Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt has offered a frank evaluation of American cinema’s habit of repeating 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 masterclass on Tuesday as part of a broader retrospective to the celebrated filmmaker, Reichardt explored how her films intentionally reposition perspective on conventional storytelling, particularly the Western genre. Rather than claiming to rewrite history, she characterised her approach as a deliberate repositioning of the cinematic lens—moving away from the patriarchal perspective that has traditionally shaped the form to explore what happens when the mythology is examined from a different angle. Her remarks came as the festival honoured her unique oeuvre, which consistently interrogates power dynamics and hierarchies within American society.
Reconsidering the Western Through a New Lens
Reichardt’s revisionist approach finds its most pointed expression in “Meek’s Cutoff,” a film that follows a group of pioneers lost in the Oregon desert and functions as a direct commentary on American expansionist ideology. The director directly connected the film’s themes to the historical context of its creation, establishing connections between the hubris of westward expansion and the military intervention in Iraq. “Meek was this guy with all this overconfidence – ‘Here we go!’ – venturing into some foreign land and distrusting the Indigenous people,” she explained, highlighting how the film captures the recurring pattern of American overextension and the disregard for those already occupying the territories being seized.
The film’s analysis of power goes further than its narrative surface to scrutinise the foundational structures of American society itself. Reichardt described how “Meek’s Cutoff” explores an early form of capitalism, examining 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 historical origins in American expansion. By reconceiving the Western genre away from glorifying masculine heroism and frontier mythology, Reichardt exposes the violence and recklessness embedded within the nation’s founding narratives.
- Expansion towards the west propelled by male arrogance and imperial ambition
- Hierarchies of power established before formal currency systems
- Exploitation of Indigenous peoples and ecological damage
- Cyclical repetition of US overextension and territorial conquest
Systems of Authority and Capitalism’s Impacts
Reichardt’s filmmaking consistently interrogates the structures of power that support American society, viewing her work as an investigation into hierarchical systems rather than individual moral failings. “A lot of my films are really about hierarchies of power,” she stated during the masterclass, highlighting how her interest lies in uncovering the institutional basis of exploitation. This thematic preoccupation extends across her body of work, manifesting in narratives that demonstrate how seemingly minor transgressions—a stolen commodity, a small crime—connect to extensive webs of corporate greed and institutional violence that structure the nation’s economic and social landscape.
“First Cow” demonstrates this methodology, with Reichardt outlining how the film’s core story of milk theft operates as a reflection of larger economic frameworks. The apparently trivial crime transforms into a gateway to grasping the workings of corporate accumulation and the carelessness with which those systems regard both the environment and marginalised communities. By highlighting these relationships, Reichardt shows how power operates not through sweeping actions but through the continuous reinforcement of social orders that advantage certain populations whilst systematically disadvantaging others, particularly Aboriginal populations and the environment itself.
From Early Commerce to Modern Platforms
Reichardt’s historical examination of capitalist systems demonstrates how modern power structures have deep historical roots stretching back centuries. In “First Cow,” she explores an initial expression of capitalist logic operating in pre-currency America, a period when official currency frameworks did not yet exist yet rigid hierarchies were already firmly entrenched. This historical framing allows Reichardt to illustrate that exploitation and greed are not modern inventions but core features of American colonial and commercial enterprise. By tracing these systems backward, she reveals how contemporary capitalism constitutes a extension rather than a break from historical patterns of dispossession and environmental destruction.
The director’s investigation of primitive trade serves a double aim: it historicises modern economic exploitation whilst also exposing the deep historical roots of Native displacement. By showing how hierarchies functioned before formal monetary systems, Reichardt demonstrates that frameworks of subjugation came before and actively facilitated the development of modern capitalism. This analytical approach challenges stories of advancement and growth, proposing rather that American imperial expansion has repeatedly rested on the oppression of Native populations and the extraction of environmental assets, developments that have simply shifted rather than fundamentally transformed across long spans of time.
The Calculated Pace of Opposition
Reichardt’s method of cinematic rhythm represents far more than aesthetic preference; it operates as a deliberate act of pushback against the accelerated consumption patterns that define contemporary media culture. By abandoning conventional pacing, she opens room for viewers to examine the granular details of power’s operation, the understated mechanisms in which hierarchies establish themselves through routine and repetition. Her films call for patience and attention, qualities increasingly rare in an entertainment landscape designed for rapid consumption and immediate gratification. This temporal strategy remains bound to her thematic preoccupations with systemic oppression and environmental destruction, forcing audiences to sit with discomfort rather than escape into narrative catharsis.
When faced with descriptions of her work as “slow cinema,” Reichardt bristled at the language, remembering a particularly memorable on-air debate with NPR’s Terry Gross about “Meek’s Cutoff.” Her objection to this label reflects a more expansive artistic philosophy: that her films move at the speed necessary to authentically explore their narrative focus rather than adhering to market-driven norms of audience engagement. The intentional pacing of story functions as a artistic selection that reflects her conceptual preoccupations, establishing a unified artistic vision where structure and substance reinforce one another. By advocating for this strategy, Reichardt pushes spectators and commercial cinema to rethink what film can achieve when freed from commercial pressures to please rather than disturb.
Combating Corporate Deception
Reichardt’s refusal to accept accelerated pacing functions as implicit criticism of how capitalism structures not merely economic relations but experience of time itself. Commercial cinema, influenced by studio interests and advertising logic, prepares viewers to expect fast editing, mounting tension, and immediate narrative resolution. By declining these norms, Reichardt’s films expose how entertainment industry standards serve to normalise consumption patterns that advantage corporate interests. Her deliberate pacing becomes a form of formal resistance, arguing that meaningful engagement with complicated social and historical matters cannot be hurried or condensed into formulaic structures designed for maximum commercial appeal.
This temporal resistance goes further than simple aesthetic decisions into territory of genuine political intervention. When audiences sit through extended sequences of landscape, labour, or quiet conversation, they perceive temporality in alternative ways—not as something to be consumed and optimised but as substantive material deserving consideration. Reichardt’s films thus educate audiences in different ways of seeing, prompting them to recognise power’s operations in moments that conventional cinema would dismiss as dramatically empty. By safeguarding these moments from commercial manipulation, she opens avenues for critical consciousness that rapid editing and manipulative scoring would foreclose, 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 resists entertainment industry’s increase in consumption and attention
- Temporal resistance permits viewers to cultivate critical consciousness and historical understanding
Truth, Fiction and the Documentary Impulse
Reichardt’s approach to filmmaking blurs conventional boundaries between documentary and narrative fiction, a distinction she considers ever more artificial. Her films operate with documentary’s commitment to observational truth whilst employing fiction’s structural possibilities, establishing a hybrid form that questions how stories are constructed and whose perspectives shape historical narratives. This working practice embodies her view that cinema’s power extends beyond spectacular revelation but in careful study of marginal elements and marginal voices. By declining to sensationalise or dramatise her material, Reichardt argues that authentic understanding develops via continued engagement rather than contrived affective moments, encouraging viewers to recognise documentary value in what might initially seem ordinary or undramatic.
This dedication to truthfulness extends to her treatment of historical material, particularly in films exploring Western expansion and early American capitalism. Rather than promoting frontier mythology or heroic conquest narratives, Reichardt’s films examine power structures, abuse of resources, and environmental destruction by focusing on those typically overlooked in conventional histories. Her documentary impulse thus functions as a form of ethical practice, demanding that cinema bear witness to suppressed stories and alternative perspectives. By preserving stylistic restraint and resisting predetermined meanings, she allows viewers space to cultivate their own analytical perspective of how American power structures have historically operated and continue to influence contemporary reality.