The Proposition

Directed by Australian John Hillcoat and written by rock-pop musician Nick Cave, who is Australian born but now living in the UK, The Proposition is a disturbing film.

The film is like a Western, set in the Australian outback in the late 1800s when Australia was inhabited by, apart from the indigenous Aborigines, White convicts and free settlers under the British Rule. The scenery is harsh, and so is life. There is no water and you can see and hear the buzz of flies all through the film. The people living here seem emotionless, hardened by the climate and their hardships of the land.

The story is about an army/police officer, Captain Morris Stanley (played by Ray Winstone), who has to bring to justice a gang of criminals – the Burns brothers – who have raped, murdered and robbed an innocent family. The film starts with Stanley and his troopers raiding and, after a gun battle, capturing two of the Burns brothers: Charlie (played by Guy Pearce) and Mike (played by Richard Wilson). The oldest and vicious Burns brother, Arthur (played by Danny Huston), remains at large, hiding.

Stanley returns to town with the captured younger Mike, leaving Charlie with a proposition: if Charlie hunts down and kills his older brother Arthur (the mastermind behind the crimes and ‘a monster’) before Christmas, Charlie and Mike will be allowed to go free. If not, Mike will be hanged on Christmas Day. However, Stanley keeps this proposition to himself, lying to the town’s people about the capture of the Burns brothers and making false promises.

As Charlie sets off to find Arthur, the film focuses on Stanley trying to maintain a balance between several worlds: the harsh Australian outback; the politics amongst his troopers; the town’s people, led by a businessman/mayor, demanding justice for the crimes and insisting on a gruesome lashing of Mike; and his English wife (played by Emily Watson) who tries to create a secluded fenced-in pure English home in the middle of the harsh Australian outback.

Charlie eventually locates Arthur but is unable to kill him, being rescued by Arthur twice: once from an Aborigine attack (when Charlie is impaled by a spear and almost dies); and again, when an English bounty-hunter (played by John Hurt) captures him. On the contrary, Charlie is enamoured by Arthur – a survivor and philosophical man, in love with the beauty of the land; and Arthur’s partner-in-crime, Sam (played by Tom Budge) – a rapist/murderer who is also a beautiful singer.

That’s the strange thing about The Proposition. The film presents a set of contrasts: good and evil, beauty and bleakness, murder and music, fragility and strength, heroes and villains. Yet, these contrasts seem intertwined, at times taking up opposite positions, bringing up questions of morality. First, overtly, when dealing with the Burns brothers as criminals; and then subtly, when questioning the governance and treatment of Aborigines (in the film’s background).

On instances, both director Hillcoat and writer Cave introduce Charles Darwin (who was most certainly in the news in late 1800) and Darwin’s theory of how we, as men, share the same ancestry with monkeys; how we have survived the worst to evolve as civilised men; and how, in the name of civilisation, we can do no wrong – even when we relapse into our basic genetic behaviours. The film seems to rationalise the fact that, when it comes to survival, we are all products of our environment.

This sense of fatality is what disturbs me. Although The Proposition ends with good winning over evil, I am left with a strange mixture of revulsion and respect. The film reminds me of William Golding’s novel ‘Lord of the Flies’.

[The thing I did not like about the film was the mumbling of dialogues by the actors. Perhaps the print I viewed was not a good one.]