Slow West is an American Western made in New Zealand about a Scottish teenager in love. It was written and directed by John Maclean, former keyboardist and DJ for The Beta Band, the eclectic, beloved cult band since dissolved. Maclean’s cinematic tastes are as varied as his former band’s sample selection (check them out, if you’re not familiar). Slow West mixes influences, styles, and themes, and with Maclean’s love of film and respect for his peers, he keeps Slow West from being stuck in the art-house.
The film stars Kodi Smit-MchPhee (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) as Jay Cavendish, a Scottish noble teenager who travels to the US in search of the woman he loves. He crosses paths with a wandering westerner named Silas Selleck (played with wry distance by Michael Fassbender) and the two become traveling companions. In pursuit of the men is Payne (Ben Mendohlsen), who searches for the girl whom Jay seeks.
An airy, wandering movie, with a number of imperfections, Slow West still manages to break many of the expectations of its genre. Maclean doesn’t hide his influences, with the Coens, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, all present in the black humor and violent executions. Maclean tilts his Western towards the absurd without breaking the bounds into complete madness. And trust me when I say this is no small feat.
Mclean has made a terrific and unusual film, one that is certainly to delight audiences. It won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and it has a festival feel throughout-in the best way. It’s strange, funny, and unexpected. The language is arcane, the photography stunning, the men stoic. “Dry your eyes, kid,” Silas tells Jay Cavendish. in a typical exchange. “Let’s drift.”
Throughout the film, I could not help but think of the Beta Band. Specifically, the House Song, from the album, The Patty Patty Sound. It’s a slow and entrancing song, circling on itself lyrically and musically. Among the repetitions is the line: “Put it in your pocket for a rainy day.” The line struck me and stuck with me as I watched Slow West, thinking about the directorial adventure that John Maclean was harboring.
The films of director Andrew Niccol are obsessed with the relationship between humans and technology. This obsession has led him to produce some very bad work (like, The Host). But his best work, Gattaca, Lord of War, The Truman Show, identify a specific technology and explores the consequences of completely integrating that tech into human life. With Gattaca, Niccol portrays a future of bio-engineered humans. In Lord of War its more simple: humanity’s love of guns. And in The Truman Show, the logical conclusions of reality TV.
Niccol goes back to this simplicity with laser focus this year. Good Kill shows audiences what drone warfare operation looks like: a bunch of people, in a room, playing games that cost lives. Niccol again teams up with Ethan Hawke, who plays Major Egan, a former fighter pilot who now spends his days in the desert outside Las Vegas, sitting in a trailer, dropping bombs on targets on other side of the world. Egan does not accept this task with the solitaire dignity of a stoic fighter pilot, as some of his peers do. The actions tear him up; the collateral damage too much to bear. Good Kill is the story of Egan’s emotional PTSD taking his life away.
Niccol wisely choses to focus his film almost entirely on Egan. Hawke has the eyes and the lines of a weary middle-aged man. But he always carries his youth in his characters, and manages to pull a surprising depth from the part that he is given. Egan’s dissolve is matched by the concerns of his wife, played by January Jones. Watching Hawke and Jones play a family in peril is powerful.
Unfortunately, much of what surrounds the Egan family story is too on-point to be of much dramatic effect. But even if the drama is lacking, there are points to be made, and Niccol takes his opportunities. The commanding officer in the movie, Lt. Col. Jack Johns, stands before his men and women declaring lines that read like copy from a military training session. “Drones aren’t going anywhere,” he says at one point. “In fact, they’re going everywhere.” Johns is full of such platitudes, containing a nugget of wisdom and a heap of cliche. Later, Johns will say with all the triteness he can muster: “Don’t ask if this is a just war. For us, it’s just war.”
Still, Good Kill offers a valuable addition to 21st century political cinema. The ethical implications of drone warfare are still unresolved (have we even started?), and yet the U.S. military continues to increase its commitment to the technology. What drone operating will do to the men and women who are at the controls is a question we had better start thinking about now, because it’s going to be one we’re dealing with for years to come. Niccol begins that conversation.
Slow West and Good Kill are showing at St. Anthony Main May 22 - 28.
