By Maura Reilly May 1, 2006, 2:38 GMT
“Australia, what fresh hell is this?”
Guy Pearce as Charlie Burns in ‘The Proposition’ Photo by: Kerry Brown
Captain Stanley, played by Ray Winstone in John Hillcoat’s outback western ‘The Proposition’, mutters that statement as he looks out at a landscape of dust and horizon.
He’s not far from hell.
He’s in 1880’s Western Australia, an English police Captain struggling against the elements, lawlessness and his own nature to bring peace.
Stanley offers the Proposition to Charlie Burns, the middle brother of a family of bushrangers wanted for rape and murder. Charlie (Guy Pearce) is given the choice: take a horse and a gun and hunt down older brother Arthur (Danny Huston) or let younger brother Mikey hang come Christmas Day.
Charlie chooses what he considers the lesser of two evils to save young Mikey and sets off into the wild in search of the rest of the gang.
Stanley’s proposition has repercussions back home with the local boss Eden Fletcher (David Wenham) who demands immediate justice for the crimes committed on local citizens and with his own wife Martha (Emily Watson) who struggles with his constant shielding of her from the reality of life in the harsh outback.
It all comes home to roost on Stanley’s front porch in a bloody final conclusion.
Guy Pearce gives another strong performance. This time he is a man trying to make a clean break for himself and his younger, more impressionable brother when the repercussions of his former life pull him back into the fray.
Following along the well – tread path of great westerns, our hero doesn’t say much. We know Charlie is a thief and a killer but you still hope he makes it in time to save Mikey. And you understand when he comes face to face with the difficult final decision about Arthur that he’s torn in two.
At the end of the quest when the work is done the question of what Charlie is going to do next resonates with the audience. After being party to and seeing so much destruction, can a man find peace?
Pearce’s subtle characterization leaves us with many possibilities for Charlie’s future.
No mistaking though, this is Ray Winstone’s movie. He is the heir apparent to Oliver Reed: a perfect blend of street hooligan and vulnerability.
Here we have a lawman, well as close as you’re going to get out here in the wild. But he himself is not as black and white as traditional law men are often portrayed. He has spent his life with bad men, may even have been one himself. (What better way to catch a thief then to hire one, right?)
But his sense of justice is unquestionable.
He is trying to bring order to chaos if only to protect his wife who he has unwittingly placed in danger by the mere fact that she is with him. He struggles to shelter her, building her pretty cage with fresh paint and portraits of the Queen on the walls and Christmas trees from England. They try to maintain a semblance of the life they left behind only to be met with resentment from the community he was hired to protect.
Emily Watson as Stanley’s good lady wife is the perfect yang to his ying and helps Winstone deliver a subtler performance than we are used to watching. There is unseen strength to Martha, a desire to understand better this new world she’s come to and to be a help to her husband. So much is revealed in her clear blue eyes, the only truly innocent person in this story.
Danny Huston is spell-binding as the unbalanced Arthur. Listening to him is like listening to his famous father, John. Huston plays Arthur as a man who’s seen his end and is just waiting for the inevitable.
While David Wenham’s character Eden Fletcher, the town boss, may look cleaner than the rest of the citizens of Banyan, the truth is far from that. His disdain for individuals or groups he considers “filth” makes Stanley’s job that much more difficult. Some may recognize Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil as the tracker Jacko from Rabbit Proof Fence (2002).
Director Hillcoat had always wanted to do an Australian Western. He saw the country’s unforgiving terrain, violent history, and treatment of the indigenous peoples as a perfect backdrop for a richly layered tale.
Hillcoat enlisted singer/songwriter Nick Cave, originally brought on to do the music for the movie, to write the screenplay. Cave’s initial resistance to the whole writing idea gave way to a lyrical character study.
Many of the elements in the movie harken to great works that came before. There are David Lean-like shots of the landscape that stretches on forever, where the addition of a solitary figure drives home the feeling of isolation.
You see trouble coming from a long way off in this place.
Guy’s flinty Charlie is reminiscent of Eastwood’s early characters like Josey Wales. John Hurt’s Jellon Lamb, the crusty bard and Donny Huston’s wild philosopher Arthur are like characters from a Shakespeare play. All blended together it makes a gripping story to become immersed in.
They aren’t reinventing the western here. If anything it shows how there is a universality to this story, times that strike a chord in audiences around the world.
Opens limited in NY & LA May 5, 2006 MPAA rated R for strong language and violence.
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