directed by John Hillcoat, 2005
It�s impossible to watch this film without realising the debt it owes to Joseph Conrad�s novel Heart Of Darkness, which also involves someone being sent deep into a raw and dangerous British colony in order to assassinate a hermit-like rogue element who has taken on semi-divine status amongst the indigenous people. It is this spiritual element that lends the film so much of its power, as it allows for a far more interesting study of characters. The film is hyper-real: nothing in it is impossible as such, but everything is heightened a little bit. Thus Arthur Burns, the Kurtz of the film, is as troubling as his literary progenitor, a massively charismatic and intelligent figure who is nevertheless a psychopath given to moments of shocking cruelty (at one point asking his brother why he can�t ever stop him from indulging his more excessive impulses). However, in his contemplative moments he seems to be the only character who knows where he is, able to reconcile the desire to �civilise� Australia with the unmerciful reality of the country. His flaw is that he cannot reconcile the different elements of his own persona with each other.
Ideological conflict in one form or another is what drives the film; the fey and unsympathetic mayor (David Wenham) is the only character who retains a simplistic black-and-white view of events, and as a consequence seems to be permanently detached from reality. By contrast, bounty-hunter Jellon Lamb (John Hurt, in a wild performance) can only grapple with his situation by drinking himself senseless. One of the driving forces of the film is how Charlie�s quest to save one brother by killing another is how it teaches police chief Captain Stanley (the excellent Ray Winstone) that human morality is not an absolutist concept, and that his initial obsessive desire to �civilise this land� is far more complicated than merely catching criminals and subjugating the natives. For me, the central scene of the film is Mikey�s whipping. Stanley disapproves, realising that the young and mentally-handicapped criminal is not responsible for his actions, but he agrees to it when his wife (Emily Watson) asks him to imagine her in the place of the Burns gang�s victim. The struggle between his ideological desire to fight crime � and his love for his wife � with his realisation of who he is really dealing with is brilliantly played, and in the event he is the only character who is prepared for the shockingly brutal result of the lashing. His wife, who seeks to turn the arid patch of land on which she lives into England, cannot cope with the idea that a criminal could elicit sympathetic feelings.
As long as intention and deed cannot be reconciled, the conflict will continue even as the people involved die and are replaced. The film ends � it cannot go further � when Charlie finally makes up his mind about who he wants to be, and Arthur ends the film with a moment of realisation of his own, in his way. In so doing Stanley is taught a brutal lesson about his earlier overestimation of his authority: he emerges bloodied and broken, but wiser for realising that he is not, and never was, judge and jury. If the film is predictable, it is because the characters ultimately assign their own fates.
Beautifully written and filmed and with largely gorgeous music (only Cave�s lyrics push the cheese-boundary on occasion), The Proposition is a sumptuous masterpiece that is brutal without ever being gratuitous. See it at once, and switch your brain to �on.�
*****
Back to films index
Back to main page