There’s a timeless quality to Western cinema that perpetuates its appeal across the years. Whether by the reminiscence of somewhat simpler times or the heroic figures that transcend through these stories, the genre has still produced outstanding films up to this day. Eleven years ago, a new classic emerged in the form of John Maclean’s Slow West. Starring Michael Fassbender as a cynical cowboy and Kodi Smit-McPhee as a love-struck Scotsman, the film follows the pair on their quest through the American plains.
At times, the film feels more like a buddy road trip with a western setting. It then exposes the brutal nature of the Wild West, all while dismantling the idealization of love. Thus, in its tight 84 minutes, Slow West reinvents the genre by exploring the real motivations of those we call heroes. Through Silas Selleck, Fassbender perfects his ability to portray morally-gray characters, delivering one of the best performances in his select filmography. While the film underperformed at the box office, it succeeded critically, with a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score. All these years later, the score holds up, and the film keeps getting better with every rewatch.
Western Landscapes Are Meshed With the Brutality of the Times in ‘Slow West’
Image via Lionsgate
In Slow West, the vast western landscape is one of the main characters. Its beauty is highlighted in each shot by Maclean and cinematographer Robbie Ryan. The magnitude of the American plains might suggest a calm and quiet existence for its inhabitants, but the story of Fassbender’s Silas and Smit-McPhee’s Jay paints a totally different picture. Their journey transforms the dreamy landscape into a lawless land with high stakes.
Silas and Jay encounter many hardships in their path, like savage attacks and robberies. But, in Ben Mendelsohn‘s Payne, the duo finds their most ruthless antagonist. Through his crew of bounty hunters, Payne proves money is the driving force of shifting allegiances. His presence somehow darkly mirrors Silas’, as both share the motivation of a bounty. But, while Silas’ ways are more nuanced, Payne resorts to brutality and violence to achieve his goals.
Although Silas and Jay start off as a team, it soon becomes clear that Silas follows the “every man for himself” rule. The Wild West has forced him to develop a tough outer shell to protect himself from the world’s harshness – thus severing him from any meaningful connections. Still, through Fassbender’s portrayal, Silas is fleshed out as a conflicted character with a redeemable soul. His loneliness caused him to lose touch with his humanity but, in his alliance with Jay, he learns to reconnect quietly with his empathy. There’s no great heroic moment for him, just a slow turn into a better version of himself.
‘Slow West’ Teaches Tough Lessons of Life and Love
Silas and Jay’s journey originates with the latter’s infatuation with Rose (Caren Pistorius). Trailing her all the way from Scotland, Jay travels to America, where she has found a refuge for her and her family. Not only does Jay uproot his whole life to find her, but he also abandons his comfort and innocence along the way. His naïveté makes you wonder how he’s been able to come this far, but you still root for him to make it out unharmed.
Jay’s journey is the living image of old-time love. He worships an idealized version of Rose that he has constructed in his mind. Through flashbacks, his perception of love is exposed as one-sided. Slow West is clear in establishing this, anticipating that Jay won’t become a hero either. Still, Smit-McPhee’s interpretation achieves a sense of triumph, regardless of how Jay’s journey was doomed from the start.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Slow West features a mix of elements of the Western genre: infinitely beautiful landscapes, a battle of two opposing forces, and a love story. But by slowly overturning each of them, the film achieves a unique essence. Vast landscapes are reduced to confined battlefields, the opposing forces are painted in different shades of gray, and the love story transforms into one that never was. By dismantling all these structures of the traditional Western film, Slow West redefines the genre – and still holds up all these years later.
