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Though one could glimpse The Searchers (1956) in its lunar landscapes, or Days of Heaven (1978) in its detached mood and often eerie beauty, the film's small, inward-looking narrative and headily large themes make it a piece of considerable originality.
Meek’s Cutoff is most definitely a niche programmer – sparse and understated dialogue, the barest of mood music and a bleached, dusty palette brings to mind such revered but commercially-barren westerns as Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978), Robert Benton’s Bad Company (1972) and Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007).
Notwithstanding exquisite images that evoke Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," city-slicker audiences may find themselves getting saddle sore.
Epic in scope, and featuring a powerful lead performance by Williams, Reichardt does justice to the myth of the wagon train settlers and makes a Western every bit as beautiful and poetic as Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, and thankfully a bit more energetic.
He captures the vast wilderness in condensed form and has a "Days of Heaven" kind of appreciation for the golden hues of the landscape.
Leave No Trace (2018)
Directed by Debra Granik
influenced by Wendy and Lucy (2008), Old Joy (2006), Certain Women (2016)
Themes
It’s a story that might remind some of such films as Captain Fantastic and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, both curiously starring Viggo Mortensen, or perhaps Kelly Reichardt’s small dramas set in the American Northwest (Wendy and Lucy, Old Joy).
In films like Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, Reichardt presents the region as a place where life is tough and the people persist in a quiet, gentle way.
Leave No Trace feels like it belongs to a school of Northwest neorealism I most closely associate with Kelly Reichardt, the Portland-based director whose film Wendy and Lucy was about the tragic mercy that strangers extend to one another when they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Though Granik’s approach is reminiscent of the sensitive, stripped-down style of Kelly Reichardt’s work (“Wendy and Lucy,” “Certain Women”), by reteaming with Scottish cinematographer Michael McDonough (who shot not only “Winter’s Bone,” but also Terence Davies’ radiant “Sunset Song” and the gritty prison drama “Starred Up”), she creates a richer visual environment in which to dwell.
It’s a story that might remind some of such films as Captain Fantastic and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, both curiously starring Viggo Mortensen, or perhaps Kelly Reichardt’s small dramas set in the American Northwest (Wendy and Lucy, Old Joy).
In films like Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, Reichardt presents the region as a place where life is tough and the people persist in a quiet, gentle way.
What I do know is that Zhao, like Kelly Reichardt (whose Wendy and Lucy is spiritual kin to this film), has a knack for gazing on the deeds of marginalized people with the greatest delicacy and empathy, without turning preachy or polemical.
It’s a character in these films — like Kelly Reichardt does with her penetrating work; see First Cow , Old Joy , Wendy and Lucy .
Fear not: “Nomadland” is still a real movie, with powerful bursts of anger and sorrow as Fern grows frustrated by her limited options and comes mighty close to exploiting the generosity around her. Though the spirit of Terrence Malick is prominent in Zhao’s lyrical style, “Nomadland” also calls to mind Ken Loach’s kitchen-sink realism for its depiction of lower-class angst clattering against the ambivalence of capitalism (consider the plight of the protagonist of “I, Daniel Blake”), not to mention Kelly Reichert’s visions of wayfaring loners (imagine Michelle Williams’ wanderer from “Wendy and Lucy,” all grown up and still no place to go).
It’s a character in these films — like Kelly Reichardt does with her penetrating work; see First Cow , Old Joy , Wendy and Lucy .
Viewers accustomed to the knotty “Short Cuts” school of multiple short-story adaptation may take a while to acclimatize to the film’s patient, clean-edged structure, which opts neither for explicit chaptering nor for intricate braiding of the three stories in question.
It’s why comparisons with Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, which have come up in various reviews, don’t quite fit.
Imagine a version of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts that didn’t weave its individual tales into some ensemble tapestry, instead simply offering a few acute approximations of Raymond Carver’s voice.
To go further, in addition to the black-and-white, which is more constraining and sinister than it is beautiful, Eggers has employed a narrow aspect ratio, closer to a square than a rectangle, similar to the shape used in Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff, and David Lowery's A Ghost Story, and to movies made in the earliest days of cinema.
A party is held in the house, a man (Will Oldham, "Old Joy") philosophizing about humankind's quest for meaning in what we leave behind when we depart this earth and how we exist until we're lost to collective memory.
Good One (2024)
Directed by India Donaldson
influenced by Old Joy (2006), Meek's Cutoff (2011)
Themes Visuals
The film is a lot like the works of Kelly Reichardt—particularly her breakout feature Old Joy—in how characters guard their feelings and show tremors under the gentle, easygoing façade of the action.
Good One is like a little sister to Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, another fantastic film about the dynamics of two men’s friendship.
India Donaldson's minimalist, slow-burn feature debut reveals a sensibility that inevitably invites comparisons with the work of Kelly Reichardt, especially Old Joy.
Much of Good One plays like a cross between Kelly Reichardt and Noah Baumbach – with further crisscrossing between multiple modes of each filmmaker. There’s the modest, verdant-scenery male bonding of Reichardt’s Old Joy, plus the seething, stranded dynamic of Michelle Williams’ character in Meek’s Cutoff; similarly, the banter of a Baumbach comedy – the dialogue between Chris and Matt is often very funny – intersects with a lower-key version of Marriage Story tensions.
It’s been nearly two decades since Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy showed how the wilderness can be an open canvas to explore the breaking points of male friendship and reckoning with a midlife crisis. While those emotional quandaries are evergreen, it’s appropriate timing to bring an entirely new element to this conceit.
Much of Good One plays like a cross between Kelly Reichardt and Noah Baumbach – with further crisscrossing between multiple modes of each filmmaker. There’s the modest, verdant-scenery male bonding of Reichardt’s Old Joy, plus the seething, stranded dynamic of Michelle Williams’ character in Meek’s Cutoff; similarly, the banter of a Baumbach comedy – the dialogue between Chris and Matt is often very funny – intersects with a lower-key version of Marriage Story tensions.
The crew filmed in New Mexico, but no matter the U.S. state, the terrain looks and feels like the bleak Eastern Oregon desert in “Meek’s Cutoff” (2010).
With New Mexico filling in suitably for a pre-metroplex North Texas and the Hill Country before urban sprawl, it would be easy to imagine the Captain and Johanna crossing wagon trails with the pioneering women of Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff, or sharing quiet communion with Ethan Hawke's PTSD-riddled gunslinger in Ti West's lamentably underseeen In a Valley of Violence.
…and Kelly Reichardt’s River of Grass…
It’s been on the rise in the United States for about decade, with films like Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop (2007) and Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008) employing a natural and semi-observational style that focuses on characters and situations rather than heavy-handed plots to tell their stories about America’s downtrodden poor.
You Were Never Really Here (2017)
Directed by Lynne Ramsay
influenced by Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Visuals
Fans of Kelly Reichardt’s minimalist gems, especially her comparable 2008 film Wendy and Lucy, will find a kindred spirit in writer/director Andrew Haigh.
Like her previous movies—River of Grass, Meek’s Cutoff , Wendy and Lucy , and Night Moves —the new one uses a slow pace to conjure a contemplative, moody atmosphere.
As is generally the case—2013’s Night Moves being the obvious exception—Reichardt eschews high drama or overt politics in favour of quietude, elegant gestures and telltale exchanges between people in tenuous relationships that allude to politics.
In many ways, Train Dreams feels like a cinematic cousin to Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven or Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow.
…it is slightly embarrassing that Brit Wright nailed the combining of race and geography in tone over the more erudite American director Kelly Reichardt in “The Mastermind” (2025).
In its final stretch, the feature eventually mutates into a tense wilderness thriller more in the mold of The Last of the Mohicans or Reichardt’s slow-burn Oregon Trail masterpiece, Meek’s Cutoff (2011).
Filmmakers Reichardt and Raymond, who collaborated on the eccentric 2006 character study Old Joy (also set in the Oregon forests) know the emotional landscape well — Wendy and Lucy is adapted from Raymond's short story "Train Choir."
Fans of “Pig” have name-dropped North Miami native Kelly Reichardt, whose films center around marginal figures in the Pacific Northwest, and indeed, parts of it suggest the movie “First Cow,” her masterful meditation on friendship and the birth of American capitalism, would have been if it had taken place in the present day.
He’s done really good work on films like Wendy and Lucy , and he shot three films that Greta Gerwig starred in.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced by Meek's Cutoff (2011)
Characters Themes
“The Gal Who Got Rattled” is one of the longer segments in which some of the characters are more developed, particularly Alice Longabaugh (a possible reference to the name Harry Longabaugh, better known as “The Sundance Kid”) played by Zoe Kazan, who was also in another wagon train movie, “Meek's Cutoff.”
A range of emotions, and a character that echoes the role she played in Meek’s Cutoff, help turn Kazan’s episode into a thing of wonder – yet not so much that death spares its players.
There’s Tom Waits as a diligent gold prospector and Zoe Kazan as a young woman embarking upon the Oregon Trail ( Meek’s Cutoff shout-out!).
The best of the stories may also be the longest and most humane: “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” which puts Meek’s Cutoff traveler Zoe Kazan back on the Oregon Trail, casting her as a lonely spinster who finds potential romance with the rugged guide (Bill Heck) of a covered-wagon expedition.
Starring Zoe Kazan - making her second trip on the Oregon Trail following Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff - as a shy bride-to-be who finds herself romanced by a charming cowboy.
In a way, Gladstone's performance expands on her memorable breakthrough in Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women, where her farmhand character's unrequited yearning for a night-school teacher played by Kristen Stewart evoked complex feelings about identity and ethnicity.
She's been one to watch since Certain Women back in 2016, but the emotional, physical, and spiritual journey of this character is eye-opening, and she doesn't miss a step.
And then there’s Gladstone, an actor with incredible talent who has not had the opportunities she deserved after a superb breakout performance in Kelly Reichardt’s 2016 indie movie Certain Women. When Gladstone is on screen, her magnetism is unwavering. It’s as if she’s baring the soul of the character she embodies and we can feel everything Mollie is feeling, all that loss, betrayal and strength.
Ernest, who married Native Osage Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone, "Certain Women"), would find himself seduced into Hale’s increasingly blatant hits on the wealthy Indians who owned the headrights to the oil discovered on their reservation at the turn of the century.
Ernest genuinely falls for an Osage woman, Mollie ("Certain Women's" Lily Gladstone), but any innocence to their love affair is supplanted by festering greed as William uses Ernest as a chess piece in his quest to rid her of her fortune.
Soon to be rechristened Mrs. Burkhart (“Certain Women” breakout Lily Gladstone, an undeniably major talent), Mollie may be “incompetent” under the eyes of the white man's law, but she can't even say that word without betraying the bitterly ferocious intellect of someone who knows the score, recognizes that she's being played, and has reluctantly accepted the fact that her people have few alternative options.