The Proposition
   
In the anarchic 1880 Australian Outback, Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) captures, after a violent gunfight that occupiers the first five minutes of the film, renegade Irish criminals Charlie (Guy Pearce) and Mike (Richard Wilson), two-thirds of the infamous Burns Gang that are guilty for the vicious massacre of a family, that is indirectly referenced to in poignant opening snapshots of frontier funerals, that included a pregnant friend of Stanley's wife Martha (Emily Watson). Determined to "civilize this land" Stanley offers Charlie a proposition: to save youthful Mike from the hangman and to receive a pardon for his crimes, he must hunt and kill his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston), a madman who is huddled somewhere in one of the desert's countless rocky ranges. To this false choice, Charlie agrees and thus set in motion the no-win dynamic between modernism and primitivism that fuels The Proposition, a revisionist Western written by recording artist, author, and all-round god-like genius Nick Cave and directed by John Hillcoat (who previously collaborated on 1988's depressing prison story Ghosts…of the Civil Dead) that, as with HBO's equally soiled Deadwood, is coated in flies, mud, and sweat while displaying an appreciation for, and fearful awe of, the near-mythic savagery that stands as enlightened society's vicious contrary opposite.
 
The substance and depth that Winstone conjures for Captain Stanley, who occasionally crosses the line, is a wonder to watch, his character's arc is most impressive. He is representative of order, the need to appease the demands for revenge of both his troopers and the townsfolk. He functions to balance the representatives of civilisation and refined society, and his own gentle and lonely English wife Martha whom he endeavours to protect from the harsh crudeness of this colonial outpost. However, skilful writing by Nick Cave equals the character arc of Stanley with his main antagonist Charlie, who is representative of the lawless outsider, Charlie is a balance between the two extremes of his brothers, forced into having to betray one to save the other.
 
The look of this film is totally stunning. The director uses the landscapes and the colours of nature to paint a story of their own. Not in the way say, Terence Malick does and not in the way that compromises the integrity of the land. The land becomes the sets and seems perfectly natural and not at all contrived. The costumes and art direction too is really top notch as is the simple and evocative music composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis which is a resonant presence throughout.
 
Despite its savagery this is a superbly poetic and original film, one of the year’s best, showcasing the talents of writer-director team Nick Cave and John Hillcoat in a gritty, believable story of brotherly love and betrayal, and the temptation into the degradation of revenge that is the consequence of violence.
 
 
Paul Elliott