• Home
  • Longform
    • Defanging the Unthinkable
      more
      View more

      Defanging the Unthinkable

      8 years ago
    • A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye
      more
      View more

      A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye

      8 years ago
    • The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"
      more
      View more

      The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"

      8 years ago
    • The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"
      more
      View more

      The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"

      8 years ago
  • Interviews
    • A New Way of Telling Love Stories
      more
      View more

      A New Way of Telling Love Stories

      8 years ago
    • Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"
      more
      View more

      Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"

      8 years ago
    • Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast
      more
      View more

      Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast

      8 years ago
    • The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"
      more
      View more

      The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"

      9 years ago
  • Critic-At-Large
    • Now Playing: "From Nowhere"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "From Nowhere"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "War on Everyone"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "War on Everyone"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "The Salesman"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "The Salesman"

      8 years ago
  • Podcast
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"

      8 years ago
Movie Mezzanine
  • Home
  • Longform
    • Defanging the Unthinkable
      more
      View more

      Defanging the Unthinkable

      8 years ago
    • A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye
      more
      View more

      A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye

      8 years ago
    • The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"
      more
      View more

      The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"

      8 years ago
    • The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"
      more
      View more

      The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"

      8 years ago
  • Interviews
    • A New Way of Telling Love Stories
      more
      View more

      A New Way of Telling Love Stories

      8 years ago
    • Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"
      more
      View more

      Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"

      8 years ago
    • Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast
      more
      View more

      Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast

      8 years ago
    • The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"
      more
      View more

      The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"

      9 years ago
  • Critic-At-Large
    • Now Playing: "From Nowhere"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "From Nowhere"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "War on Everyone"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "War on Everyone"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "The Salesman"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "The Salesman"

      8 years ago
  • Podcast
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"

      8 years ago
  • Home
  • Longform
    • Defanging the Unthinkable
      more
      View more

      Defanging the Unthinkable

      8 years ago
    • A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye
      more
      View more

      A Fitting, Impressive Goodbye

      8 years ago
    • The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"
      more
      View more

      The Ambivalent, Bittersweet "My Life as a Zucchini"

      8 years ago
    • The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"
      more
      View more

      The Complex Morality of "No Country for Old Men"

      8 years ago
  • Interviews
    • A New Way of Telling Love Stories
      more
      View more

      A New Way of Telling Love Stories

      8 years ago
    • Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"
      more
      View more

      Breaking Standards with Julian Rosefeldt of "Manifesto"

      8 years ago
    • Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast
      more
      View more

      Indulging Mightily with Alex Ross Perry and the "Golden Exits" Cast

      8 years ago
    • The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"
      more
      View more

      The Ultimate Meta-Performance: Kate Lyn Sheil on "Kate Plays Christine"

      9 years ago
  • Critic-At-Large
    • Now Playing: "From Nowhere"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "From Nowhere"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "Fifty Shades Darker"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "War on Everyone"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "War on Everyone"

      8 years ago
    • Now Playing: "The Salesman"
      more
      View more

      Now Playing: "The Salesman"

      8 years ago
  • Podcast
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 287: "Kundun"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 286: "Pinocchio"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 285: "That Darn Cat"

      8 years ago
    • Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"
      more
      View more

      Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 284: "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement"

      8 years ago
“Slow West”
  • Featured / Theatrical

“Slow West”

  • by Dan Schindel
  • May 11, 2015
  • 0
  • 2938

When working in a genre as well-worn as the Western, the temptation is strong to toy with storytelling form. We’ve seen this in efforts as varied as the revisionist Unforgiven (1992) and last year’s parodic A Million Ways to Die in the West. But John Maclean’s Slow West subverts the expectations of the Western in the least-showy ways of any riff I can think of. There’s never an image or a line of dialogue that shoots a “we know that you know how these things usually go” wink at the audience. Again and again, it simply takes what looks like standard-issue genre situations and then veers off in completely unexpected directions.

What makes the film such a delight is that its subversions always work in service of offbeat comedy, disquieting meditation, or sometimes both. A chase sequence appears set to begin, only for two men to be thrown from the horses in a nigh-on Three Stooges gag. A visit to a trading post springs into a tense gun standoff that ends in bleak viciousness. Safety appears to have been reached with a kindly traveling-wagon man, only for him to abandon the protagonist in the night, leaving him solitary on the vast Colorado plain. The straightforward quest at the movie’s center ambles through one deadpan absurdity after another.

The story follows young Scotsman Jay (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who follows his love Rose (Caren Pistorius) across the Atlantic into the uncharted 1800s American West after she and her father John (Rory McCann) become fugitives. Jay’s joined in his journey by Silas (Michael Fassbender), a rogue who becomes his escort half by volunteering and half by almost-threatening insistence. But Silas is only after the bounty on Rose and John’s heads, and so is his former gang, led by the intimidating (and magnificently coat-adorned) Payne (Ben Mendelsohn). It’s a race across the prairie to see who gets to Rose and John in time—though, as the film’s title suggests, it turns out to be quite a slow one.

Jay’s an outsider in the wilderness—but then, the same could be said for many young Western leads (True Grit’s Mattie Ross, The Searchers’s Martin Pawley—even Back to the Future’s Marty McFly, if you wanna be cute). The difference here is that everyone who tells Jay some variation on “this is no place for you” is continually proven right. Slow West quietly disassembles the American ideal of the “Old West,” a semi-mythical realm where any man with enough pluck and gumption can make it—a notion that is itself an extension of the American Dream. Jay has a heart full of love driving him forward, but love is hardly enough. There’s a point to the movie’s insistent defiance of Western-genre traditions: He (and by extension, we the audience) can’t cut it in this unforgiving environment. And it’s not a matter of the West being a place of omnipresent violence where only the savage survive—it’s simple competency. Rose and John aren’t hard and grim like Silas, but they make it because they know what they’re doing. The viewer soon learns that even Jay’s love for Rose is just another fantasy.

Slow West dances between cheekiness, tragedy and thrills with breathtaking deftness. The climactic gunfight has both an exciting and original setup (it can best be described as whack-a-mole in a wheat field) and culminates in a magnificent visual joke that I won’t dare spoil here. This is a measured, patient film about the idea of the West (appropriately, its cast, crew, and New Zealand shooting locations are all European or Oceanian) that thankfully never feels as dry and academic as that description sounds.

Tags
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Related posts

  • JakeCole
4
This Week on MUBI: “Velvet Goldmine”

This Week on MUBI: “Velvet Goldmine”

9 years ago
  • KenjiF
5
“Anomalisa” Is A Genuinely Enlivening Work of Art

“Anomalisa” Is A Genuinely Enlivening Work of Art

9 years ago
  • JakeCole
16
Back to Basics in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

Back to Basics in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

9 years ago

One thought on ““Slow West””

  1. Pingback: The 50 Best Movies of 2015 | Movie Mezzanine

About Us

Movie Mezzanine is an online publication dedicated to covering the medium that connects us all, one film at a time. With writers stationed around the globe, we offer a uniquely diverse perspective on cinema, both old and new. To learn more about us, go here.

Spotlight

Putting the Geek to the Plow

Cleantalk Pixel