Guns and Flies

The Proposition, 2005. Directed by John Hillcoat, written by Nick Cave. Starring Guy Pierce, Ray Winstone, Emily Watson, Danny Huston, the foppish David Wenham, Richard Wilson, and the woefully underutilized John Hurt, and two of Australia’s greatest aboriginal actors: David Gulpilil (famous for Walkabout) and Tommy Lewis (from The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith).

Now playing at the Lagoon, instead of the Uptown, where they’re screening The Celestine Prophecy. Apparently, the finest films in the world don’t have a home at this Landmark Theatre.

For those of us who love westerns–and I count myself amongst that forlorn group–The Proposition is as welcome as, well, as welcome as a the ghost of Sam Peckinpah in a lonely Montana hotel on a cold evening. Like old Sam’s best movies, this one is dirty, has vile characters, bucketloads of extreme violence, a morally compromised society, and gorgeous photography. Not to mention a decent script that sometimes falters but nevertheless serves its masters well. Like the films of Sam Peckinpah, this one’s being criminally neglected, shuffled off to the shoeboxes at the Lagoon theater, waiting to vanish like a bad dream.

Even better, The Proposition doesn’t soak itself in Peckinpah’s drunken machismo, has a sharp female character who is not simply a whore or a saint.

The facts: Captain Stanley (played by Ray Winstone, whose tense performance almost gave me a headache) and his scurrilous crew blast apart a brothel in order to apprehend half of the infamous Burns gang. After killing scores of prostitutes, the captain gets his men, Charlie and Mike Burns (Guy Pearce and the angel-faced Richard Wilson). Stanley makes a deal with the intelligent Charlie: if you go into the outback and murder your brother Arthur, the maniacal leader of the wicked clan, then the baby, Mike, won’t die at the hangman’s noose. Charlie accepts, is given a gun and a horse, and makes his way into the unforgivable desert.

Nothing, of course, can go right. The Proposition cuts between the two societies, that of the criminal in the desert and the face of law and order in the town. But the Captain has troubles: his men, as rotten as the criminals they pursue and nearly genocidal in their attempts to rid Australia of aborigines, don’t trust him; his wife (played by Emily Watson, a beacon of cleanliness and clear morality in this wasted land) seeks justice for the murder and rape of her best friend (at the hands of the Burns gang); his superior Eden Fletcher (played by David Wenham, whose lispy performance is ridiculous, the only weak spot in this fine film) is after him to get results, and eventually disrupts this proposition by having the feeble Mike Burns flogged to death.

Nick Cave’s screenplay is nice, even as it threatens to slog into Cormac McCarthy’s He-Man Spiritual Territory. I might also add that Cave’s soundtrack is astounding, and should be required for future westerns. But I digress: the menacing Arthur burns, played with one of the great slow-burners in Danny Huston (John’s grandson) is simply fabulous–a philosophizing bastard who stares at sunsets and ruminates on love and family. John Hurt is along for the ride, acting with the subtlety of John Lovitz in his Subway ads, but it’s great to see the old coot brandishing a gun, snot dripping from the end of his nose. The film is relentlessly dirty, and insects are everywhere, crawling on men and women, biting and buzzing.

One could argue that The Proposition is a study of the madness of society versus the madness of family. For the Burns’ clan is, indeed, a close-knit family who might even be said to love one another. Captain Stanley’s little town in the middle of nowhere is a civilized place, where no one trusts one another and deceit is the first order of business, as long as everything is in its place. But the Burns’ are vile creatures, rapists, murderers, and in the final analysis, no one emerges clean and clear and unwounded.

The Proposition is a film you could analyze until the dingoes come home, and in doing so find scores of little contradictions, mistakes, and etc. It’s not a perfect film, but for the lover of the western, it is perfectly entertaining, provided you can stomach some its violence. I could, and would see it again.