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| Courtesy
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The
bloody Australian Outback western “The Proposition,”
with a screenplay and music by Bad Seeds musician Nick
Cave, is a revenge drama in which the violence feels
real and ruthless and delivers a definite visceral impact.
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'The
Proposition'
by David
Germain
Associated Press
If Nick Cave had written it in song, his harsh Australian
Western "The Proposition" might have made a fine
addition to "Murder Ballads," his album of bloody
tunes about killers, barbaric love and death.
Fleshed out as a film in the singer's first solo screenplay
effort, "The Proposition" makes for a dark and
twisted time, a portrait of a bleak 1880s frontier which,
like Cave's songs, offers an intriguing blend of the idyllic
and the savage.
The film's brutality will be a turnoff to some viewers.
While "The Proposition" is no bloodier than many
a schlocky horror flick, the violence here feels real and
ruthless, carrying a much more visceral impact.
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Director
John Hillcoat, whose collaborations with Cave include the prison
drama "Ghosts...of the Civil Dead," forges a film gorgeous
in its sparseness and harshness, cinematographer Benoit Delhomme
capturing a vast land of rugged, pitiless splendor.
Guy Pearce is the ostensible lead, playing a captured outlaw given
an agonizing choice: Hunt down and slay his mad dog older brother,
or watch his childlike younger brother hanged.
Yet it's Ray Winstone, Emily Watson and particularly Danny Huston
who dominate the film. Pearce's facade of stony stoicism rarely
cracks to give a glimpse of the turmoil within, while Winstone,
Watson and Huston subtly infuse their own austere characters with
a great range of desperation, doubt, devotion and resignation.
"The Proposition"
opens in the middle of a shootout as the law catches up with Charlie
Burns (Pearce) and sibling Mikey (Richard Wilson), wanted for crimes
that include rape and murder.
After the siblings are captured, Capt. Stanley (Winstone), a British
lawman intent on taming his patch of wild Australia, offers Charlie
an arrangement. He and Mikey will be pardoned if Charlie tracks
and kills their brother Arthur (Huston), the demon of the family
who's considered the real instigator of the siblings' misdeeds.
If Charlie fails, hapless Mikey swings by the neck.
Charlie's search for Arthur through the stark Outback is juxtaposed
with the awkwardly tender home life of Stanley and his wife, Martha
(Watson), a close friend of a woman raped and murdered by the Burns
boys.
Stanley's standing in the community and at home diminishes when
Martha and the townsfolk, led by autocratic Eden Fletcher (David
Wenham, best known as Faramir in "The Lord of the Rings"
movies), learn of the lawman's dubious offer to let two wanted murderers
go free in exchange for the ringleader.
Even as the law abiding residents clamor for peace and order, they
fall back on mob justice themselves.
The hushed, genteel interplay between Winstone and Watson is marvelous,
with the actors creating a complex dynamic of a husband trying to
shield his porcelain bride from the world's ugliness and coming
to realize his wife is far less fragile than he believed.
John Hurt turns up in a showy though ultimately pointless role as
a bounty hunter who encounters Charlie.
"The Proposition" contains a warning about its disturbing
depiction of violence against Aborigines, yet the carnage-often
jolting in its severity and suddenness-is meted out democratically
against settlers and natives.
Amid the brutishness, Huston's Arthur emerges as a surprising figure,
a poetic, almost cultured spirit whose philosophical soulfulness
makes for an engrossing contrast to his amoral cold bloodedness
toward all those outside his extended family of fellow renegades.
Huston, the son of director John Huston and half brother of Anjelica
Huston, inhabits Arthur with a wondrous mix of charm, humor, cunning
and mournful awareness that the way of the gun is passing, and him
with it.
Cave provides scattered vocals and wrote the film's score with Bad
Seeds band mate Warren Ellis, the rootsy, melancholy music evoking
a pioneer way of life giving way obstinately to civilization.
"The Proposition," a First Look Pictures release, is rated
R for strong grisly violence, and for language. Running time: 104
minutes. Three stars out of four. |
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