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 perpetually recycles itself.” During a masterclass on Tuesday as part of a broader retrospective to the acclaimed director, Reichardt explored how her films deliberately shift perspective on traditional narratives, particularly the Western genre. Rather than claiming to rewrite history, she characterised her approach as a intentional recalibration of the cinematic lens—moving away from the patriarchal perspective 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 celebrated her unique oeuvre, which continually examines power dynamics and hierarchies within American society.
Reinterpreting the Western Through a New Lens
Reichardt’s reinterpretive approach reaches its sharpest articulation in “Meek’s Cutoff,” a film that follows a group of pioneers stranded in the Oregon desert and serves as a direct commentary on American expansionist ideology. The director directly connected the film’s themes to the political moment of its creation, establishing connections between the arrogance underlying westward expansion and the military intervention in Iraq. “Meek was this guy with all this hubris – ‘Here we go!’ – heading into some foreign land and mistrusting the Indigenous people,” she explained, highlighting how the film depicts the recurring pattern of American overreach and the disregard for those already inhabiting the territories being conquered.
The film’s examination of power transcends 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 deeply rooted. This historical lens allows the director to expose how systems of exploitation—whether directed at Indigenous communities or the natural environment—have deep roots in American expansion. By reconceiving the Western genre away from glorifying masculine heroism and frontier mythology, Reichardt reveals the violence and recklessness woven throughout the nation’s founding narratives.
- Westward expansion driven by masculine hubris and expansionist goals
- Power structures created prior to formal currency systems
- Exploitation of Indigenous peoples and environmental destruction
- Recurring pattern of US overextension and territorial conquest
Systems of Authority and Capitalist Effects
Reichardt’s filmmaking persistently explores the structures of power that support American society, treating her films 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, emphasising that her interest lies in uncovering the institutional basis of exploitation. This thematic preoccupation pervades her body of work, appearing in narratives that show 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” illustrates this strategy, with Reichardt explaining how the film’s central narrative of stealing milk operates as a window into wider capitalist systems. The apparently trivial crime transforms into a lens for comprehending the workings of capitalist wealth-building and the carelessness with which those frameworks treat both the natural world and marginalised communities. By highlighting these connections, Reichardt reveals how power operates not through grand gestures but through the everyday enforcement of social orders that favour certain populations whilst consistently excluding others, especially Aboriginal populations and the ecosystem itself.
From Early Commerce to Modern Platforms
Reichardt’s analytical study of capitalist systems reveals how contemporary power structures have deep historical roots extending back centuries. In “First Cow,” she examines an early manifestation 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 firmly entrenched. This historical framing allows Reichardt to demonstrate that exploitation and greed are not contemporary creations but foundational elements of American colonial and commercial enterprise. By examining these systems historically, she reveals how modern capitalist systems represents a continuation rather than a break from historical patterns of environmental destruction and dispossession.
The director’s analysis of initial economic systems serves a double aim: it situates historically contemporary economic violence whilst simultaneously revealing the extended lineage of Native displacement. By illustrating how power structures operated before standardised money, Reichardt illustrates that structures of control antedated and fundamentally enabled the emergence of contemporary capitalism. This viewpoint contests accounts of improvement and modernisation, proposing rather that American imperial expansion has consistently relied upon the oppression of Native populations and the exploitation of natural resources, trends that have only transformed rather than fundamentally transformed across centuries.
The Deliberate Tempo of Defiance
Reichardt’s approach to cinematic rhythm represents far more than aesthetic preference; it functions as a deliberate act of pushback against the accelerated purchasing habits that define contemporary media culture. By eschewing conventional pacing, she creates space for viewers to observe the granular details of power’s operation, the subtle ways in which hierarchies make themselves known 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 proves integral to her thematic preoccupations with structural inequality and environmental destruction, forcing audiences to sit with discomfort rather than escape into narrative catharsis.
When faced with portrayals of her work as “slow cinema,” Reichardt bristled at the language, remembering a notably contentious on-air debate with NPR’s Terry Gross about “Meek’s Cutoff.” Her rejection of this label demonstrates a wider conceptual framework: that her films progress at the pace required to truly investigate their subject matter rather than adhering to market-driven norms of viewer satisfaction. The intentional pacing of narrative functions as a structural decision that reflects her subject interests, creating a unified artistic vision where technique and meaning reinforce one another. By championing this method, Reichardt pushes audiences and the industry alike to rethink what film can achieve when freed from commercial pressures to entertain rather than provoke.
Combating Corporate Deception
Reichardt’s rejection of accelerated pacing serves as implicit critique of how capitalism shapes not merely economic relations but experience of time itself. Commercial cinema, shaped by studio interests and advertising logic, trains viewers to expect fast editing, building suspense, and instant story resolution. By declining these norms, Reichardt’s films demonstrate how standards of the entertainment industry serve to naturalise consumption patterns that benefit corporate interests. Her intentional pace becomes a form of formal resistance, insisting that meaningful engagement with complex social and historical questions cannot be rushed or compressed into formulaic structures intended for maximum commercial appeal.
This temporal resistance goes further than mere stylistic choice into territory of genuine political intervention. When audiences experience extended sequences of landscape, labour, or quiet conversation, they experience time differently—not as something to be consumed and optimised but as substantive material deserving consideration. Reichardt’s films thus train viewers in different ways of seeing, encouraging them to observe power’s operations 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 foreclose, 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 counters entertainment industry’s increase in consumption and attention
- Temporal resistance permits viewers to cultivate critical consciousness and historical awareness
Fact, Narrative and the Documentary Instinct
Reichardt’s method of filmmaking blurs traditional distinctions between documentary and narrative fiction, a distinction she views as ever more artificial. Her films work within documentary’s commitment to observational truth whilst drawing on fiction’s compositional potential, creating a hybrid form that questions how stories are constructed and whose perspectives dominate historical narratives. This strategic method embodies her view that cinema’s power extends beyond spectacular revelation but in careful study of marginal elements and peripheral perspectives. By declining to sensationalise or dramatise her material, Reichardt insists that authentic understanding arises from prolonged focus rather than contrived affective moments, encouraging viewers to acknowledge documentary value in what might initially appear mundane or undramatic.
This commitment to truthfulness informs her examination 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 investigate power structures, exploitation, and environmental destruction through the experiences of those typically overlooked in conventional histories. Her documentary impulse thus functions as a form of ethical practice, insisting that cinema document suppressed stories and alternative perspectives. By preserving stylistic restraint and resisting predetermined meanings, she allows viewers space to develop their own critical understanding of how American power structures have historically operated and continue to influence contemporary reality.