A 16-year-old boy and a world-weary man make their way through a dense forest on horseback. “That’s just a shame,” the boy says to his older counterpart as the two discover a felled tree, a man crushed beneath it, the hand of his rotted corpse still clenching the axe he used to chop it down. “Is it?” the man asks, chortling. The boy responds with a smirk, “No, no it isn’t.” His once-naïve mind, now all but tainted by his companion’s cynicism.
The scene described above is one you might find in a Coen brothers film, or perhaps a Quentin Tarantino joint — though devoid of the popular music Tarantino would use to contrast the 1870s American frontier backdrop. Yet here it is smack dab in the middle of Slow West, the feature directorial debut of John Maclean, and while the film is clearly inspired by Maclean’s predecessors both classic and contemporary, scenes like this fit well within its confines. Stylish, lean, and steeped in cynicism, Slow West is a solid take on the Western thriller, a genre exercise that doesn’t really break any new ground but effectively traverses existing territory.
Slow West is a tragic fable of unrequited love and life on the frontier, set in the treacherous American west and centered on Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a 16-year-old boy from Scotland crossing the land alone in search of Rose, the woman he adores. Having survived thus far despite his youthful inexperience, Jay comes across a band of ex-soldiers who threaten his safety. Enter Silas (Michael Fassbender), a drifter who immediately disarms and kills the men and offers to guide Jay on his journey west for a fee, $50 upfront and $50 on arrival. Jay agrees.
But Jay and Silas quickly come across trouble again in the form of an immigrant couple who holds up a provision store. The scene plays out like a higher-stakes version of one in The Grand Budapest Hotel: the store owner shoots the male outlaw, the female outlaw shoots the store owner, and once the woman turns her gun on Silas, Jay steps in and shoots her in the back. Slow West begins as little more than a surreal drama set on the frontier, Jay pondering the world and dreaming of Rose as he looks up at the stars in the night sky, but here its stakes become clearer. The film isn’t going to end without a body count, and a sizable one at that.
Jay is forced to act opposite his own morals, and he must come to grips with that, but more important than that is a discovery we unearth during the ordeal. What Jay doesn’t know is that Silas, a bounty hunter, has a bigger reward in mind than his escort fee. By way of a “Wanted” poster we learn Rose and her father are on the lam for murder — Jay seems the only person in the country who doesn’t know as much — and Silas hopes Jay can lead him to them so he can collect the $2,000 prize.
With Slow West, what you see is largely what you get. The above premise is rather simple, the film mostly absent of twists and turns, and in stripping the story to its bare essentials Maclean churns out a finished product that passes by like dust in the wind. Traditional revisionist western touches abound — the Coen comparison above is actually rather apt — but while it doesn’t push the genre forward all that much or flip it obviously on its head, Slow West is a wistful and contemplative Western thriller that tweaks its formula just enough to be effective.
At just 84 short minutes the film is a breeze, and yet it manages to fit in enough detours to make the adventure worth embarking upon. Standing in the way of Silas’ desired prize is a gang of bounty hunters he split from years ago in order to forge his own path. Led by Payne (Ben Mendelsohn), the group is hot on Rose’s trail, large enough to divide and conquer but smart enough to recognize their true strength is in numbers. Silas’ other obstacle, of course, is Jay himself, whom Silas has grown not only to tolerate but to like. The relationship that evolves between the two is a large part of what makes the movie worth seeing.
It would be easy to reach the end of Slow West and write it off as a relatively futile exercise in style over substance, its straightforward story leaving little in the way of surprise and its influences well-worn on its untidy sleeves. But there is something more here, as Maclean shows us how pitiless one must be to survive the New World and just how fruitless that lifestyle can be. Robbie Ryan (Philomena) beautifully captures the look of the film, with New Zealand his stand-in for 1870s Colorado. The striking imagery serves as a pretty facade, one vastly at odds with the film’s sordid characters.
One other scene square in the middle of Slow West finds Jay sitting on a chair around a campfire in The Middle of Nowhere, U.S.A. Jay is but a guest dropping by, a loner at the mercy of a nomadic writer. The two begin to converse, the man curious about the east, from which Jay came. What news does it bring? “Violence and suffering,” Jay says. “And West?” he asks. “Dreams,” the man begins, “and toil.” Indeed.
