You never get your fill of nature… It salves the heart, the mountains, the trees, the endless planes, the moon, the stars… every man can debate quiet, and complete, even the lowliest misanthrope…
Some folk of my generation will tell you when they first saw
Nick Cave (1983) and be able to reel off the touchpoints of a career that has
not only sustained innovation and vitality but has evolved through music into
print and then film. He can write the most beautiful songs about a woman being
drowned who is redeemed by her hatred for her murderer, the exploits of serial
killers and look his personal tragedies straight on… he is the most honest of
artists and this film proved his ability to tackled complex themes as well as
provide the most elegant if fierce and frightening, drama.
The Burns boys are ultra-violent criminals and yet, Arthur
Burns (Danny Huston), head of the family, who will kill a man just as easily as
a dog, is in love with the beauty of the Outback landscape and even in the
midst of the most violent episode can always find time for the endless majesty
of the sunset hance his quote at the top. The film was directed by John
Hillcoat who had been inspired after a trip to the region and then begun
thinking of the harsh time of the 1880s when it was arguably wilder than the
wild west.
Hillcoat got Nick Cave involved on the story and later the
score, his first collaboration with violinist and composer Warren Ellis, with
the result and unflinching portrayal of humanity in fight or flight and
survival mode as the Australian West was won with all the unfairness and
amorality that entails. Tom E Lewis, who plays outlaw Two-bob, reflects in the
documentary on the fact that even in 2005, aboriginals and white folk didn’t
always mix and the film enlists the help of local native Australians to show
the impact of the invading white men and the notorious Queensland Native
Police.
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| Danny Huston |
Danny Huston sums up the essence in the making of
featurette, the characters are not delineated in terms of good and bad, the
good guys are bad and the bad guys are good… he sees his Arthur as being
very moral, with a very strong sense of family and woe betide the lawman or
Englishman who gets in the way. Cave is always able to present the most extreme
situations in an almost off-hand way and whilst this encompasses the film’s violence
– no Hollywood or Spaghetti Western rolling around – it also enables the
presentation of the historical aspects in a way that makes the viewer make
their own assessment. As Tom Budge, who plays one of Arthur’s confederates Samuel
Stoat, points out, you don’t have to “elevate” the Aboriginals to deal with the
issues of their treatment.
It’s about the nature of civilisation… who we are and how
wrong we get it…
Then we have the English, with Captain Morris Stanley played
by Ray Winstone and his wife Martha, Emily Watson, who makes the above observation
and refers to the couple’s small “Chekhovian house”. Their homestead is a representation
of the impossible dreams of empire, with their garden a mannered and futile
horticultural attempt to recreate the environment of the home country. As
Winston says, unlike the USA, a lot of people didn’t choose to go to Australia,
they were sent, and this impacted the relationship between law and order with a
cultural imposition that simply fails against the harshness of the environment
and the people.
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| Emily Watson and Ray Winstone |
This is Stanley’s experience in the film as he fights to
maintain his values in the context of and authority and police force far
removed from what he is used to: a good man in the wrong position as Cave says
in one of the set’s interviews. The proposition Stanley makes is an eternally
problematic one, he does a deal with Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), that he and
his younger brother Mikey can go free if he brings down his older brother Arthur (Huston), who is wanted for rape and murder of Eliza Hopkins and her unborn
child before Christmas in nine days’ time. Needless to say, it’s hardly seasonal
weather in the blistering 50-degree heat as Charlie sets off leaving Mikey in
perilous incarceration, the guards and local populace keen on revenge without
due process.
Australia, what fresh hell is this… make no mistakes Mr
Burns I will civilise this place.
Charlie goes to the Hopkins’ home stead and sees the graves
and the unused crib, perhaps he realises that his brother has gone too far,
Pearce is amazing, as usual, in delivering intensity and complexity with deep
interior feeling but he’s far from alone with this cast and this material.
There’s an exchange between Stanley and Martha after she comes to see him at
the jail, she shocked at the World he lives in, “in there”, believing in him
and recognising the burdens of his position without knowing the deal he has
done and the reason he has spent three days watching over his – still secret –
prisoner.
 |
| John Hurt |
You want star turns… meet Jellon Lamb, an Englishman “of no
little education” played with skills way beyond "world-weary" by John Hurt. Charlie meets him seemingly
drunk in a lonesome cantina serving himself as the barman has been impaled by
three aboriginal spears. The two spar carefully, Lamb clearly whip smart
despite his degradation, a bounty hunter clearly looking for the same man as
Charlie.
Back in town, a group of aboriginals have been captured
and through interpreter Jacko (the recently deceased David Gulpilil, star of
Walkabout), tell of a “Dogman”, a fierce white man who lives in a cave. Charlie,
meanwhile, is about to experience one of the film’s most unexpected twists as
he wakes to find his horse killed and a spear flying in to puncture his chest,
as he falls unconscious he sees an aboriginal’s head shot open… the film’s way
with horror is, as I’ve said, casual. Charlie awakes to find himself being
tended by his brother’s gang.
Meanwhile, Stanley’s men are talking leaving him exposed to
local opprobrium as the fact he let Charlie go is shared across town. Popular
opinion must be assuaged and local official, Eden Fletcher (David Wenham), orders
Mikey to be given one hundred lashes as an initial punishment for the murders.
Whilst this might possibly kill the boy, it could also bring the Burns gang back,
looking for revenge.
 |
| Guy Pearce and Danny Huston |
Stanley sends the disloyal Sergeant Lawrence away with
tracker Jacko and the other men to investigate the Cantina murder by a group of
Aboriginal people on the instructions of Fletcher. Bloodshed ensues… and the
Burns gang hear the shots echoing from miles away.
The film’s sense of dread grows heavier as the policemen
celebrate their murders and Arthur sits in the moonlight staring intently at the
Moon. Events are about to catch up with all the participants in the thunderous final
sequence, Hillcoat juxtaposing the disturbing peace of the Stanleys’ household
with the savage death count beyond as the Burns gang comes down from their
mountain to rescue Mikey…
This is a film to savour and to rewatch and a tip of the hat to cinemtographer Benoît Delhomme who captures the extraordinary light of this desolate and beautiful landscape as well as every pained element of humanity.
It is, of course, an
excellent set from the BFI, packed with wonderful extras, contemporary interviews
with the cast and crew along with commentaries from Cage and Hillcoat as well
as a new one from critics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson.
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| Emily Watson |
Other features include:
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) or Blu-ray only release is presented in High Definition
An 80-page book featuring new writing and recollections by John Hillcoat, Cat Villiers, Leah Purcell and Warren Ellis, plus essays by Andrew Graves, Professor Catriona Elder, Dr Stephen Morgan and Adrian Martin
John Hillcoat and Nick Cave in Conversation (2021, 53 mins, audio only): a newly recorded conversation between the film’s director and its screenwriter
The Making of The Proposition (2005, 27 mins), behind-the-scenes documentary
Inside
the Proposition (2005, 43 mins), featurettes looking at the
film’s pre-production
Shooting
the Proposition (2005, 24 mins), featurettes on the production and the
challenges faced during filming
B-roll footage (2005, 20 mins): behind-the-scenes footage shot during the making of the film
Interviews with Guy Pearce, Danny Huston, John Hurt, Emily Watson, Ray Winston and other cast members
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