43-578: Slow West is a 2015 revisionist Western film written and directed by John Maclean in his directorial debut . It stars Kodi Smit-McPhee as a young Scotsman searching for his lost love in the American West , accompanied by a bounty hunter played by Michael Fassbender . It premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival on 24 January 2015, where it was awarded the Sundance Institute's World Cinema Jury Prize: Dramatic Winner. The film
86-770: A "Best of the Web Pick", describing its best feature as "boards teeming with filmmakers" and its worst as "glacial search engine". IndieWire has been praised by Roger Ebert . In 2012, IndieWire won the Webby Award in the Movie and Film category. In 2022, IndieWire 's entire staff was honored as the Best Website, Traditional News Organization by the Los Angeles Press Club at its annual Southern California Journalism Awards, with judges noting that
129-434: A Hollywood perspective, hidden by a huge amount of mainstream news. As filmmaker Doug Wolens points out, IndieWire is one of the few places where filmmakers can consistently and reliably keep on top of often-ignored small film festivals, which films are opening and what other filmmakers are thinking." In 2002, Forbes magazine recognized IndieWire , along with seven other entrants, in the "Cinema Appreciation" category, as
172-408: A dream of Silas and Rose living together with a child. They awaken to find that Payne has stolen their weapons. Silas discloses the bounty to Jay. They evade Payne's gang in a forest, where Jay is injured by Native Americans. Rose and her father live in a nearby prairie, protected by a Native American called Kotori. Victor, disguised as a priest, tracks them down and kills Rose's father. After reaching
215-459: A gunfighter is over. Shane rides away to an uncertain future, possibly to die (he is wounded), and it is farmer Starrett ( Van Heflin ) and his family who endure. Fifteen years after Stevens's Shane , Sergio Leone directed Once Upon a Time in the West , a revisionist Western which completely subverts the traditional with complex characters and multiple plot devices, the key one being revenge –
258-541: A new perspective on the Western genre. Early examples of this sub-genre are Leone's A Fistful of Dollars , starring Clint Eastwood , and Corbucci's Minnesota Clay , starring Cameron Mitchell , both made in 1964. The revisionist and psychological Westerns have been carried forward from their own standard settings into the neo-Western , a notable of which is the Coen brothers ' No Country for Old Men (2007), based on
301-402: A traditional Western drifter riding across a traditional Western landscape but it is soon apparent that he has entered a complex setting which is populated by, as Kim Newman puts it, "believable characters with mixed motives". Even though rancher Ryker ( Emile Meyer ) is ostensibly the villain of the piece, he makes the point that he has striven for thirty years to develop the cattle range which
344-458: A wanted poster offering a $ 2,000 bounty for Rose and her father. He plans to use Jay to get to the bounty. Another bounty hunter, Victor the Hawk, also takes notice of the poster. Inside, a Swedish couple attempts a robbery which results in the death of the owner and the husband. Jay intervenes and shoots the wife. Silas and Jay gather provisions and leave, abandoning the couple's children outside. In
387-575: Is Scottish, "felt the scenes in Scotland had to be shot there" and not in New Zealand. The film received critical acclaim upon its premiere at Sundance. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 92% of 138 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's consensus reads: " Slow West serves as an impressive calling card for first-time writer-director John M. Maclean—and offers an inventive treat for fans of
430-710: Is generally agreed that there were hints of a darker perspective in some films of the 1930s such as Westward Ho (1935), directed by Robert N. Bradbury and starring John Wayne , in which the hero leads a band of vigilantes on a quest for revenge. Westward Ho is the earliest film in AllMovie 's list of revisionist Westerns. The earliest films classified by AllMovie as psychological Westerns are The Ox-Bow Incident and The Outlaw (both 1943). The Outlaw/Gunfighter sub-genre focused on outlaws and gunfighters as human beings rather than using them as stock characters, often dressed in black, as in traditional Westerns. The aim
473-481: Is not exhaustive. It includes major films labelled revisionist Western, anti-Western, psychological Western, Indian Western, outlaw Western, gunfighter Western, or spaghetti Western. By 1970, revisionism had supplanted the traditional as the predominant Western sub-genre and so the list highlights the films released until then to illustrate the development of the concept. Subsequently, revisionist themes have prevailed in Western film production. Major releases from 1971 to
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#1732775293640516-411: Is now being taken over by fence-building " sodbusters ", many of whom have the mixed motives noted by Newman. Despite the complexity of its characters, Shane is nevertheless filmed in a conventional setting and ends with the hero outshooting and killing the three main villains. There is, however, an element of revisionism in the ending when the disillusioned Shane admits to Ryker that he knows his day as
559-426: Is part of Penske Media . It has a staff of 26 people, including publisher James Israel, editor-in-chief Dana Harris-Bridson, editorial director Kate Erbland, digital director Christian Blauvelt, and editor-at-large Anne Thompson . In Wired , in 1997, Janelle Brown wrote: "Currently, IndieWire has little to no competition: trades like The Hollywood Reporter and Variety may cover independent film, but from
602-546: The Sundance Film Festival to begin their coverage of film festivals; it offered indieWIRE: On The Scene print dailies in addition to online coverage. Printed on site, in low-tech black-and-white style, the publication was able to scoop traditional Hollywood trade dailies Variety and The Hollywood Reporter due to the delay these latter publications had for being printed in Los Angeles. The site
645-592: The 1960s, not bound by the Hays Code, were strongly revisionist by presenting morally ambiguous stories featuring an anti-hero or a sympathetic villain . From 1969, revisionism has prevailed in Western film production. The traditional Western typically features a strong male lead character, often a lawman or cavalry officer, who takes direct action on behalf of supposedly civilized people against those deemed to be uncivilized ( see also : Civilizing mission ). The former are portrayed as honest townsfolk or travelers, and
688-590: The Swedish children. On 19 September 2013, it was announced that Michael Fassbender , Kodi Smit-McPhee , and Ben Mendelsohn had joined the cast of Slow West , produced by Film4 Productions . Principal photography commenced on 21 October 2013 in New Zealand, which stood in for the film's Colorado setting. The flashbacks set in the Scottish Highlands were filmed in Wester Ross . Maclean, who
731-551: The Western as a way to represent Leftist doctrine in the second half of the 1960s, interpreting the conflict between Mexico and the U.S. through the lens of Italian politics. Leone popularized the morally ambivalent gunfighter through his representation of "The Man with No Name," Clint Eastwood's gritty anti-hero who was copied again and again in Spaghetti Westerns in characters such as Django and Ringo and which came to be one of its universal attributes. Beginning in
774-516: The Western." On Metacritic , the film has a score of 73 out of 100, based on 27 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Rodrigo Perez of The Playlist in his review said: "Slow-burning and simmering, Slow West knows how to kick the voltage into high gear." Bilge Ebiri of New York magazine gave the film a positive review, and said that it is "an absurdist, melancholy coming-of-age tale that jumps from odd comedy to striking violence to stirring reflection". Michelle Orange of SBS gave
817-427: The early 1970s are particularly noted for their hyper-realistic photography and production design. Other films, such as those directed by Clint Eastwood , were made by professionals familiar with the Western as a criticism and expansion against and beyond the genre. Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales ( 1976 ) and Unforgiven ( 1992 ) made use of strong supporting roles for women and Native Americans . This list
860-453: The film four-out-of-five stars, and said that " Slow West is defined by a kind of loving ambivalence—about its hero, its genre, and perhaps most of all about a landscape so harsh and so beautiful it almost makes a man hope to die." Revisionist Western The revisionist Western is a sub- genre of the Western fiction. Called a post-classical variation of the traditional Western,
903-408: The film inspired goodwill to other Native American chiefs such as Sitting Bull , Crazy Horse and Geronimo – as a result, "it became fashionable for Westerns to be pro-Indian". Many of the films were produced in the 1950s during the milieu of McCarthyism and attempted to strike back against blacklisting of the film industry at that time, notably High Noon (1952) starring Gary Cooper . By
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#1732775293640946-469: The footsteps of various web- and AOL -based editorial ventures, IndieWire was launched as a free daily email publication in the summer of 1996 by New York- and Los Angeles-based filmmakers and writers Eugene Hernandez , Mark Rabinowitz, Cheri Barner, Roberto A. Quezada , and Mark L. Feinsod. Initially distributed to a few hundred subscribers, the readership grew rapidly, passing 6,000 in late 1997. In January 1997, IndieWire made its first appearance at
989-697: The late 1960s, independent filmmakers produced revisionist and hallucinogenic films, later retroactively identified as the separate but related subgenre of " acid Westerns ,” that radically turn the usual trappings of the Western genre inside out to critique both capitalism and the counterculture . Monte Hellman 's The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind (1966), Alejandro Jodorowsky 's El Topo ( 1970 ), Roland Klick 's Deadlock (1970), Robert Downey Sr. 's Greaser's Palace ( 1972 ), Alex Cox 's Walker ( 1987 ), and Jim Jarmusch 's Dead Man ( 1995 ) fall into this category. Films made during
1032-484: The latter as outlaws or hostile Native Americans . In the revisionist Western, the traditional format and themes are subverted by such devices as the Native American protagonist; strong female characters ; the outlaw protagonist; plots that are pre-eminently concerned with survival in a wild environment; or the presentation of a morally ambiguous storyline without definite heroes, these often featuring
1075-573: The most successful directors were Italian, resulting in these films being known by the misnomer Spaghetti Western. Leone is often credited with initiating the growth of these co-produced European Westerns as he played a seminal role due to the financial success of A Fistful of Dollars. Scholars such as Austin Fisher have begun to pay attention to how in this popular genre Italian directors such as Damiano Damiani , Sergio Sollima and Sergio Corbucci , in responding to international and national events, chose
1118-486: The motive of enigmatic gunfighter Harmonica ( Charles Bronson ). As in Shane , it is not the gunfighters who "inherit the West" but in this case the compassionate town-building ex-prostitute Jill ( Claudia Cardinale ). By the end of the film, all of the antagonists except Harmonica are dead and, like Shane, he rides away to an uncertain future. Opinion is divided on the origin of the revisionist or psychological Western but it
1161-438: The next morning, Werner has left, stealing Jay's horse and equipment. Silas finds Jay and returns Jay's horse and belongings, saying he ran into Werner while looking for Jay. The pair meets Payne, the leader of Silas's old gang, which has taken in the Swedish children. Payne gives Silas and Jay an absinthe in a failed attempt to gather information about Rose and her father's whereabouts. While they are asleep, Silas and Jay share
1204-425: The past, Rose is aware of Jay's affection in Scotland, but only cares for him as a "little brother". Jay's uncle, Lord Cavendish, accidentally dies in an argument with John Ross, Rose's father. Rose and her father leave for America with a bounty on their heads. In the present, Jay abandons Silas and proceeds alone, thinking him a "brute". He meets a travelling writer, Werner, who offers to accompany Jay. When Jay wakes
1247-504: The prairie, Silas ties Jay to a tree to keep him from harm. Silas rushes to the house to warn Rose of Payne's gang but is wounded by Victor. Payne and his men murder Victor and assault the house. Jay frees himself and runs to the house. After Kotori and most of Payne's gang are murdered, Rose realizes she has shot Jay in the confusion. While she comforts him, Payne enters the house, and Jay shoots him. As he dies, Silas tells Rose that Jay loved her "with all his heart". Silas stays with Rose and
1290-506: The present include: Indiewire IndieWire is a film industry and film criticism website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film , although its coverage has grown to "include all aspects of Hollywood and the expanding universes of TV and streaming". IndieWire is part of Penske Media Corporation . The original IndieWire newsletter launched on July 15, 1996, billing itself as "the daily news service for independent film ". Following in
1333-527: The revisionist subverts the myth and romance of the traditional by means of character development and realism to present a less simplistic view of life in the " Old West ". While the traditional Western always embodies a clear boundary between good and evil , the revisionist Western does not. Revisionist themes have existed since the early 20th century but it was not until 1968, when the Hays Code restrictions were relaxed, that revisionism finally supplanted
Slow West - Misplaced Pages Continue
1376-517: The site is "full of analysis of entertainment issues, not to mention the depth of most of the pieces that immediately pop up on the site. Quite compelling and thought-provoking." The IndieWire Critic's Poll is an annual poll by IndieWire that recognizes the best in American and international films in a ranking of 10 films on 15 different categories. The winners are chosen by the votes of the critics from IndieWire and other invited critics from around
1419-407: The so-called anti-hero or a sympathetic villain . The object is to blur the traditionally clear boundaries between "right" and "wrong" (the "good guy" against the "bad guy") by emphasizing the need for survival amidst ambiguity. The traditional Western treats characters in simplistic terms as good or bad with minimal character development . The psychological Western, which began in the 1940s and
1462-783: The time of the loosening, and later abandonment, of the restrictive Hays Code in the 1960s, many directors of the New Hollywood generation such as Sam Peckinpah , George Roy Hill , and Robert Altman focused on the Western and each produced their own classics in the genre, including Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971). Meanwhile, European directors such as Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci had been making Western films unencumbered by American expectations nor Hays Code inspired censorship, and these spaghetti Westerns also provided
1505-588: The traditional Western, are nearly always the enemy of the "heroic" white settlers and cavalry. In the Indian Western, roles can be reversed with peaceful Native Americans driven to fight against white aggression. Usually, however, the Native American hero or heroine is played by brownface whites such as Burt Lancaster and Jean Peters in Apache (1954). In Dances With Wolves , the female lead
1548-419: The traditional. Although many earlier Westerns are labelled as revisionist, the distinction between them is often blurred by variable themes and plot devices. Some are labelled psychological Westerns , which is closely related to and sometimes overlaps with the psychological drama and psychological thriller genres because of their focus on character, at the expense of the action and thrills that predominate in
1591-417: The traditional. Other revisionist films, in which action and adventure remain prominent, are labelled Indian Westerns or outlaw/gunfighter Westerns because, instead of the traditional hero , the protagonist is a Native American , an outlaw , or a gunfighter . The term anti-Western is generally used in reference to particularly gruesome and/or nihilistic examples of the genre. The spaghetti Westerns of
1634-579: The work of Cormac McCarthy , an author known for writing revisionist Western literature, such as the novel Blood Meridian . European countries, which had imported Western productions since their silent film inception, began creating their own versions and, in 1964, Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars became an international hit initiating the spaghetti Western filone. Although they were mostly shot in Spanish locations, featured U.S. actors, and were co-produced by European and U.S. producers, many of
1677-474: Was Mary McDonnell playing a white who had been raised by the Lakota . There had been earlier films which portrayed Native Americans sympathetically, but the breakthrough for this sub-genre was Broken Arrow (1950), directed by Delmer Daves and starring James Stewart , with Jeff Chandler as Cochise . Kim Newman wrote that Chandler's performance established Cochise as "the 1950s model of an Indian hero" and
1720-507: Was acquired by Snagfilms in July 2008. On January 8, 2009, IndieWire editor Eugene Hernandez announced that the site was going through a re-launch that has been "entirely re-imagined". Penske Media acquired IndieWire on January 19, 2016. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The focus of IndieWire initially was independent film, but has grown to encompass mainstream film, television, and streaming media. IndieWire
1763-502: Was first released on 15 May 2015 in the United States, with a simultaneous release on video on demand . Jay Cavendish, a young Scotsman, travels to the American West to search for his love, Rose Ross. He encounters a group of men chasing a Native American . An Irish bounty hunter , Silas Selleck, arrives and shoots dead the leader. Jay employs the bounty hunter for protection. At a trading post, unbeknownst to Jay, Silas sees
Slow West - Misplaced Pages Continue
1806-431: Was hugely popular through the 1950s and 1960s, prioritizes character development ahead of action whilst retaining most of the traditional aspects. For the most part, the psychological Western morphed into the revisionist Western as censorship restrictions were relaxed and removed in the 1960s. Shane (1953), directed by George Stevens , is a psychological Western. The title character ( Alan Ladd ) seems at first to be
1849-471: Was to examine the impact of gunfights on the participants by revealing their neuroses and redeeming characteristics. AllMovie's earliest films of this type are two silents: The Road Agent (1926), directed by J. P. McGowan and starring Al Hoxie ; and Jesse James (1927), directed by Lloyd Ingraham and starring Fred Thomson . In a similar vein, the Indian Western seeks to reverse negative stereotypes by sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans who, in
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