The Western is America’s oldest and proudest film genre, and after a century, independent filmmaker Kelly Reichardt has found a fresh angle.

“Meek’s Cutoff,” which opens Friday, is a superb achievement: lyrical yet realistic, intelligent yet evasive.

It tells the story of three families traveling across Oregon in their covered wagons, circa 1845. Their guide is the charismatic but ineffective Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood). Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams) is the strong center, decisive and practical. During their travels, they come across a lone Indian (Rod Rondeaux) who may lead them to water.  

Reichardt — who directed “Old Joy” and “Wendy and Lucy” and makes her living teaching film-production courses at Bard College in New York — approached the movie in a practical way, researching the real Meek and reading the settlers’ journals.

“So much of American mythology comes from the movies, and there’s a guy who has the answer,” she says. “My intention was to be specific, but not buy into the mythology. So we met with historians and asked them certain questions about how things were done and the answer would always be, ‘What would you do?’ You find yourself looking around, thinking about what tools you have and what’s possible.”

Indeed, Reichardt’s movie subverts the usual movie portrayals of settlers as optimistic and naive (as in “Wagon Master” and “Bend of the River”), though she didn’t start out that way.

“Some things are encoded in the language of those films that I didn’t even think about until I was out there looking through my viewfinder,” she says. “Like if you do a high wide shot and there’s a wagon down below, it will read as a Native American viewpoint, even if you don’t mean it that way. I can’t ignore what came before.”

Williams did her own research, inventing an entire backstory for her character.

“It got so complicated that I couldn’t keep up with it,” Reichardt says, laughing.

In one memorable scene, Emily takes an absurdly long time to load and shoot a rifle — adding gunpowder and making adjustments.

“I wanted to show the process of how long everything took,” Reichardt says. “Westerns are filled with these moments where all of a sudden it’s all action. Walking across the country for six months is not action. It’s more like entering a trance. Just dealing with all this material, it slowed us down. Time was a different thing.”

IF YOU GO

Meek’s Cutoff

Starring Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Rod Rondeaux
Written by Jon Raymond
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Rated PG
Running time 1 hour 44 minutes