THE PROPOSITION
The opening scenes of The Proposition, an Australian flick set in the 1880s outback, are bleak and morbid. Nick Cave, composer and performer of bleak, morbid folk-rock, not only penned the script, he also wrote the score. The film, directed by John Hillcoat, shows us one familys radical perspective on loyalty and betrayal. Police Captain Stanley, played by Ray Winstone (I could see Russell Crowe is this role, but hes too expensive for low-budget independent films) and a couple of his grungy-looking officers show up at Charlie Burnss (an especially gaunt Guy Pearce) home way out in the middle of the sun-parched nowhere.
Charlie lives with his woman and his mentally ill younger brother, Mikey. Charlie has broken from his brothers, which his outlaw, older sibling Arthur (Danny Huston in a serious, against-type casting move) sees as betrayal. Arthur is a renegade to end all renegades ever depicted historically and otherwise, except maybe by author Cormac McCarthy. Stanley questions Charlie on Arthurs whereabouts. Getting no answers, the Captain and his goons pistol-whip Charlie, his woman, and Mikey and take Mikey hostage. Hell release Mikey and drop the charges against Charlie if Charlie kills Arthur before Christmas arrives in 9 days. Hence, the proposition.
Seems Arthur, his brothers - - one who sings like an angel - - and their Aborigine sidekick, had robbed, beaten, shot, and killed an entire family of English settlers. They had raped the pregnant wife and exacted the unspeakable upon the unborn, one of the few grisly scenes we are thankfully spared. Arthur has become a legend; the Aborigines say that at night, he transforms himself into a howling dog. He hides out in a cave in the barren mountains with the others and his woman (about whom we know little nor what happens to her later). In his mountain retreat, haunted eyes behind long, ropy strands of black hair hanging in his face, Arthur recites Shakespeare and waxes philosophical; his cronies drink up every word.
While watching the film you can almost taste the dust, feel the grit in your teeth, so righteously does cinematographer Benoit Delhomme capture Australias Outback. The officers dust-covered blue uniforms have faded to gray from the relentless sun. Everyones attire is filthy; their long hair hangs in greasy strings, faces and bodies grimed and shiny with sweat. So it is a shock when the Captains immaculate, impeccably dressed boss, Eden Fletcher (David Wendham) arrives on the scene, in top hat, frock coat, and ascot to demand harsher treatment for Mikey. Which Stanley carries out. Winstone as Stanley shows his conflict with Fletchers demands in the subtle expressions crossing his face; his subsequent action speaks volumes, deepening his character.
Emily Watson plays Martha Stanley, the captains wife. She creates a proper English oasis in her home and garden, which she had fenced off from the encroaching desert and has planted with roses and herbs. She wears the latest fashions, ordered from a catalogue. Martha is kindly and genteel, a proper Englishwoman, who dares not ask her husband what troubles him, but prepares his morphine powder for his constant headaches. She bathes in a porcelain tub; her almost translucent, white-as-porcelain, skin is unreal in this setting, and her femininity is not lost on the louts who work for her husband when she shows up unexpectedly at the jail when Stanley stays away for more than a couple of days.
John Hurt has a bit part in the film as Jellon Lamb, a desiccated, addled, desert rat, whom Charlie runs across in his hunt for Arthur. While sharing a bottle, Lamb brags to Charlie of his worldwide travels, ranting on about Charles Darwins theories (published in the late 1850s), which Lamb finds incredulous, on humans as descendant from monkeys and that the white man is brother to the blacks. Throughout the film there is reference to the need to civilize Australia by killing off all the Aborigines like soldiers are doing in America to the Indians.
Mikeys fate sets the wheels in motion for a Burns brothers rampage that takes place on Christmas Day. Captain and Martha Stanley, dressed in their finest - - he in a boiled shirt with celluloid collar and string tie, she in a low-cut, burgundy velvet gown - - sit down to a candlelit dinner of turkey and trimmings, decorated mail-order tree standing resplendent in the corner. From what has gone down, you know something hellish is about to break loose. Steeling yourself is useless protection against what transpires. And Charlies morality is tested to the extreme.
This film is not for the faint-hearted. As in classic Westerns by Sam Peckinpah, none of the violence and brutality in The Proposition is done out of context nor anyway gratuitous The film is in limited release: its at the Lumiere in San Francisco, the Shattuck and Parkway Speakeasy in Berkeley and Oakland, the Century Regency in San Rafael, and the Century Cinemas 16 in Mt. View. Check listings for times.