The Proposition

Directed by John Hillcoat, 2005
Cast: Richard Wilson, Noah Taylor, Jeremy Madrona, Joe Marmuyac, Guy Pearce

By Rada Djurica

The Australian Western The Proposition is Nick Cave’s saturated western tale of betrayal, with characters that, in their brutality, are familiar to us in a historical commentary about English imperialism. It seems that Nick Cave, scriptwriter and music writer, comes from the same dark place as he does with the music of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. The Proposition portrays the clash between civilized and indigenous peoples. While the main characters consider the Aborigines the “bad guys”, actually, the Aborigines are the good guys here, treated unfairly by the law!

Set in Australia in the late 19th century, the film starts with chaotic gunfire nearby a whorehouse. Guy Pearce plays one of the bad Irish brothers (which is amusing because he usually plays a good guy). Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone having fun playing a sadistic law holder) orders the gunfire.

The Burnses, Charlie (Pearce) and younger brother Mike (Richard Wilson) are killers who slaughtered an entire family, including a pregnant wife who was also raped. So Stanley proposes that Charlie trade one brother's life for another. Charlie has to kill his "bad brother", Arthur (Danny Huston), who is hiding up in the hills among “bloodthirsty” Aborigines. Or he can watch his boyish little brother being brutally whipped and hanged on Christmas Day in front of righteous, bloodthirsty Christians.

In contrast to the viciousness, Stanley's pretty, devoted wife Martha (Emily Watson) is blind and deaf to her husbands’ cruel nature. She tends her perfect rose garden, the tiny white picket fence separating her world from the outside. If I ever meet Cave, I will ask him if he thought of Samuel Beckett while writing The Proposition.

The Proposition is Australia's Outback western, a totemic bloodbath and saga of conquest, a gory, tender heartbreak. Director John Hillcoat fills the film with heat and dust reminiscent of biblical movies. This is nothing forced or sentimental crude here. The acting is superb and the characters well-crafted. This film is also a masterpiece of mood and menace, an atmospheric film, just like Cave’s music. The combined forces of John Hillcoat's directing and Nick Cave's screenplay produce an uncompromising movie you cannot turn away from. The Proposition is a movie of loyalty and betrayal, decrying the lack of soul and heart in the English settlers of Australia