Slow West was released on May 15th, 2015. It is written and directed by John Maclean. It tells the story of Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) a young Scottish man who travels to the American West to search for his lover, Rose (Caren Pistorius). Along the way he employs the services of bounty hunter Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender). Unknown to Cavendish, there is a bounty on Rose's head, one which Selleck hopes to collect.
Slow West deals with a subject that westerns often neglect: the experience of foreign immigrants in the west. Early in the film a Swedish couple, desperate for money, rob a trading post. Jay is forced to kill the wife in order to protect Silas. Outside they find the couple's hungry children, now orphans. This entails a loss of innocence for Jay which is a running theme throughout the film. At one point, after abandoning Silas, he meets a traveling writer named Werner, who is writing a book about the tragic experience of Native Americans in the west. Jay feels awkward around Werner asking him "You care not to share your company with a murderer?" But Werner, it turns out, is not to be trusted either. He runs off in the night with Jays horse, leaving him alone in the desert until Silas shows up and the two men reunite. The biggest naive notion that Jay holds on to through most of the film, is his unwavering love for and devotion to Rose. This, it turns out, will also prove unfounded. Jay's naivety is contrasted with Silas' cynical outlook on life. He narrates, 'To him, we were in a land of hope and good will. The way I saw it... kick over any rock and most likely a desperado will crawl out and knife you right in the heart if there was a dollar in it." Ultimately, the two men influence each other. Jay becomes more pragmatic and loses his sense of naivety. Silas, by contrast, loses some of his cynicism and finds some purpose to his life.
Silas narration, and the often surreal tone of the film in general, give it the feeling of a story told around a campfire. There's one scene where Jay, intoxicated, stumbles on the camp of Payne, the head of Silas old gang. One of the gang, named Skelly, relates a story about a friend he once had who killed as many people as he could in order to become famous. To stop him, Skelly made a fake wanted poster with his friend's name on it but his friend, still unsatisfied, was still determined to kill more people to increase the reward money. The next morning Skelly hears a shot and sees a man standing over a body. Thinking someone has killed his friend for the reward he kills the man only to find that his friend is still alive and the man was standing over a dead bear. This scene, in many ways, seems pointless and out of place. But if you approach the whole film like a tall tale, told by a bunch of drunks around a campfire, it starts to make more sense. This is probably what I appreciate most about the film. After all, what is the western if not an extension of American folklore.
The film is not without its flaws. Maclean's use of extended flashback is obtrusive at times and the ending is a little too neat. But if his storytelling is a little lacking he makes up for it with his biting dialogue. Jay: "Charles Darwin talks of ‘evolution by natural selection’" Silas: "For our sake lets hope he's wrong". Kodi Smit-McPhee and Micheal Fassbinder both deliver the dialogue well and they have good chemistry together. Fassbinder is quite adept by now at playing cynical loners (Magneto, Edward Rochester) and McPhee is really fits the role of the wide eyed, naive young romantic. Also worth mentioning is the beautiful cinematography courtesy of Robbie Ryan.
The most common complaint levied against the modern western genre is that it has become tired and formulaic. While I find this is often the case movies like
Slow West (or
Bone Tomahawk which I reviewed a few weeks ago) are proof that it still has some life left.
Score: 9/10
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