Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt has provided a candid assessment of American cinema’s tendency to recycle its own myths, telling an audience at the Visions du Réel documentary festival in Nyon, Switzerland, that “the American story keeps repeating itself.” During a Tuesday masterclass as part of a broader retrospective to the celebrated filmmaker, Reichardt explored how her films deliberately shift perspective on conventional storytelling, particularly the Western genre. Rather than asserting to revise history, she framed her approach as a deliberate repositioning of the cinematic lens—moving away from the male-dominated viewpoint that has long dominated the form to explore what happens when the mythology is examined from an alternative viewpoint. Her remarks came as the festival honoured her unique oeuvre, which continually examines power dynamics and hierarchies within American society.
Reinterpreting the Western Through a Different Lens
Reichardt’s reinterpretive approach reaches its sharpest articulation in “Meek’s Cutoff,” a film that tracks a group of settlers stranded in the Oregon desert and functions as a direct commentary on American expansionist ideology. The director explicitly linked the film’s themes to the historical context of its creation, establishing connections between the hubris of westward expansion and the invasion of Iraq. “Meek was this guy with all this hubris – ‘Here we go!’ – venturing into some foreign land and distrusting the Indigenous people,” she explained, emphasising how the film depicts the recurring pattern of American overextension and the dismissal of those already occupying the territories being seized.
The film’s analysis of power transcends its narrative surface to challenge the foundational structures of American society itself. Reichardt described how “Meek’s Cutoff” examines an early form of capitalism, studying a period before currency was established yet when rigid hierarchies were already firmly entrenched. This historical lens allows the director to reveal how systems of exploitation—whether directed at Indigenous communities or the natural environment—have strong foundations in American expansion. By reframing the Western genre away from promoting masculine heroism and frontier mythology, Reichardt exposes the violence and recklessness inherent in the nation’s founding narratives.
- Expansion towards the west propelled by masculine hubris and expansionist goals
- Power structures established before formal currency systems
- Exploitation of Indigenous peoples and environmental destruction
- Cyclical repetition of American overreach and territorial conquest
Systems of Authority and Capitalism’s Impacts
Reichardt’s filmmaking persistently explores the structures of power that support American society, positioning her output as an analysis of hierarchical systems rather than individual moral failings. “A lot of my films are really about hierarchies of power,” she stated during the masterclass, stressing that her interest lies in revealing the structural dimensions of exploitation. This thematic preoccupation pervades her body of work, taking shape through narratives that reveal how seemingly minor transgressions—a stolen commodity, a small crime—connect to sprawling systems of corporate greed and institutional violence that shape the nation’s economic and social landscape.
“First Cow” demonstrates this strategy, with Reichardt explaining how the film’s central narrative of milk theft operates as a reflection of larger economic frameworks. The ostensibly minor crime transforms into a lens for comprehending the mechanisms of corporate accumulation and the disregard with which those frameworks handle both the ecological systems and excluded populations. By focusing on these links, Reichardt shows how control works not through sweeping actions but through the everyday enforcement of hierarchies that privilege certain communities whilst deliberately marginalising others, particularly Indigenous peoples and the ecosystem itself.
From Early Commerce to Contemporary Systems
Reichardt’s historical examination of capitalism demonstrates how modern power structures possess deep historical roots stretching back centuries. In “First Cow,” she examines an initial expression of capitalist logic functioning in pre-currency America, a period when formal monetary systems had not yet been established yet strict social orders were already deeply embedded. This historical framing allows Reichardt to illustrate that greed and exploitation are not modern inventions but core features of American colonial and commercial enterprise. By examining these systems historically, she reveals how contemporary capitalism represents a continuation rather than a departure from established precedents of environmental destruction and dispossession.
The director’s examination of initial economic systems serves a twofold function: it contextualises modern economic exploitation whilst simultaneously revealing the long genealogy of Aboriginal land seizure. By showing how hierarchies functioned before formalised currency, Reichardt illustrates that structures of control antedated and fundamentally enabled the emergence of contemporary capitalism. This viewpoint questions narratives of progress and development, indicating instead that US territorial growth has continually depended on the subjugation of Indigenous peoples and the exploitation of natural resources, developments that have simply shifted rather than radically altered across historical periods.
The Deliberate Pace of Opposition
Reichardt’s approach to cinematic rhythm embodies far more than aesthetic preference; it functions as a deliberate act of resistance against the accelerated purchasing habits that shape contemporary media culture. By eschewing conventional pacing, she establishes scope for viewers to examine the granular details of power’s operation, the understated mechanisms in which hierarchies make themselves known through routine and recurrence. Her films require patience and attention, qualities increasingly rare in an entertainment landscape engineered for rapid consumption and immediate gratification. This temporal strategy proves integral to her thematic preoccupations with structural inequality and environmental destruction, compelling viewers to sit with discomfort rather than escape into narrative catharsis.
When presented with descriptions of her work as “slow cinema,” Reichardt bristled at the terminology, recalling a particularly memorable on-air exchange with NPR’s Terry Gross about “Meek’s Cutoff.” Her resistance to this label reflects a broader philosophical position: that her films progress at the pace required to genuinely examine their narrative focus rather than adhering to commercial conventions of audience engagement. The intentional pacing of plot operates as a structural decision that reflects her subject interests, creating a unified artistic vision where form and content strengthen each other. By advocating for this approach, Reichardt provokes spectators and commercial cinema to rethink what film can achieve when liberated from commercial pressures to please rather than disturb.
Combating Market Exploitation
Reichardt’s refusal to accept accelerated pacing serves as implicit critique of how capitalism shapes not merely economic relations but experience of time itself. Commercial cinema, influenced by studio interests and advertising logic, trains viewers to expect rapid cuts, mounting tension, and quick plot resolution. By refusing these conventions, Reichardt’s films expose how standards of the entertainment industry serve to normalise consumption patterns that advantage corporate interests. Her measured rhythm becomes a type of formal resistance, insisting that meaningful engagement with complicated social and historical matters cannot be hurried or condensed into formula-driven structures created for maximum commercial appeal.
This temporal resistance extends beyond simple aesthetic decisions into territory of genuine political intervention. When audiences sit through extended sequences of landscape, labour, or quiet conversation, they experience time differently—not as commodity to be efficiently managed but as substantive material deserving consideration. Reichardt’s films thus educate audiences in alternative modes of perception, encouraging them to observe the workings of power in moments that conventional cinema would dismiss as dramatically empty. By safeguarding these moments from commercial manipulation, she creates possibilities for critical consciousness that rapid editing and manipulative scoring would eliminate, demonstrating cinema’s capacity to serve as an instrument of ideological resistance rather than capitalist reinforcement.
- Extended sequences demonstrate power’s ordinary, commonplace operations within systems
- Slow pacing counters entertainment industry’s increase in consumption and attention
- Temporal resistance enables viewers to develop critical awareness and historical understanding
Truth, Fiction and the Documentary Impulse
Reichardt’s approach to filmmaking dissolves conventional boundaries between documentary and narrative fiction, a separation she considers ever more artificial. Her films work within documentary’s adherence to observational truth whilst utilising fiction’s compositional potential, developing a blended approach that examines how stories are constructed and whose perspectives influence historical narratives. This methodological approach demonstrates her conviction that cinema’s power extends beyond spectacular revelation but in careful study of minor particulars and underrepresented viewpoints. By resisting exaggerate or embellish her material, Reichardt maintains that genuine insight develops via continued engagement rather than manufactured emotional crescendos, encouraging viewers to recognise documentary value in what might initially seem ordinary or undramatic.
This dedication to truthfulness extends to her examination of historical material, particularly in films addressing Western expansion and early American capitalism. Rather than celebrating frontier mythology or heroic conquest narratives, Reichardt’s films examine power structures, exploitation, and environmental destruction by focusing on those typically rendered invisible in conventional histories. Her documentary impulse thus functions as a form of ethical practice, demanding that cinema document suppressed stories and alternative perspectives. By preserving stylistic restraint and refusing to impose predetermined meanings, she creates room for audiences to cultivate their own analytical perspective of how American power structures have historically operated and continue to shape contemporary reality.