Family Ties and Australian History, Both Soaked in Blood, in ‘The Proposition‘
By MANOHLA DARGIS
The teeth are yellow in the Australian western “The Proposition,” and the sky is as red as blood. Directed by John Hillcoat from a screenplay by the darkly moody musician and author Nick Cave, the film tells a story of murder in the outback that is as cruel as it is aesthetically flamboyant. Here flies swarm over the living and the dead with equal attention, perhaps because one doesn’t really seem all that different from the other. In the late 19th century, warm flesh and cold meat each appear fairly rancid under the glare of the hot Australian sun, or at least when caught in the similarly pitiless gaze of these filmmakers.
The wide open spaces and roughneck history of modern Australia, including the wholesale slaughter of the continent’s native peoples, make the country a natural setting for a western. Not surprisingly, given Mr. Cave’s fondness for the baroquely macabre (one of his recent CD’s is titled “Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus”), “The Proposition” takes a jaundiced view of the frontier. That’s particularly true of the white settlers, who in both their tooth decay and moral rot come across as more desperate than even Sam Peckinpah’s most colorful desperadoes, and who appear fairly indistinguishable no matter on what side of the law they travel. Mr. Cave left Australia years ago, but his native country’s penal-colony origins and mysterious beauty have clearly retained a strong grip on his imagination.
Given that “The Proposition” tells something of a national-foundation story, there’s a primal, almost biblical tint to its parts. Guy Pearce plays Charlie Burns, who, after riding in an outlaw gang alongside his older brother, Arthur (Danny Huston), is imprisoned by the reform-minded Captain Stanley (a magnificent Ray Winstone). The captain cuts Charlie loose after presenting him with the proposal of the film’s title: either Charlie kills Arthur by Christmas, which is fast approaching, or Stanley will hang their teenage brother, a simpleton called Mikey (Richard Wilson). Fortified by alcohol, Charlie rides into the outback, looking for his older brother, a butcher of men whom the Aborigines liken to a dog; fortified by love for his wife, Martha (Emily Watson), the captain uneasily remains behind.
As this lineup suggests, the cast of “The Proposition” is reason enough to see the film. Mr. Huston has carved out his own screen niche as a creepy-crawler, and while his character is at once underconceived and overbaked, given to spouting verse like the poetic creation he is, the actor makes him a wonderfully substantial presence, whether galloping across a plain or sitting Buddha-like in front of the sinking sun. There is something heavy and monumental about the way Mr. Huston takes up film space (in this he can recall his father, John Huston), which makes a nice counterpart to the otherworldly Mr. Pearce, a performer of such apparent delicate physicality and eerie grace that you half expect him to be carried off by the wind.
Both actors are memorable, as is Mr. Winstone, whose surprising, occasionally eccentric performance provides “The Proposition” with some of its finest moments. Sweat pouring off his thick body, matting his hair and spotting his uniform, Captain Stanley seems like a man perpetually out of his element, whether he’s squirming under his wife’s touch or trying to bring his brutish men to heel.
Boiling over with rage and choked by despair, he appears trapped in existential impotence, yet wages war at everything and everyone around him: his men, the town, the outlaws, his wife, even his own body. Few actors register menace on screen as persuasively as Mr. Winstone, who here directs that menace inward, turning Stanley into one more victim of the land’s unrelenting violence.
And unrelenting it surely is. “The Proposition” probably comes closer to the truth than origin stories like “The Patriot,” a Hollywood fantasy that turns the American Revolution into a glib action flick. Like some other storytellers intent on setting the record straight or at least a bit less crooked, Mr. Cave and Mr. Hillcoat occasionally and temporarily lose their way by letting the technological excesses of the present swamp the grim excesses of the past.
It is, for instance, hard to say what precisely we are to glean from the image of a man having his head shot to pieces, other than the skill of the special-effects artists and the realization that, in their own grubbily picturesque way, the filmmakers are as beholden to a kind of romance as anyone.
“The Proposition” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). There is extreme gun and knife violence.
The Proposition
Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.
Directed by John Hillcoat; written by Nick Cave; director of photography, Benoît Delhomme; edited by Jon Gregory; music by Mr. Cave and Warren Ellis; production designer, Chris Kennedy; produced by Chiara Menage, Cat Villiers, Chris Brown and Jackie O’Sullivan; released by First Look Pictures. Running time: 104 minutes.