The film opens, after a chilling credit sequence where the echoey and plaintive voice of a young child sings a melancholic song and still photographs from long ago flash on to the screen. These photographs include historical documents, showing massacre sites and dead Aborigines’ and seamlessly blended photos of Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) and his men. This evocative title sequence places the audience directly into both the time period of the film and the danger which this time brings to its characters. When the song ends there is a harsh transition to the action, a young man is confusedly attempting to escape the cascading gunfire which is engulfing the Chinese Brothel he is in. The scene goes on and more characters are presented taking cover from the ear-deafening gunfire. The younger two brothers of the Burns gang have been caught. Captain Stanley offers them a proposition. If Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) wants his younger brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) to live then he must kill his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston) before Christmas, as Mikey will hang on Christmas Day. Stanley then releases Charlie. With this single scene the whole of The Proposition is outlined. The proposition itself while being simple in plot dynamics, it is thematically deep and resonant. It has both Biblical and Shakespearean connotations. The themes of the film being reminiscent of the Abel and Caine tale, and the families at war in many Shakespearean tragedies. The film from here then follows two story paths, Captain Stanley and his wife and their relationship to the Australian settlement which they live on the cusp of and Charlie Burns’ attempt to find his brother. The decision on whether to kill one brother to save another brother being unclear in his mind. Nick Cave, the films screenwriter uses this dichotomous storytelling method to investigate a number of transcendent themes: the nature of humanity, masculinity, family, evil and racism. Cave’s plotting is simplistic and his dialogue is exquisite; reminiscent of both his incendiary music and lyrical majesty and the rough-hewn prose favoured by Cormac McCarthy. The dialogue while being sparse is truly a thing of wonder, which is delivered with panache by all of the lead actors. But a special mention must go to John Hurt as Jellon Lamb, a bounty hunter who is also hunting Arthur Burns and in turn the whole Burns gang. He spits out racist dialogue with a wheezy reckless abandon, the dialogue having a similar quality to another great revisionist Western, HBO Television series Deadwood. Charlie Burns on his way to his older brother’s hideout in the Outback runs into Lamb in a bar, Lamb’s only company before Charlie arrives is a dead bar tender and flies. John Hurt plays this barroom scene with breathtaking scenery chewing; he is like a force of nature yet as old as Moses himself. The dialogue, as mentioned, is hilarious and disgusting for a modern audience in equal measure. Hurt is over the top yet he remains completely within character and presents a man both at odds with the world and confident with himself. He plays a similar plot role within The Proposition as does Woody Harrelson within the equally brilliant modern Western-Noir No Country for Old Men, but he plays the role with more freedom and menace creating a greater sense of unease within the audience. Hurt’s performance is one of the most indelible cameos presented in the last decade. But it is not only the Nick Cave’s script which makes this modern Western a must see, there are number of filmic techniques which must be discussed in order to enthuse about the brilliance of this singular masterpiece. While discussing Nick Cave it is necessary to mention the truly wonderful score he provided the film. The Western as a genre has one of the most interesting attitudes to music; it is seen as a necessity to have an expressive and memorable Western Soundtrack. From the classic Spaghetti Western scores by Ennio Morricone, to the unsurpassed Bob Dylan score for Pat and Garrett and Billy the Kid and Nick Cave’s own masterful score for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s work on the score for The Proposition is one of the great Western scores, it is melancholic throughout highlighting what can only be called the despair of all the main characters with a combination of violin and piano, and spoken word vocals from Nick Cave’s deep voice. Yet the score also builds, grasping the audience by the neck and dragging them towards the inevitable Western shoot-out climax. It is propulsive and screeching when necessary, the mood and tone of the score alters dramatically and without concession to the audience and it is a perfect match for the bleak sun blasted visuals of the film. The visual splendour of the film is probably what the audience will first notice and subsequently take away from the film. The Proposition is a glorious mix of sun-burnished yellows and dark brown; it is visually reminiscent of Days of Heaven directed by Terrence Malick. It has the same focus on fields of yellowed grass and wheat, the same roving camera capturing the sun and the moon. Scenes are often shot with a wide angle to capture as much of the beauty of the physical world as humanly possible. Stanley asks rhetorically at the beginning “What fresh Hell is this?” this question could be a one sentence description of the visual style director John Hillcoat employs. Australia has never looked so bleak and fly-ridden. The flies are a major part of the atmosphere in The Proposition, they buzz around every character in and out of their eyes and mouths. This film makes the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch looks like the film Amelie! It is the closest human approximation to the Catholic notion of Hell seen on film. The great unfilmable novel Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness of the West is the closest artistic approximation to this film, Blood Meridian is another Western steeped in violence and biblical thematic. John Hillcoat emphasises the visual magnificence of the film by including a brutally realistic violent edge. The gunshots echo loudly off the screen, every shot that hits human flesh proving to be catastrophic, a spear which passes through flesh and bone and blood with great ease yet the wound’s full ramifications is never hidden. Hillcoat’s finest scene and the finest sequence of the film is during one of these gruesomely frightening gothic moments, where young Mikey is whipped for his past transgressions. This is corporal punishment at its most visceral and disturbing. Hillcoat creates a mood where violence is art, and the art causes emotional upheaval within the stunned viewer. Never before has violence within a Western been so visceral and hard-hitting. John Hillcoat is a notable director within World Cinema, despite only having a few completed credits to his name so far. He is perhaps the most exciting and unique Australian film director. While not having the range nor the back catalogue of the world renowned Peter Weir, Hillcoat is creating one of the most impressive catalogues of offbeat cinema. His films are cloaked in violence, visual metaphors and deep thematic, he has an unblinking eye for the vagaries and poetry of the human soul.
Charlie Burns as a character also subverts the traditional Western stereotype, Charlie is the audience’s nominal lead character. He is outside the law like many Western lead characters over the course of film history; perhaps most notably The Ringo Kid played by John Wayne in John Ford’s recognised classic Stagecoach. Yet he is an incredibly passive lead character. His motives are inscrutable, as are his feelings about anything other than his obvious love for his younger brother. He is an unusual character for a Western, even for a revisionist Western, as his angst seems to be both internal and existential. Guy Pearce makes Charlie an intense screen presence, without softening his murderous edge; he is gaunt, dirty and monosyllabic. Yet his desperation to save his younger brother is noble in its intent. He takes some of the style of Blondie (Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly) but makes rooting for him even less pleasant, he has very little heroic in his make-up. Then we can come to Arthur Burns, a character who would seem more at home in a gothic horror film than a Western of any colour. He is not after money or land; he robs no town nor builds any railroads. He is a killer of men, and rapes women. The Aborigines in the film describe him as a wolf, all concepts which can be more usually seen in horror and crime cinema than in Westerns. In Westerns the notionally bad guy usually is after something whether it be revenge or less lofty materialistic ideals but in The Proposition Arthur Burns is only searching for death. He is the first Western Grim Reaper. However, Danny Huston as Arthur Burns is cause for one of the few criticisms which can be levelled at The Proposition, Huston lacks both the ability at accents and the intensity which Guy Pearce brings to his role, and he is lacking in charisma and acting talent to sufficiently engage the audience with Arthur like a more powerful actor could. However, this does not derail the film. Wilson McLachlan |
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The Proposition has a simple set-up that is outlined in the first ten minutes of the film with one expository speech. Ray Winstone plays an English policeman who believes it is his job to civilise the young country of Australia, civilise it from the pervasive criminal element, presented in the film as Irish, and from the Aborigine’s that the white settlers found inhabiting the land when they got there. He sees the single most important task ahead of him as bringing Arthur Burns, the head of the Burns crime family, to justice dead or alive for the murder of white settlers the Hopkins family. He has a rather unique plan on how complete this task.
A final aspect of The Proposition which makes it endlessly fascinating to watch and discuss is the way it relates to the Western genre as a whole. All revisionist Westerns to some extent subvert what is considered to be the natural order to the genre, they make cowards out of those who used to be heroes. The Proposition does a wonderful job subverting the traditional Western stereotypes, Ray Winstone plays a character who is a sheriff protecting his town from the twin threat of the naturals (Natives in America, Aborigines in Australia) and lawless criminals; by any form of traditional structure he would be the lantern jawed hero, a masculine man whom everybody respects and loves. John Wayne would have played him and Maureen O’Hara would have been his red-headed feisty wife. However, in The Proposition Captain Stanley is beset by crippling headaches, his men do not respect his decision to let Charlie Burns go; it is implied that his wife is both emotionally lonely and sexually unfulfilled. Then at the height of Captain Stanley emotional arc he is betrayed by the town people and by his wife, he steps back meekly and allows the people there vengeance against the mentally feeble Mikey Burns – something Stanley knows is wrong and does not prevent. John Wayne would never have allowed it! Even one of the most critically acclaimed presentations of the Western mythos, Deadwood, did not unman the sheriff; it is such a bold move by Cave and Hillcoat that it seems almost unfathomable. Yet Stanley is played with such a sympathetic edge by Ray Winstone it is impossible to dislike the man as he crumples before your eyes. Winstone bringing his considerable bulk to the role and less than leading man looks to give a great character performance.
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