Proposition, The
As an Australian film The Proposition is a tremendous and inspiring effort. It’s a sad state of affairs to have to qualify it as such, but it is especially great…for an Australian film, which is obviously, to anyone in this country, not saying a fuck of a lot.
Many praise the film for its even-handedness in bouncing between the two sides of the law in Guy Pearce’s bushranger and British Dude’s sheriff, but personally I found it one of the film’s weaker points. Everything with Pearce and his band of outlaws was captivating stuff, and then to continually cut back to another scene with the Law and his wife in their isolation made me feel like I was missing out on the best parts of the film.
While his musical contribution to the film cannot be faulted, there’s the odd moment of pretentiousness that seeps into Cave’s script, something that I have at times also felt about his lyrics. The bad guys here are seemingly all poets or scholars. The older brother, the film’s apparent psychopath, speaks in moving soliloquies about the meaning of family, while a boozy bounty hunter happens to have a great fondness for literature.
Pearce’s older wild brother is built up much like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now – you hear so much about him that his presence hangs over every second of the film even though he doesn’t appear for some time. Unfortunately, unlike that film, here the character doesn’t quite meet up to the hype, as we meet him too early in the film’s duration for him to have such an effect. I was actually under the impression that the film would be more about Pearce’s character’s journey to find his brother, but he pretty much finds him after only one montage, and the rest of his story is about the decision he has to make – which brother to save, and which to betray.
The Proposition is a hauntingly beautiful film that takes the barren Australian outback landscapes and…well, splatters them with blood. Quite a bit of blood, actually. A lot of critics seemed to take exception at just how bloody this tale was, which if nothing else proves that we don’t see too many heads exploding in Australian films these days. Unless there was one in Me & My Stupid Mate – if you can find someone that actually paid to see that masterpiece please ask them for me.
It is probably unfair to claim this film as the start of a movement in Australian cinema, as the first of a ‘new wave’ of not totally shithouse movies that are not just content to lazily bask in crude stereotypes under the banner of ‘studying our own identity’, but it is obvious that this movie is a step in the right direction. Let’s hope it’s the start of a long procession of good genre films made in this country. My dream is that I live to see the day where we don’t have to add the qualifier “…for an Australian film” to positive reactions to our movies anymore.