The non-ending

Okay, I'll take the bait.

It's loosely based on historical events, so those interested in finding out what happened to the settlers in the end could do worse than open a book. The film itself, though is noticeably unconcerned with either the events that led to the settlers leaving the convoy or what happens to them once they are reunited with it. Instead, it focuses almost entirely on their relationship to the Indian. The historical events placed the settlers in a life-threatening situation in which their collective facade of white, Christian supremacy dissolves almost completely and this is what the film examines. It ends at the point where the last and most aggressive opponent of the Indian’s presence, Meek, admits that he is at the mercy of the Indian’s knowledge and whims. The last scene ends with that long, mysterious shot of the Indian walking into the distance indicating, to me at least, the uncertainty of their position without their usual, unreal self-belief - what the future Americans would term Manifest Destiny.

The Indian led them to water. It is historically documented. There's your answer.

The ambiguity here is the point. A lot of the pilgrims who headed out west in covered wagons took a terrible chance. The landscape they traveled over was an unforgiving one, where lack of water, lack of food, disease, bad weather, losing the trail, snakebites, or 1,000 other problems could easily lead to death for one or all of the members in a wagon train. Given the fact that the pilgrims were venturing out into unfamiliar territory with nothing except what they could carry in their wagons, and given that there were few reliable maps until pilgrims had been traveling to California and Oregon for decades, the crossing was very hazardous. Many pilgrims were seriously unprepared, and many of them died. Even the wisest decisions could be fatal due to chance. Anyone who made it to Oregon did so due to luck, or perhaps fate, as Meek would have it, or maybe by the grace of God.

Meek's Cutoff isn't about the fate that befell one particular group of people; it's about the terrible, terrible uncertainty that pilgrims had to deal with, which grew with every step that took wagon trains away from civilization until they'd gone too far to turn back and took on urgency with every setback--illness, injured oxen, prairie fire--that threatened death before anyone so much as came close to Oregon. Around the corner, any pilgrim might find wealth and happiness in a new land, or he could find a terrible death and suffering at the hands of disease, thirst, or animal attack. The worst part? He wouldn't know which fate would be his for months on end (unless he died before then).

A lot of people have been calling Meek's Cutoff a contemporary Western, but in a lot of ways, it's more a contemporary horror film.

The ending was great. This is not a happy movie. The half dead tree was an amazing metaphor for their situation. This film is meant to put you in their shoes, what better way to do so than leave you with the same daunting fate they faced? The movie was slow because like I said, instead of just a viewing experience, this was meant to play out like an actual experience. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and that's totally ok, but it sounds like you're a bit inept and inexperienced when it comes to recognizing and appreciating out of the box narratives/storytelling.

The reason we have every right to be indignant about the ending is because we are promised one. To those who say that it's just an examination of the plight of settlers crossing the desert and no ending is necessary, I direct your attention to the fact that the director did, in fact, set up what is commonly known as a plot.

The plot in the movie is simple: will they find water? If they run out, they're going to die. That's called stakes. They argue about whether or not to kill the Indian and there is conflict over whether or not he is working with them or against them. That's called dramatic tension drawn from plot. Then we lose a wagon and more water. That's called raising the stakes.

When you establish stakes, raise them and introduce dramatic conflict over them, you are creating what's called a story, which implies a promise to resolve all those things.

This is not an "American" concept. It's a Greek concept and it's several thousand years old.

I seriously have to wonder if they just ran out of film for the camera or money to finish the production. The director was clearly setting us up for a climax. That takes skill and it was done very well and very deliberately. (Story doesn't happen by accident.) I actually have a hard time believing that leaving us hanging that hard was done deliberately. If so, it was a very ill-advised technique. It is not brilliant, academic, artistic or thought-provoking. It's a childish prank, nothing more. It is "art" suitable for a rebellious high school student.

Failure to finish the story in this case is especially egregious because it is based on historical events (The Ridge family blazing the Meek Cutoff trail) and there was a historical conclusion to the journey.)

The director is a brilliant film maker and he has done a great injustice to both his craft and his audience. I enjoyed watching this film and savored the very adept manipulation of the plot with a subtle hand. (The dust and sunlight got worse and worse, for example. BRILLIANT visual dramatic tension.) To throw it all away at the end is just absurd. Brilliant or not, I'll never trust him again. And what's the point if nobody's watching?

I didn’t care for the non ending but I think I get why it was chosen. We are watching the settlers story play out the entire movie, following the plot as observers, then at the very end, we join the experience as the settlers, not knowing how it’s going to end, just like them.

I don't recall "Jaws" just ending that way. Brody clearly killed the shark by shooting the scuba tank, which ruptured and killed the shark. Are you referring to one of the sequels?

They should be punished.