John Maclean’s career began when he joined The Beta Band in 1997. His art background led him to create the Scottish folktronica band’s first promo video a year later, making around thrity more before the band split in 2004. An acquaintance showed several of these videos to Michael Fassbender who, acknowledging a raw talent, sought out a potential collaboration. Following the pairing’s association on a number of successful short films, Maclean’s debut feature, starring and executive produced by Fassbender, is the wonderful Slow West.
The innocence of Jay, a well-bred young Scot on the trail of his true-love is pitted against the experience of Silas, a grizzled bounty hunter secretly on the trail of that same love in 1870s Colorado. Rose, the Penelope of both their odysseys, has a bounty of $2000 on her head following the accidental death of Jay’s aristocratic relative back in Scotland, for which she and her father were blamed. Also on her trail is Silas’ former gang, led by Payne as well as enigmatic lone hunter Victor the Hawk.
The hasty education of the young by the experienced is nothing new for the Western genre, but rather than two-dimensional characteristics of young and old, of innocence and experience, Jay and Silas are both valuable to one another and vulnerable at the same time. Early in the film Jay unloads his pistol into the back of a young woman during her bungled attempt at robbing a trading post. He’s far from the fop you might anticipate from his introduction. Equally Silas, for all his apparent ruthlessness, has moments of humour and naivety.
There are echoes of Jean Pierre Jeanet in Maclean’s direction, and perhaps of the Coens and Wes Anderson as well. Seemingly pointless caveats away from the main plotline feel perfectly natural and fitting in Maclean’s world, whereas similar events might feel forced and unnecessary in the film of a lesser director. Jay passes a trio of black men singing by the side of a trail, and briefly converses with them about love in their Native French. Later, he and Silas stumble across the remains of a lumberjack killed by the same tree he was cutting down. The two find themselves under attack from Native Americans disguised as trees (a scene that provided perhaps the most vocal audience reaction of the film), which ends in an almost slapstick way. But these sit naturally in the episodic structure that also includes several well-executed flashbacks.
Slow West presents an unglamorous and authentic view of the 1870s West that you can’t help but feel extends beyond the 1.66:1 frame that we are being shown. The South Island of New Zealand serves perfectly as 19th century Utah; the combination of sparse wasteland and luscious greenery offering more than the genre norm of boundless desert. It is a place riddled with mystery and ruthlessness, a seemingly endless expanse that is utterly alien to some and painfully familiar to others. Death lingers everywhere, a fact made explicit by a wonderful closing montage of every corpse left during the action.
Helped by superb performances by Fassbender and young Kodi Smit-McPhee, as well the always-brilliant Ben Mendehlsohn, Slow West is an incredibly promising debut by writer-director John Maclean.
Slow West will be shown at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 9 July 2015.
Slow West Official Site
We have a favour to ask
LeftLion is Nottingham’s meeting point for information about what’s going on in our city, from the established organisations to the grassroots. We want to keep what we do free to all to access, but increasingly we are relying on revenue from our readers to continue. Can you spare a few quid each month to support us?
