The Proposition
Watched The Proposition this weekend. Flawless movie; so flawless in its portrayal of violence that it can be hard to watch.
The basic idea is, in the late 19th century, the Burns brothers gang is robbing, murdering, and raping its way through the Australian outback. Captain Stanley manages to capture Charlie and Mikey Burns. But the man the good Captain really wants is their older brother, Arthur Burns, who is a true sociopath and the mastermind of the gang’s reign of terror. Unfortunately, Arthur is hiding, Bin Laden-like, in a remote cave complex in the hills, and neither the police nor the bounty hunters nor even the Aborigines can get to him. So Captain Stanley gives Charlie Burns a proposition. Find and kill your older brother Arthur in 9 days, and you and your younger brother are pardoned. Fail, and young, mentally handicapped Mikey hangs.
And then, of course, everything goes to hell.
The movie is beautiful. The actors all act great. The dialogue is memorable. The music is good. The movie seems to pay particular attention to naturalism — the flies, the dust, the rotten teeth in everyone’s mouth. And thanks to this flawless technique, the movie’s final scene is extremely hard to watch.
After one finishes The Proposition, one starts to think about justice, about loyalty, about family. About violence and laws and revenge. About whether there was a worse way for the story of Captain Stanley and Charlie Burns to end.
This Australian movie is by far the best Western I have ever seen.