Review of Slow West (2015) by Joshua H — 30 May 2015

When "Slow West" played at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Jury Prize Dramatic Award, "The Hollywood Reporter" published a review calling the film "a pitch-perfect debut from musician-turned-filmmaker John Maclean." And though I must disagree with both Sundance and "The Hollywood Reporter" (and most critics) about the movie's perfection, I still find "Slow West" to be a fascinating meditation on violence, civilization and the western genre, itself.

"Slow West" takes place in 1870, and centers on a young man from Scotland, Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee, "Let Me In"), who has come to America in search of his lost love, Rose (Caren Pistorius, "Offspring"). We don't find out until later why she left their homeland, though we catch glimpses of her in flashbacks. When we first meet Ray, he is wandering, alone on horseback, through a desolate landscape of burning Native-American dwellings. A male voice, which we will very soon connect to a bounty hunter named Silas (Michael Fassbender, "12 Years a Slave") narrates this stark opening, before the man, himself, shows up and shoots a would-be hold-up artist in the head, thereby effectively taking young Jay under his wing. The violence does not end here: we're only just getting started. And yet, it's a quiet film, with almost no non-diegetic sounds (differentiating itself from its bleak revisionist cousin of the 1990s, "Dead Man," in which the music of Neil Young blared throughout). When guns are fired and blood spilled, there's usually very little warning. Though the film, reflecting both its title and the time in which it's set, meanders, there is nothing slow about the eruptions of brutality. This is how the so-called civilized world tames the wilderness, through mayhem and turbulence.

So why is it less than perfect? Well, it all feels so schematic: no one speaks like a real human being, and very few characters are allowed enough depth to be meaningful. The film is beautifully photographed by Robbie Ryan ("Philomena"), yet the people who inhabit the landscape feel like constructs. When we briefly meet a German writer named Werner (perhaps a reference to the great Herzog?), he utters the memorable line, "In a short time, this will all be a long time ago." That's a brilliant statement, but it merely serves to underline the fundamental artificiality of the set-up, since no one really talks like that (well, except for Werner Herzog). Still, there are a lot of great concepts up on the screen, and Fassbender is always a pleasure to watch. The equally mesmerizing Ben Mendelsohn ("Bloodline"), shows up for a few all-too-brief scenes, too. See it for them, and for the cinematography, and for the idea of the movie. It may not be great cinema, but it's compelling enough.