THE PROPOSITION

Australia had been a colony for almost a hundred years by the time The Proposition opens but the Outback still looks wilder and stranger than parts of the American West. As a wily bounty hunter observes, “Russia, China, the Congo, oh, I have traveled among unknown people in lands beyond the seas. But nothing, nothing, could have prepared me for this godforsaken hole.”

            Few of the early Europeans ever came to understand the land, much less the aborigines’ connection with it. Most of those who stayed on came to regard it as a land of contrasts; breathtaking beauty as a backdrop to dangers and mysteries beyond their grasp. Through this path the history of Australia unfolded. Largely a peaceful nation with beaches that rival any tropical paradise, its beauties hide a darker history of racism than its people let on, at least until 2008.

            John Hillcoat’s The Proposition, the best film of 2005, came as a prologue to the government issued apology to the natives. Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone), a burly sheriff brought over from England to tame the wild lands and capture the savage Burns Brothers gang. Led by three brothers, this pack of killers has terrorized the local outposts, their sprees of violence having culminated with the rape and murder of the Hopkins family when the film opens. When a country is founded as a penal colony it is reasonable to expect convicts running loose.

            Stanley, cornering the middle brother Charlie (Guy Pearce) and wounding the youngest and feeblest Mike (Richard Wilson) after a bloody shootout at their hideaway shack, strikes a deal with Charlie. If Charlie kills his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston), a murderous psychopath hiding somewhere in the mountains, by Christmas (nine days away), Stanley offers to pardon both Charlie and Mike. The captain justifies his proposition as a necessary not only in capturing Arthur, the deadliest of the brothers, but as a significant step toward his overall pledge to civilize the wild country for the sake of his fragile wife Martha (Emily Watson), a woman so scared of the new country she has recreated an English home in the middle of the desert.

            But Banyon Prison’s war with the Burns brothers is mostly a distraction from the government’s (represented by the abusive Fletcher played by David Wenham) war with the aborigines, a subtext the film does not let us ignore. In fact, using a traitor against his own family seems to be a common practice among the prison guards. Working with the white officers is Jacko (David Gulpillil), a rifle-wielding native who helps round up his own people and serves as a prison translator all to remain in good graces with his white employers.

            The Burns brothers were seen as only slightly more human even before they were known as outlaws. They are, after all, Irish, as were most of the prisoners sent down under and the disdain for these men carried over to the new colony. Being regarded higher, though, the Burnses themselves hold the natives in contempt, though they do have a faithful mixed-race gunman in their gang by the name of Two Bob (Tom E. Lewis).

            No walks of life are free of prejudice in The Proposition, certainly not within the law or among thugs. The most outspoken racist may be Arthur’s right-hand man Samuel (Tom Budge). Meanwhile, Jellon Lamb (John Hurt), a weasley bounty hunter holds the Irish and the aborigines in almost equal contempt. He balks at the implication of Darwin’s theory that he is at an equal evolutionary stage as the indigenous people of this land he disdains.

            Then again, clearly defined morality is elusive in The Proposition. Arthur is preceded by his monstrous reputation. Even the aborigines fear him and dare not wander into the mountain where he dwells. They call him the “Dog Man” and tell blood-curdling tales of him shape shifting at night when they can hear him howling at the moon. Some of the most unforgettable shots in the film feature Arthur before the narrative officially introduces him, a lone ghastly figure against a desert wasteland. And yet, when the movie first shows us his face, Captain Stanley is proven correct. Though a merciless killer, Arthur is essentially a man like any other and bound to a code of ethics that proves to be his demise, namely that of protecting and even forgiving his family. He forgives Charlie his betrayal and then risks all to rescue Mike from jail.

Mike, as we have seen, is weak and mentally challenged. A case could be made that he can’t be held accountable for his crimes. Charlie, however, is the most enigmatic of the three. We are given reason enough to believe that he will draw the line at senseless murder. Upon his first encounter with Jellon Lamb, he spares the bounty hunter though he could easily have killed him. He refrains from shooting Arthur in the back on each opportunity that arises and then performs one last noble act of sacrifice right before the movie ends. He had seen enough blood and parted ways with his older brother at the start of the film and it’s doubtful he had much to do with the Hopkins massacre. Nonetheless he participates in a prison coup that ends in an orgy of brutality.

Not that there were many salvageable guards in that prison anyway. One particular scoundrel, Sergeant Lawrence (Robert Morgan), practically jumpstarts the ensuing chain of violence when he spreads word about the captain’s proposition with Charlie Burns.

Jellon Lamb, though a man of “no little education”, is a conniving viper whose only mistake is to misjudge his prey. Booze controls much of what he says, yet John Hurt plays the whiskered devil with such beastly grit that his first appearance is the most intriguing in the film with a creepiness that movies through our veins like the best work of David Lynch.

Defying all expectations, Captain Stanley comes out the most honorable of the bunch, despite his grave misjudgments. Still, let us not forget that he is all too willingly a part of a corrupt system when he answers to a man like Eden Fletcher.

            If Stanley’s downfall is his failure to understand the Outback it is because nature never offered any help. It’s a beautiful place, flowing with energy beyond the comprehension of most white men. But the Burns brothers do come to terms with the land. While Mike is being lashed in prison (more as a vengeance on his brothers than for any wrong doing on his part), the moon and stars seem to communicate his suffering to his brothers.

            Perhaps the only way to bond with such a place is to drop all pretenses of civilization, something Stanley and his wife refuse to do despite the mounting evidence that they must. They have modeled their home in true English fashion Martha spends her lonely afternoons at home planting her flower garden much like she undoubtedly did back home, all the while oblivious that their little spot of heaven stands out like a sore thumb against the surrounding desert.

            The Burns gang paid a price, however, for developing an uncompromising kinship with the Outback and resorted to a predatory nature. But maybe the loss of humanity for the growth of animalistic behavior is an inevitability with our survival instincts are put to the test. In this sense, Arthur is a “Dog Man” in more than a metaphysical way. The wild has morphed him into a human predator.

            Neither the townspeople nor the authorities have escaped similar transformations, though in ways not as superficially conspicuous. After ordering the massacre of a local native group, Fletcher proceeds to have Mike publicly whipped and in doing so creates a diversion for the locals. Ironically, the petrified Martha convinces her husband to allow this abuse of power and unknowingly helps develop the bloodbath to follow.

The effect of a mysterious desolate land on a corrupt colony also takes its toll on the natives, who are responsible for at least one murder just before the narrative and the attempted murder of Charlie before he is rescued by Samuel.

Given its bleak view of human nature, the most surprising aspect of The Proposition is how alluring Hillcoat makes the Australian desert while also deromanticizing it. This place, after all, long captured the imagination of Europeans. Many went over, and most realized that it was not to be as easily tamed as they had thought. As Australia is a land of contrasts, so Hillcoat makes The Proposition. The tip off starts at the very beginning as a lovely traditional hymn “This is a Happy Land” opens a film about a place where happiness never shows its head. It’s not overstating things to say that the norms of human behavior have reverted to their most primitive origins. Indeed, some of the occurrences of the place (such as when a prison guard inexplicably shoots his foot) are so far removed from the civilized world that they create an uncertainty about what is an appropriate response. Are they comical or tragic?

This subtle teasing of the audience’s response clues is played to great effect in two fantastic scenes. In the first, Jacko and a posse of aboriginal prisoners break down howling like dogs as they tell the aggravated Captain Stanley about the fearsome “Dog Man” of the mountains. It all has a spooky effect, but are they just teasing the brutish captain? Are we supposed to be in on the joke and mock Stanley’s gullibility? That we are never told exactly (the film never shows us their reaction once Stanley walks away) makes it all the more haunting. In either case, their tales of the supernatural paint a world far beyond Stanley’s understanding.

            Samuel has a beautiful voice, especially when he sings “Peggy Gordon”. Unfortunately, he usually breaks out in song while committing some sort of atrocity. His voice plays over the whipping of Mike and, more dramatically, later on as he prepares to rape a woman. Although our natural instinct is to recoil at the brutal images, we can’t help but be taken by his sweet voice. Does this say something about us as an audience?

            Because he understands the conflicting feelings and contradictions that the early Europeans saw in Australia, as well as more than a few things about John Ford’s version of the American West, John Hillcoat created a most unusual tour de force, a beautiful film about brutality. The Proposition twists our sensibilities while mesmerizing our eyes.