LOS ANGELES, April 9, (RTRS): The West wasn’t all cowboys and Indians and shoot-outs at the OK Corral, insists “Meek’s Cutoff,’’ a realistic slice of pioneer life that offers a disquieting alternative vision of America’s most mythic location. In place of violence, director Kelly Reichardt (“Old Joy,’’ “Wendy and Lucy’’) underlines the harshness and monotony of a long journey by covered wagon. The film’s refusal to spectacularize the emigrants’ hardships, as well as the story’s lack of a clear beginning or end, signal major difficulties driving this wagon train beyond the festival circuit, where its pleasing low-key quality that should earn it accolades.
The film is based on a real story from the American West. The time is 1845, and three families have chosen to leave a larger wagon train on the Oregon Trail to set out on their own with a hired guide, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), over the Cascade Mountains. The film starts five weeks into their march across the high plain desert, circling around without even sighting mountains and running out of food and water fast. They have concluded Meek doesn’t know the way, or perhaps has deliberately lead them off the path for reasons of his own.

Capture
Lost in the middle of nowhere, the emigrants start to doubt each other. It is at this point that they capture a lone Indian (Rod Rondeaux), their natural “enemy’’, but who in reality may (or may not) become their guide and savior .
Of the nine characters in the film, only the three women emerge clearly. The men, even the flamboyant braggart Meek and the scowling, enigmatic Indian, never come into focus. Michelle Williams (“Brokeback Mountain’’) creates a true heroine in Emily Tetherow, a young wife whose strong character leads her to protect the captive against Meek’s racist fury. Scottish actress Shirley Henderson (of “Bridget Jones’’ fame) is haunted by memories of her father’s pigs and how comfortable their lives were compared to her own. Zoe Kazan (“The Exploding Girl’’) is memorable as a young wife frightened to the point of racist hysteria.
From the first shot of the narrow, ox-drawn wagons wobbling across the interminable desert, the absence of Widescreen is felt like a punishment. Reichardt’s unintuitive choice to shoot the film in an almost square TV-size format gives the immense wide open spaces of the West an uncomfortable claustrophobia, adding to a foreboding atmosphere that pervades the trek.
The clash of civilizations competing for the same land — the Native Americans and the encroaching colonists, who aspire to have the territory declared as part of America — is a principal theme here, worked out in a subtly modern, progressive key. Missing is a touch of John Ford’s warmth and humor.


In 1981’s “Arthur,’’ Dudley Moore played a lovable drunk with a fatherly butler, Hobson (John Gielgud).
But the Arthur which opened in theaters Friday featured a much darker, alcoholic bad boy Russell Brand. The new Hobson, played by Helen Mirren, is, as The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt’s review notes, “in constant conflict with her aging charge. She prods sharply where the butler steered with the gentlest of touches.’’
Why the change?
“Society as a whole we’re not expected to be tolerant of that kind of behavior anymore,’’ says Melissa Braun, casting director, Grant Wilfley Casting. (She cast “Burn After Reading,’’ “Men in Black 3’’ and “Boardwalk Empire;’’ her company did not cast “Arthur.’’)
Brand plays the role as a “pathetic, bratty little boy who refuses to grow up,’’ notes Honeycutt’s review, which is “a modern-day view of what an alcoholic is — not acceptable behavior, not lovable,’’ Braun tells THR. “Perhaps they’re having a more responsible interpretation of an alcoholic.’’
Braun credits it to “all that psychoanalysis that became so popular in the ’80s, and everyone going into rehab. Suddenly there’s a different level of hyperawareness of addiction and drugs and alcohol. Even some people argue today that alcohol is more addictive than marijuana. Somebody would never have suggested that 15 years ago.’’

Also, she notes the “conservative Republican movement. It’s so much more constrictive of what’s construed as addictive behavior versus what is just plain having fun and getting drunk.’’
Meanwhile, “it’s easier to glorify drug use than alcohol,’’ adds Braun. Stoner movie “Your Highness’’ opened in theaters Friday as well.
“The stereotype of an alcoholic is somebody on a downward spiral, that looks in really, rough shape. Whereas a pot smoker is very much a college kid, maybe grungy, hippy-looking. I’ve done scenes scenes recreating AA;, ‘We want people who look like troubled souls,’’’ she says. “If we’re looking for a party scene, we want college kids who look like they’re having fun. It’s definitely different.’’
“It’s much easier to make fun and laugh at people getting high than getting drunk,’’ she adds. “There’s a real view out there that alcohol is more dangerous than smoking a joint.’’