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 wider tribute to the celebrated filmmaker, Reichardt explored how her films deliberately shift perspective on conventional storytelling, particularly the Western genre. Rather than claiming to rewrite history, she framed her approach as a intentional recalibration of the cinematic lens—moving away from the patriarchal perspective that has traditionally shaped the form to explore what happens when the mythology is scrutinised from a different angle. Her remarks came as the festival honoured her unique oeuvre, which continually examines power dynamics and hierarchies within American society.
Reconsidering the Western From a Fresh Lens
Reichardt’s revisionist approach finds its most pointed expression in “Meek’s Cutoff,” a film that tracks a group of pioneers lost in the Oregon desert and functions as a direct commentary on American imperial ambition. The director explicitly linked the film’s themes to the historical context of its creation, drawing parallels between the arrogance underlying westward expansion and the invasion of Iraq. “Meek was this guy with all this overconfidence – ‘Here we go!’ – venturing into some foreign land and distrusting the Indigenous people,” she explained, emphasising how the film depicts the cyclical nature of American overreach and the dismissal of those already inhabiting the territories being conquered.
The film’s exploration of power goes further than its narrative surface to interrogate 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 deeply rooted. 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 reframing the Western genre away from celebrating masculine heroism and frontier mythology, Reichardt exposes the violence and recklessness embedded within the nation’s founding narratives.
- Westward expansion propelled by male arrogance and imperial ambition
- Hierarchies of power created prior to formal currency systems
- Exploitation of native populations and environmental destruction
- Cyclical repetition of American overreach and territorial conquest
Power Structures and Capitalism’s Impacts
Reichardt’s filmmaking consistently interrogates the structures of power that support American society, viewing her work as an examination of 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 runs throughout her body of work, appearing in narratives that reveal 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 strategy, with Reichardt outlining how the film’s central narrative of stealing milk serves as a window into larger economic frameworks. The apparently trivial crime transforms into a window into grasping the processes behind business expansion and the recklessness with which those systems handle both the natural world and marginalised communities. By examining these links, Reichardt reveals how control works not through dramatic displays but through the continuous reinforcement of hierarchies that privilege certain populations whilst consistently excluding others, especially Native communities and the natural world itself.
From Initial Trade to Contemporary Platforms
Reichardt’s historical examination of capitalist systems reveals how contemporary 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 had not yet been established yet strict social orders were already deeply embedded. This historical framing allows Reichardt to demonstrate that greed and exploitation are not modern inventions but core features of American colonial and commercial enterprise. By tracing these systems backward, she exposes how contemporary capitalism represents a continuation rather than a break from established precedents of dispossession and environmental destruction.
The director’s investigation of early commerce serves a dual purpose: it situates historically modern economic exploitation whilst also exposing the deep historical roots of Native displacement. By demonstrating how hierarchies functioned before standardised money, Reichardt demonstrates that systems of domination preceded and indeed enabled the rise of modern capitalist systems. This analytical approach questions accounts of improvement and modernisation, indicating instead that American imperial expansion has repeatedly rested on the oppression of Native populations and the extraction of environmental assets, patterns that have merely evolved rather than radically altered across long spans of time.
The Deliberate Speed of Resistance
Reichardt’s method of cinematic rhythm constitutes far more than aesthetic preference; it operates as a deliberate act of resistance against the accelerated consumption patterns that shape contemporary media culture. By abandoning conventional pacing, she establishes scope for viewers to witness the granular details of power’s operation, the nuanced methods in which hierarchies make themselves known through routine and repetition. Her films call for patience and attention, qualities growing uncommon in an entertainment landscape engineered for rapid consumption and immediate gratification. This temporal strategy proves integral to her thematic preoccupations with institutional domination and environmental destruction, obliging spectators to sit with discomfort rather than escape into narrative catharsis.
When presented with characterisations of her work as “slow cinema,” Reichardt resisted the terminology, remembering a particularly memorable broadcast disagreement with NPR’s Terry Gross about “Meek’s Cutoff.” Her objection to this label reveals a broader philosophical position: that her films unfold at the tempo needed to genuinely examine their narrative focus rather than aligning with industrial standards of entertainment consumption. The intentional pacing of plot functions as a structural decision that echoes her thematic concerns, establishing a unified artistic vision where structure and substance strengthen each other. By insisting on this method, Reichardt provokes spectators and commercial cinema to reassess what movies can do when freed from commercial pressures to entertain rather than provoke.
Countering Commercial Manipulation
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, prepares viewers to expect rapid cuts, escalating tension, and instant story resolution. By declining these norms, Reichardt’s films demonstrate how entertainment industry standards serve to normalise consumption patterns that serve corporate interests. Her deliberate pacing becomes a type of formal resistance, insisting that substantive engagement with intricate social and historical issues cannot be rushed or compressed into standardised structures intended for maximum commercial appeal.
This temporal resistance extends beyond mere stylistic choice into territory of genuine political intervention. When audiences sit through extended sequences of landscape, labour, or quiet conversation, they experience time differently—not as something to be consumed and optimised but as material substance worthy of attention. Reichardt’s films thus educate audiences in alternative modes of perception, prompting them to recognise the workings of power 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 eliminate, demonstrating cinema’s capacity to serve as an instrument of ideological resistance rather than commercial reinforcement.
- Extended sequences reveal power’s mundane, quotidian operations within systems
- Slow pacing resists entertainment industry’s acceleration of consumption and attention
- Temporal resistance allows viewers to foster critical consciousness and historical awareness
Fact, Narrative and the Documentary Instinct
Reichardt’s method of filmmaking dissolves conventional boundaries between documentary and narrative fiction, a distinction she views as ever more artificial. Her films function through documentary’s dedication to observational truth whilst drawing on fiction’s narrative frameworks, establishing a combined method that interrogates how stories get told and whose perspectives influence historical narratives. This working practice demonstrates her view that cinema’s power extends beyond spectacular revelation but in patient examination of marginal elements and peripheral perspectives. By resisting exaggerate or embellish her material, Reichardt insists that genuine insight emerges through continued engagement rather than manufactured emotional crescendos, encouraging viewers to identify documentary value in what might initially seem ordinary or undramatic.
This dedication to truthfulness informs her treatment of historical material, especially within films addressing Western expansion and early American capitalism. Rather than celebrating frontier mythology or heroic conquest narratives, Reichardt’s films investigate systems of power, exploitation, and environmental destruction through the experiences of those typically rendered invisible 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 maintaining formal restraint and resisting predetermined meanings, she allows viewers space to cultivate their own critical understanding of how American power structures have historically operated and continue to shape contemporary reality.