How the West was really won
Slow West (out of 4) Starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Caren Pistorius and Ben Mendelsohn. Written and directed by John Maclean. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 84 minutes. 14A There’s more to the story than meets the bull’s eye in Slow West, a brainy and genre-defying western by newcomer John Maclean.
A prizewinner at Sundance 2015, it stars Kodi Smit-McPhee as naive 16year-old Scots aristocrat Jay Cavendish, who is searching for his missing love, Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius), in the lawless Colorado Territory of the late 19th century.
He hires rough gunslinger Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender) to help him find her. Unsmiling Silas tells the woefully unprepared Jay that he really needs someone to watch his back, if he hopes to live long. Psychopaths such as Payne (Ben Mendelsohn) roam the range.
Jay’s quest may be more quixotic than he thinks. Maybe it’s not Rose who needs saving, as a “Wanted” poster suggests early on.
The film subverts genre at every turn, tipping its Stetson to the Coen brothers, as well as John Ford, with character motivations slowly unfolding and always in question.
But it’s not here to satirize or politicize, and with a running time of just 84 minutes, it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. Dialogue is sparse and lean, giving us just what we need and nothing more.
Maclean’s background as a member of the Scottish folk group the Beta Band, for which he made music videos, doubtless taught him the virtue of economy.
Exhibiting filmmaking strengths that belie his inexperience, Maclean proves himself a keen observer not only of human nature, but also of the fullness of wild nature.
His eye and Robbie Ryan’s nimble camera are as much in awe of the vastness of the plains and the starry night sky as young Jay is.
Maclean pulls off a visual pun that is as brilliant as it is cruel.
But he saves his greatest eloquence for the very end.
It’s no spoiler to reveal that we are slowly reminded, in a series of wordless flashbacks, that the Old West was won as much through spilled blood as true grit.