The Greatest Trick

There’s a warning at the beginning of The Proposition stating that Aborigines may find the film offensive. Given how staggeringly violent this brilliant but politically incorrect film is, Aborigines won’t be the only ones potentially heading for the exits. I, on the other hand, must guiltily confess to enjoying every blood soaked minute.

Ostensibly an Australian western, The Proposition is a very different…er…proposition from the morality tales of John Ford, or even the bloodbaths of Sam Peckinpah. Director John Hillcoat paints an unremittingly grim, nihilistic yet strangely lyrical and beautiful picture of an Australia not yet tamed; the Wild Down Under, for want of a better expression.

Ray Winstone plays Captain Stanley, the sometimes brutal yet essentially decent lawman who catches bandits Charlie and Mike Burns, two of three notorious brothers. Instead of hanging them both, he releases the middle brother Charlie (Guy Pierce) telling him his younger brother will be hanged by Christmas Day unless he finds and kills Arthur, the older brother who is guilty of a horrific rape and triple murder.

Charlie reluctantly agrees, but will he really betray his older brother to save the younger? This central dilemma unfolds in an almost Shakespearean fashion, but with a staggering amount of violence and relentless pessimism. I am no fan of screenwriter Nick Cave’s music (far too bleak for my tastes), but he has fashioned a brutal yet eloquent screenplay. The rich atmosphere is also complemented by a fine cast. Ray Winstone is superb as a man desperate to “civilise this land”, whilst at the same time mollycoddling his well-to-do wife Martha (the always excellent Emily Watson). Richard Wilson (not the Richard Wilson from One Foot in the Grave) and Danny Huston are very good as the younger and older Burns brothers respectively, and there’s an amusing, hilariously OTT cameo from John Hurt as an embittered, cynical bounty hunter. The only false note comes from David Wenham’s one-dimensional Pommie Eden Fletcher.

But the film really belongs to Guy Pierce, whose melancholy brooding and ambivalent performance glues the story together. Proving once again how far he has come since appearing in Neighbours, this is the latest in a remarkable slew of first-rate performances from LA Confidential to Memento and now this. He is a fantastic actor who just seems to get better and better.

However, it must be said that despite my love for westerns, I cannot recommend this film to anyone. For a start, its violence will prove prohibitive to all but the strongest stomachs. One particular flogging scene attempts to match The Passion of the Christ for sheer brutality, as townsfolk gather to watch a young man being lashed to a bloody pulp. Sitting through this scene, one feels as luridly complicit in the brutal punishment, as those standing watching.

But it isn’t so much the violence that caused me problems as much as its relentlessly pessimistic and explicitly anti-Christian worldview and those familiar with the compositions of Nick Cave are unlikely to be surprised by this. Given how few and far between westerns are these days, I found it a shame that despite being something of a guilty pleasure, I will not be adding this film to my collection when it comes out on DVD. Despite being an undoubted work of art, it can’t be described as “noble, lovely or true” – the criteria given in the Bible for what Christians should fill their minds with.

However, I do predict The Proposition is destined to become a cult classic.

Simon Dillon, March 2006.