Contrary to many other reviews, I do not urge you to see this. Sure, there is some sparse filmmaking that conveys a landscape, the experience of vicariously inhabiting for a while. But there are so many other sojourns to take into untravelled edges of the map - Malick, Herzog, Weir, etc - that actually quench the thirst, that I see little reason to parch with this.
So the scout leading the band of godfearing settlers to Oregon is lean, craggy, violent, the kind of person who blazed the trails now traveled by civilization. But now it's the turn of the younger man who instead of kicking around the Indian can barter with him for directions. Do you see how thin, how schematic?
There is the reversal of western modes that we sensibly expect from a western at this time and age; we're with the women's point-of-view for all this, relegated to merely observing from a little out of way as the men lay down the plans for what the world should be. Oh, we see them to be thoroughly clueless to even decide which way to circle around a riverbed.
As for the ending, suitably vague, we can surmise the outcome by our knowledge of history. Who got eventually swept aside in the race for modern civilization, who made it to the other end. Who merely vanished with the land.
Could it be the female, caring hand behind the film, that can't bring herself to wreak real havoc upon these lives? Because it's all strangely lethargic, of course like the journey itself some will insist. But where is the dread? Notice, by contrast, how masculine felt Valhalla Rising from last year - another mixed film from the same mould.
Or maybe it's simply this particular filmmaker, female or not, who can get on the road but is unsure where to lead us, or if at all. There is precious little in the way of visual metaphor, recurring pattern, or introspection that takes us to the bottom of things.
It's a rather hollow thing, the low rumbling of wagon-wheels on flat wilderness, scattered with a few evocative moods. It was perhaps unavoidable that the fashionably minimal would come out West.
I recommend that you rewatch Tree of Life - since this ends with the image of one - or skip ahead to Tarr who, if nothing else, at least is not lukewarm about the void, but at the same time I don't want to dissuade you. By all means.
