This weekend I finally got around to seeing a new western – Slow West, by director John Maclean. I liked it, although it won’t make it into my video library. Like The Homesman, I found it too dark for my tastes, although it’s not nearly as dark as The Homesman. There is much to criticize about this film (see the review at http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/slow-west-2015), and I can’t kick on any of the detailed missteps that Cheshire enumerates here. However, for all that, I thought it a worthy western that, as good genre pieces must, both adheres to and deviates from the classic formula of a “western.”
Slow West definitely falls into the category of a “gray western,” as defined by Richard Etulain. Viewers are definitely going to root for the wispy innocent character of Jay Cavendish, but beyond him, there is no certain footing. His “partner,” if you’d call him that, Silas Selleck, is a gray character if ever there was one, cut from the same cloth as the original “man with no name” from Sergio Leone’s famous trilogy. Virtually everyone in the cast follows a blurred moral compass, and in many respects this is a postmodern western that defies the good guy/bad guy dichotomy. It overturns many of the optimistic values of the traditional western. This is a tragic western, but unlike other postmodern westerns, the final scene hints at a classically optimistic ending that reifies the values of the traditional western by suggesting that people can still build a rewarding future in this new land, escape their past and build a new life. That is, provided they can avoid falling victim to the senseless violence that rules the land.
Slow West definitely falls into the category of a “gray western,” as defined by Richard Etulain. Viewers are definitely going to root for the wispy innocent character of Jay Cavendish, but beyond him, there is no certain footing. His “partner,” if you’d call him that, Silas Selleck, is a gray character if ever there was one, cut from the same cloth as the original “man with no name” from Sergio Leone’s famous trilogy. Virtually everyone in the cast follows a blurred moral compass, and in many respects this is a postmodern western that defies the good guy/bad guy dichotomy. It overturns many of the optimistic values of the traditional western. This is a tragic western, but unlike other postmodern westerns, the final scene hints at a classically optimistic ending that reifies the values of the traditional western by suggesting that people can still build a rewarding future in this new land, escape their past and build a new life. That is, provided they can avoid falling victim to the senseless violence that rules the land.
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