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Meek's Cutoff (2010)
Valiant Try, but seriously flawed--opportunity missed
First off, set the stylistic issues aside for a moment. The director and writer obviously tried to link the movie "somewhat" to history. They allowed the actors to get dirty, they showed the land's power probably as well as they knew how to do, and they shot the movie "close" to the setting of the original Meeks' Cutoff disaster of 1845.
The problem is: The Meeks' train had almost 1000 people and 200 wagons. In 1845, this was MORE people than lived in the ENTIRE town of Portland, Oregon! The thought that a mountain man (Meeks) could lose his way and along with him, 1000 people would die in the Oregon Desert....Well, that would be a national tragedy, far worse than the Donner Party.
But this movie has three wagons. Count 'em, three. Worst case scenario here? Seven people might die--this would cause hardly a ripple then, and it doesn't make sense now. Why would a mountain man guide 3 wagons across Oregon? Who would pay him? Where could 3 families come up with the money? It simply makes no sense whatsoever.
I waited until I watched the movie both in Bend (close to where some of the disaster occurred) and in Salem (close to their destination). The reaction to the movie was similar in both theaters: a lot of head-shaking and gales of laughter at the absurd ending.
In the end, this movie is like a Rorschach Blot--it will tell you more about yourself and what you expect from a movie that purports to be about history than it will about the movie itself. It does a good job of portraying the loneliness and the desolation (from the midwest pioneers' POV), but it does a horrible job of getting the historical significance of the cutoff attempt. There is no reason for the audience to care. None. If you like "films" because they are "postmodern critiques of social mores and societal ills," you'll find a reason to like this film. But if you think that a film that purports to be about history should be, well, about history, then you'll probably laugh too at this movie.
This movie could have been a great movie about a little known episode in our history. Why a mountain man would get so lost over a trail that he HAD been over....well, that's a good question. Unfortunately, one that this film doesn't come close to grappling with. It largely wastes the historical significance of the chora (Plato's sense of place), the angst the pioneers had as they faced the possible end of their lives so close to their destination. Imagine what they must have felt: having crossed the long prairies, the rivers, worried about Natives & disease, crossed the Rockies--all that, and then they're being led into the wilderness by what they must have thought a lunatic.
But this film gives us 7 people wandering in the desert. Like a western version of Hangover III. So we don't care. In 1845, 500-1000 people dying is a national tragedy; 7 people is a normal day on the Oregon Trail. So, in the end, the movie fails and becomes just what its well-meaning but highly ignorant director and writer abhor: a movie made by easterners about what they THINK the west was. When it comes right down to it, this movie could have been made in Manhattan, Los Angeles, the Mojave, the Amazon, with half the cast of Survivor. There was no need to take the crew to Burns, Oregon--none whatsoever. So the location was largely wasted (you see the same scenery in later scenes that you do in the early), and the tiny errors mentioned in the "Goofs" section pale in significance to the macro- and mega-error of so limiting the movie as to make what came a whisker's width of become a national tragedy an exercise crafted at the level of a grad student.
Three Faces West (1940)
Look for the Dust Bowl sequences
One of the best parts of the picture are some scarce clips of Dust Bowl sequences woven into the picture. The actual location of a mountainous location near Lone Pine, California look nothing like the Great Plains, but you can tell when you see gang plowing by mules, and some other shots shot during the Dust Bowl, that they are the real deal. There is also some confusion when you're told at one point they're in Oklahoma, and in another North Dakota, but it captures at least some of the tough issues faced by the farmers of the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl.
Frankly, it is simplistic to see any ONE treatment of these times as definitive. "Letters from the Dust Bowl," "The Worst Hard Times," GRapes of Wrath," etc. are ALL snapshot treatments. Same here. But watch it, take what you can from it, and keep reading and watching as much materials as you can.
La resa dei conti (1967)
If it weren't meant to be so serious, it would be laughable
A truly dreadful film with some of the worst dubbing of all time. Worse, apparently some scenes were filmed, then their continuations were shot based on OTHER scenes! One example (from many): during a gunfight a woman is clearly shot seriously, probably fatally, and the camera shows her slumping to the floor. Seconds later, she is apparently unhurt, begging Van CLeef not to go!! A real laugher, made with high school talent, poor direction, and dubbing that is (like I said) so poor it makes Chinese Kung-Fu movies look good! If you need a laugh, and there is absolutely nothing else to do, and if you must, watch this film...but mostly to see how NOT to make movies. Van Cleef must have groaned when he saw this piece of garbage.