The Proposition
Peering out of a makeshift hovel, through the distorted view of heat waves, onto a burial scene, Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) asks, “Australia. What fresh Hell is this?” Bringing to mind Milton’s famous words, “The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” The Proposition, directed by John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave, who also composed the score, puts Milton’s claim to the test.
Cave is known for the macabre images his lyrics evoke, and fans of the stories he weaves will be pleased to see how well-realized his vision is in this film, which is a Western transposed upon the Australian outback. Characters ride viscerally through the arid landscape, twist through sinewy brush, drink under an immense night sky riddled with bright stars, often becoming mere silhouettes, flattened by the land. Indeed, the landscape overwhelms, driving the Anglos to drink or madness, often both.
The Proposition is about borders, the fight for protection and containment. The movie proper begins with the tinny sound of bullets popping through the walls of a dark hovel. An utterly terrified face pops on the screen as bullets tear through flesh and thin walls. The British have come to Australia “to civilize the land.” Yet, civilization is as fragile as the china tea set with which Martha Stanley (Emily Watson) serves her husband, Captain Stanley, breakfast. Civilization is their isolated British house set in the middle of the outback protected by brittle twigs poked into the desert floor. It’s a makeshift port in a feverish storm, racked by the erosive wind that blows throughout the film. Their relationship to the land is like an arranged marriage, performed by a callous hand. Captain Stanley’s tears seem an attempt to appease the spirit of the arid land. They fall like a form of sacrifice to a god whose mercy never comes. He only gets pitiless rain, a bit of water tossed to a scorned prisoner.
Nothing in this frontier town is as simple and orderly as the British customs Martha attempts to maintain at home. The Proposition echoes in the heart of darkness. The old rules no longer suffice, so Captain Stanley has to invent a new method to catch Burn’s brothers, an outlaw gang of Irishmen who have just raped and murdered a pregnant woman. Stanley offers Charlie burns a proposition: if Charlie (Guy Pierce) can kill Arthur Burns (Danny Huston), the older brother and savage leader of the band, Stanley will free Mikey Burns (Richard Wilson), the weak and simple adolescent, who might be innocent of the crime.
Charlie thus begins his search for his older brother. Like Captain Kurtz, Arthur has changed with the land. He has become like its spirit. The natives know him and say he can change into a dog. He cannot be caught. Along his search, Charlie encounters Jellon Lamb (John Hurt), a bounty hunter who has also been changed by the land, but he is more weathered by the climate, and more afraid to identify with the natives. He waxes high about the inferiority of the Aborigines and the Irish. Lost in this land, he can only maintain his integrity through claims of a superiority that does not exist. He tries to capture the Burns but Arthur gets the best of him.
The movie has a disdain for the presumptuous colonizers, represented by Eden Fletcher (David Wenham), who inspires the most contempt, particularly with his arrogant voice. A prick with an unbending spirit, he refuses to acknowledge that he is in a new land that requires a new approach to law, amongst many other things. He rides around on an immaculate white horse and it is only a matter of time until he is stained with the blood of his decrees.
As chaos spirals out like an ever-widening gyre, guilt becomes harder to pin upon people and deeds become irrevocable. Tragedy is imminent. The film strikes hard with its moral ambivalence. As with most great Westerns, it demonstrates that law is not something rigid and easily implemented but something almost amorphous and difficult to maintain.
Benoit Delhomme (the cinematographer) and Chris Kennedy (the production designer) have collaborated magnificently to create an evocative, mythic landscape. The actors have also gone beyond their requirements to people this landscape with characters driven to extreme places of mental and physical stress, making Captain Stanley’s integrity all the more poignant. The result of all this collaboration is a bloody yet edifying film, an impressive and thoroughly satisfying achievement, an A.
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