Movie Review: A Western In The Outback -- The Proposition
As a uniquely American genre, westerns have traveled a long and dusty trail since John Ford’s My Darling Clementine. In John Hillcoat’s The Proposition, the trail winds its way to the Australian Outback.
Brutal yet brilliant, beautiful though bloody, the screenplay by Aussie rocker Nick Cave (The Bad Seeds) holds true to the elements of the genre: Symbolic of all things good is the woman from the east, a fight for survival and power against nature on an isolated, barren landscape, and not one, but two flawed heroes seeking redemption.
New in perspective is the unfiltered portrayal of colonial Australia, but remarkable is its mirror image of the history of the American West: The attempted annihilation of indigenous people, the painful isolation of rustic life and the warped definitions of law and justice that emerge when far removed from the pressures of society.
The main titles run over vintage photos of grave markers, a burned-to-rubble homestead and excerpts from a death book, the evidence and aftermath of a rampage of killers. In this story, bushranger Captain Morris Stanley (Ray Winstone, Sexy Beast, Cold Mountain) offers outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce, L.A. Confidential, Memento) a deal to save himself following his gang’s pillage and murder of an innocent family. He has just nine days to find his ring leader brother Arthur (Danny Huston, The Constant Gardener, 21 Grams) and kill him in order to save himself and his childlike younger brother, Mikey (Richard Wilson) from the certainty of a public hanging.
Eyes perpetually brimming with tears, swilling medicinal potions, Captain Stanley himself weighs heavy under his own guilt for his wife’s sacrifices in living on the dust-dredged frontier. Martha Stanley (Emily Watson, Angela’s Ashes; Punch-Drunk Love), holds steadfastly to civilized ways amidst a desolate backdrop. She demands justice for her murdered friend, but is the first to falter when faced with the spectacle.
Exquisitely written and acted, each character is fully faceted with pendulum-swing dichotomies of their most notable traits: Loyalty, then betrayal; soft-spoken chaste contrasting a demand for blood-soaked penalty; ruthless authority filtered through briny tears; a madman’s admirable philosophies on life, honor and family.
Rich cinematography captures an unforgiving landscape. The atmosphere ripples with heat over a cracked desert floor populated with leafless trees, and the glowing orb of sun, most beautiful as it makes its daily exit over the horizon, which begs the question, “What are these people fighting for?” For this western, in “man’s fight against nature,” the landscape has already won, and "nature" takes the form of the psychotic brother on the lam. Swarms of buzzing, relentless flies become analogous to how these people will all end up, reflective of their moral demise and a reminder of the high price paid for a dried up patch of lifeless dirt.
Cave has created music for 22 films and worked with Warren Ellis (The Libertine) to create the haunting melodies, which tell their own story, sometimes replacing the soundtrack of the film at its most intense moments. Hillcoat and Cave have a previous writing/directing collaboration for the prison drama Ghosts. . .of the Civil Dead.
