Two period pictures at the New York Film Festival (September 24–October 10) investigate history from an oblique viewpoint. Pablo Larrain’s Post Mortem replays 1973’s bloody coup against Marxist president of Chile Salvador Allende from the perspective of an autopsy clerk; Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, set in 1845, tracks a wandering wagon team on the Oregon Trail at a time when that territory’s ownership was yet to be established.