The Proposition [Blu-ray]

Hype is hype and cinema more than most art genres suffers due its dependency on it. However, I was prepared with empathatic promise for,'Propostion' having lauded Cave's score for,'Jesse James' and esteemed his writing in,'The Secret life of The Love Song'. After all, we'd seemed to have dieted on Westerns as kids and even gone to the same art school in Melbourne. So I dipped into the recent,'Nick Cave Stories' and this film over the weekend. The conclusion is that both products do not showcase his talents at their premium. The brilliant, brooding intensity found in the three minute pop vehicle is not so elucidating when extended to feature length nihilism. We never enter into the hearts or minds of the characters and no amount of ravishing scenery, and again, a superb score, can disguise or substitute for the serious absence of moral compass. Not, mind you, in the narrative, which one expects from the given scenario. But in the treatment and construction of the film. Whether this is the writing or directing I don't know. But I frequently felt that the film's sense of the frontier was left on the storyboard, and at times veered close to parody; cliches and stereotypes abound and the film has that familiar, pre-psychological Australian aspect to it. As for, 'Nick Cave Stories', only the industry of hype cultivating celebrity, could justify its publication. Such scant offerings and marginalia is a reproach even to hagiography. A few Polly Borland photos apart saves it from absolute dismaissal as trivia.

Great characters, cinematography, and music propel this harsh tale of the 1880s Australian Outback. The characters are mostly shades of gray, with even the most villainous seeming to have at least some kind of moral code. Although awash in violence, the movie does convey the damaging aftereffects upon those who witness, experience, and perpetrate it, even when it seems justified.

The film crew ventured far enough into the Outback to capture not only its desolateness but some spectacular sunsets and moon shots. The music enhances the overall feel of the movie. The collaboration between musician/wordsmith, Nick Cave, also the movie's screenwriter, and Dirty Three's Warren Ellis works exceedingly well, combining Ellis' atmospherics perfectly with Cave's lyrics.

All of the acting succeeds, but the most noteworthy is John Hurt's portrayal of the bounty hunter, Jellon Lamb, which alone is worth the price of the movie.

Recommended for those with patience, an interest in moral dilemmas, and a stomach for onscreen violence.

If you are looking for a gory, bloody movie, this is it! From the reviews I read about this movie, I thought it would be good, but there was not one thing I liked about it. It was violent and depressing. I am sorry I wasted my money!
BTC

After recently leaving his older brother's (Arthur) gang, a dirty, skeletal bad guy named Charles Burns (Guy Pierce) has taken along his younger brother (Mikey), keeping him away from more senseless slaughtering on the behalf of the gang (you have to love how into character Guy Pierce gets). The arid countryside of Australia is rough, and being a criminal makes it even worse. And when Captain Morris Stanley, a driven law-man who fancies himself as an Aussie version of Wyatt Earp, decides to go after the three brothers, there is major trouble for Charles.

Both brothers are soon captured, and that is when Morris presents the proposition to Charles: find and kill his brother Arthur, or his younger brother Mikey will hang. It's obviously a difficult choice; he seemingly has to decide between saving a more naïve younger brother, or allowing his older brother, a man referred to as an abomination, to live freely.

What follows is a search by Charles and Morris amongst the Aborigonies for Arthur Burns, a man who has been given a Crocodile Dundee-level, mythical status by the locals. He's someone to be honored and feared, so much so that shape-shifting powers have even been attributed to him, as if he were magical and able to change into a dog at will. Not so much. Charles finds his brother and is forced to make the ultimate decision.

This film's deliberate moral ambiguity is it's strength, and the conclusion provides yet another difficult moment, where good and bad are not completely clear, and the best characters can do is grasp onto the belief that God works in mysterious, albeit seemingly unjust and perverse ways.

There are several major flaws to this movie. The first, and clearly the worst, is Morris' wife Martha, a busybody moron ruled entirely by emotions, constantly interfering where she is neither wanted nor supposed to be. She's just a dreadful character. Aside from her considerable attempts to ruin the movie, there were also some very poorly done camera shots, and a storyline looser than an all fiber diet. Perhaps it was just that there was too much focus on Morris and not the others. It's the absolute lack of meaningful character development that really hurts this film. At the end of the movie I didn't empathize with a single character; in fact, I loathed everyone except Morris. Last but not least, the audio quality is horrible. I don't know if it's merely an aspect of the DVD transfer, or just amatuer movie making, but watching it is difficult without either missing something or getting eardrum injuries - choose your own agony.

It's a fairly good movie, with great acting and some interesting aspects, but it's lacking in too many ways to be considered a great movie.

The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2006)

Imagine you're the middle brother of three, and the three of you have been an outlaw gang for so long no one remembers anything else. Now imagine that the local law captures you and your younger brother, and offers you a proposition: you have nine days to find and kill your older brother, or the law will hang your younger brother. What do you do?

Such is the situation that Charlie Burns (L. A. Confidential's Guy Pearce) finds himself in. The law, in the person of Captain Stanley (Sexy Beast's Ray Winstone) has younger brother Mike (Richard Wilson) in chains, and will only let him go if Charlie hunts down and kills his psychotic older brother Arthur (Danny Huston). As with most westerns, it's a simple plot; what you do with it is what separates the wheat from the chaff. And John Hillcoat has stamped himself a director for the ages with this, the best western since Dead Man a decade previous.

Australia seems an obvious place to make westerns; the great big sky just begs for the kind of stark, unforgiving cinematography that Australian directors have been utilizing for decades now. (Though, oddly, despite living in the land of the cinematographers, Hillcoat imported his from France-- Benoit Delhomme, who cut his teeth on such stunning movies as Cyclo.) It's dead perfect for westerns, as is the barren, inhospitable Outback landscape where The Proposition takes place; New Mexico ain't got nothin' on this. Add a script written by Nick Cave, who seemed to be channelling the spirit of Cormac McCarthy's earlier, bloodier western novels (oh, yeah, if you think The Road and No Country for Old Men were warped, check out Blood Meridian...). Cave has had a fascination with the culture of the American South for a long, long time now (note his excellent, terribly underrated novel ...And the [censored for amazon consumption] Saw the Angel), and since McCarthy originated in the South (while I'm talking books, McCarthy's southern-period novel Child of God is another must-read), it all comes together like one huge thunderclap. And what a storm it unveils. Cave, who also did the music for the film (with his Bad Seeds compatriot Warren Ellis-- no relation to the graphic novel writer), meshes the two in a remarkable way; being as much a music fan as a movie fan, I tend to pay a lot of attention to how well music goes with image, and it does so here in a way I'm not sure I've ever seen before. The film's music is as much a character as is Charlie, or Arthur, or the outback itself. (Okay, I can think of one other example, perhaps-- Peter Gabriel's score for The Last Temptation of Christ.) Cave created a thing of remarkable savagery and beauty here, and Hillcoat realized it as well as he could-- and that is very well indeed.

I haven't even scraped the tip of the iceberg of the reasons why you need to see this movie. There are so very many. Hillcoat, whose next project is, ironically enough, an adaptation of McCarthy's The Road (why Cave did not write the screenplay, I've no idea, but Guy Pearce is once again involved), has created what may be the perfect down under western here. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Flirting with a spot on my 100 best movies of all time list. **** ½