Guy Pearce: Will You Marry Me?
Actually, that would be a proposal rather than a Proposition.
Boom boom.
So anyway: if you're a fan of any of the following you'll have wanted to see The Proposition:
- Nick Cave
- Warren Ellis
- Ray Winstone
- Australia
- Westerns
- Violence
- Shouts of "monkeys!"
- David Gulpilil (who isn't?)
- Flies
- Flies
- Deserts
- More flies
You'd expect a screenplay written by Nick Cave to be more ornate than this maybe, more Gothic, more obtuse, but what The Proposition does very well is convey an almost hyper-realistic Outback/Western setting, complete with almost tangible heat, lingering desert shots and flies you almost want to brush away in the cinema. When Ray Winstone's eyelid flickers very minutely at one stage, you know that there's a man who' s focused so much on his role that the fly is incorporated into the film as an integral part. It's not natural for a geezer like Ray, surely, to deal with that sort of heat and that amount of creepy-crawlies, but he does it admirably.
I don't own the soundtrack to this movie, unfortunately, but for once I'm tempted to buy it now I've seen the film. Love or loathe Nick Cave, you can't help but be swept away by anything The Dirty Three's Warren Ellis puts his hand to, and this is no expection: any time a violin makes itself heard is a transcendent moment in the film, although don't expect not to be slightly bemused by M. Cave's vocal contributions.
Violence is a fairly major feature of this film, but I've yet to see a film where it's more relevant and warranted. Arthur Burns really is a nasty guy, so it would stoopid not to show why. If anything, it's more emotionally painful to watch, and the violence is mixed up in all that.
As for not owning the soundtrack: try something elegiac from Cave's last album: The Lyre Of Orpheus; and something classic, yet fairly fitting with it's apprehensive, claustrophobic tone: Tupelo.
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