Slow West is a gorgeous film that deserves to be owned in high definition and watched on the widest screen possible, in true Western fashion. A beautiful film that almost feels like some half-remembered dream, director John Maclean uses Scottish and European cinema as a powerful influence with the way he shoots the gorgeous New Zealand scenery, standing in for the Old West. The film has certain 19th-Century novelistic stylings as it carries a heavy use of symbolism that feel more in line with Herman Melville than John Ford - for example, an errant jar of salt that literally collides with a character's wound. These powerful motifs work perfectly with the beats of the plot, which follows an amoral bounty hunter named Silas (Michael Fassbender) who escorts a lovelorn young Scottish lad, Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee), westward across the frontier in search of the boy's true love. There's a lot of subtle musing within the script about the looming closure of the frontier, and these wild men who drift from place to place with no real place in the societies that await them on either coast. Jay claims that there is more to life than survival, and Silas' slow, understated coming-around to Jay's way of thinking is really well done. I t's a treat to own Slow West as it lends itself to multiple viewings and the ability to catch something that may have been missed the previous go round.
Cinephile since 1993, aged 4, when he saw his very first film in the cinema - Jurassic Park - which is also evidence of damn fine parenting. World champion at Six Degrees of Separation. Lender of DVDs to cheap mates. Connoisseur of Marvel Comics and its Cinematic Universe.
