2005: The Proposition

The Proposition (Hillcoat, 2005) 8/10

"Australia. What fresh hell is this?" (Captain Stanley)

The Australian Outback is one of the world's most mythical and inhospitable places. Less than ten percent of the Australian population lives in this region of eucalyptal forest, skeletal brush, sun-baked sand and orange rock. In its most liberal definition defines almost seventy percent of the Australian continent, yet the term is most commonly associated with the country's most arid and remote areas populated in Australia's national mythology by ancient Aboriginal cultures and lawless mauraders such as Ned Kelly.

In the late 19th century, British modes of "civilization" and Victorian culture collided with the indigenous population as Australia transformed from a penal colony to a bastion of imperial virtue. Like the American West, with its folkloric associations of rebellion and its earthy Aboriginal society, the Outback became unfairly equated with barbarity and insubordination: stereotypes which remain to this day. It is this clash of civilizations and societial attitudes which permeates John Hillcoat's exemplary revisionist western The Proposition.

Based on a screenplay by Australian songwriter Nick Cave, The Proposition is a throwback to the violent historical revisionist approaches of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone, but with a richer social critique. In rural Queensland, notorious outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) is captured along with his simpleton brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) by English emigree Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone). Desperate to impose his legal authority on the area, Stanley offers Charlie Burns an extra-legal proposition: his and Mikey's freedom in exchange for the capture and assassination of the gang's vicious and sociopathic leader, Arthur Burns (Danny Huston) within nine days. If Charlie fails, Stanley informs him that Mikey will be hung on Christmas Day.

Thus begins Charlie's descent into the nether regions of the Australian Outback in search of his sadistic brother and Cave and Hillcoat's exploration of civilization, honour and family. With the rowdy Burns family substituting for Australia's most famous gang of familial Irish immigrants, the Kelly Gang, this desolate film centers upon codes of civility and culture. Drafted from the backalleys of London in order to tame the Outback, Winstone's Captain Stanley is a complex figure. In the genteel house he resides in with wife Martha (Emily Watson), he embodies the values and virtues of Victorian culture.

The couple dine on roast dinners served by aborigine servants, while sitting in a room adorned with British regalia (Union Jacks; royal portraits) and silverware. Martha orders dresses from catalogues and imports roses and conifers from England in a dire attempt to replicate an English garden surrounded by the yellow blasts of sand. Even their white picket fence is mostly constructed from bark stripped from decaying trees. Their attempts to establish an authentic Englishness on their property are implicitly artificial in the construction and absurd in their design amongst the harsh indigenous landscape which envelops their small home.

A wonderful example of this is found in Captain Stanley's Christmas greetings to his departing Aborigine servant. With a rifle in hand, Stanley apprehensively prepares for further violence; while decked in Victorian attire, his servant removes his shoes at the gate: emphasizing the awkwardness of enforcing British culture on an unwilling population and in an inappropriate environment. Furthermore, while Stanley attempts to civilize the community, he fails to recognize the irony of his failed attempt. He and his fellow policemen are racist, ignorant and arrogant toward the Australian climate and aboriginal culture. They fear the surrounding landscape and its native people, yet pompously express their ability to conquer it through further colonization of the culture. Their method of order is not through equality and justice, but through violence and capitulation. Rather than reconcile with the Aboriginal population, they hire an Anglicized Aborigine to interpret and hunt down fellow tribal members.

Yet, even he questions their tactics as he mutters "strange mob, you whites;" after a group of police officers on a routine patrol, engage in ritualistic and juvenile attempts to urinate upon one another near a tree. This inverted notion of civil behaviour is also found in the treatment of prisoners and the work habits of the community's political and legal constituants. Scenes of excessive floggings, verbal abuse, public drunkenness, explicit sexual banter and gross misuse of firearms typify the blatant misappropriation of power and authority by government and police officials in the community on a daily basis.

Education is also examined in the character of Jellon Lamb (John Hurt): a self-proclaimed adventurer who has travelled to China, Congo and Russia in search of fortune. Yet, for all his knowledge of Darwinian biological theory and foreign societies, he is supremely ignorant and racist: mocking the suggestion that white and Aboriginal peoples are physiologically equal and openly berating the Irish-born Charlie Burns. Similarly, Arthur Burns who is notorious for his brutal sadism, routinely quotes from philosophers in his mild-mannered, hushed voice.

Key to Arthur Burns' approach to life is the emphasis on family. Hiding in the rocky enclaves, Arthur lives with a blend of criminals and Aboriginals including his lover/wife. Together the group forms a "family" which Arthur prides over everything else. Upon Charlie's return, Arthur desires for his brother to return into the familial fold. But within Charlie's soul there is internal turmoil. In the film's media res opening, we learn that Charlie and Mikey had earlier left Arthur's gang. The modern integrationist concept of community is beginning to take root within the Australian landscape: supplanting traditional bonds of family. Thus, for Charlie, family no longer holds as much sway as it once did. Yet, within the community's English imaginary with its perverted notions of justice, there is perhaps little room for (re-) admission into European society: a fact belatedly revealed to Charlie.

Furthermore, the ancient codes of honour no longer are bound by blood, but rather by a flawed sense of social improvement as noted in Stanley's reluctant responses to the town's savage judicial equilibrium. When Captain Stanley breaks such a code by passively allowing the townspeople to flog Mikey in the dusty town square, he understands that Arthur with his traditional codes of family will respond with a violent repraisal. Charlie on the other hand desires progressive reconciliation: noting that while violence begets more violence, it does not balance the scales of justice: a notion the town's legal authorities fail to understand in their primal sense of "civilized" frontier justice.

Featuring a songbook engrossed with violence, betrayal and death, The Proposition highlights the central concepts and ideas prominent throughout Nick Cave's entire musical and literary career oeuvre. In his literate script, the actions and attitudes of the central characters are not black and white, but are painted in thick shades of grey. The internal motives and actions of the film's central characters often opposes their external public personas, while the Aboriginal population are not explicitly revered, but shown as either meek figures who have capitulated their cultural identity or are attempting a final gasp to preserve it against Eurocentric hostility.

Like the Italian and revisionist westerns which inspired it, The Proposition is a film which meditates upon the implications of violence, while visually demonstrating it. Hillcoat's direction uses a minimalist approach, which often results in the harshest acts shown in brief passages or heard off-screen. Furthermore, the violence in The Proposition is never gratuitous, but integral to the savagary of the story. Yet, through strong editing and direction, the film allows for the audience to feel the film's explicit aggression, while often not being privy to actually seeing it. This is noticeable in the appropriate lack of footage detailing the film's most explicit acts of violence such as rape, flogging and torture.

In Benoit Delhomme's sparse and stylish cinematography the harsh beauty of Australia's rustic plains is brutally exposed; astutely complimenting the film's understated performances particularly by Danny Huston, Guy Pearce and Emily Watson. The complex, psychological nature of the film's story impressively extends to the performances of criminally underrated veteran English actors John Hurt and Ray Winstone.

In the past four years, the Western has slowly begun to revive itself with the releases of Tommy Lee Jones directorial debut The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Ron Howard's 2003 film The Missing and Seripham Falls starring Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnon. Future releases such as the Brad Pitt led The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and Walk The Line director James Mangold's remake of 3:10 To Yuma, demonstrate a possible return to the defunct genre in a style similar to that of the musical with films such as Dreamgirls and Chicago. Although a return to cultural prominence and popularity the genre held in the Fifties and Sixties is unlikely, the release of socially imbued minor classics like The Proposition herald positive possibilities for the genre's future.


* The Proposition is released on R2 DVD by Tartan Home Video and by First Look/Maple Home Video in R1.

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque