10A - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, September 5, 2006
ARTS
Whips and bullets grit up
amusician Cave's first film
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Even Clint never squinted
through a western this grue-
some. "The
Proposi- The
tion" opens Proposition
in the deaf-
ening midst At the Michigan
of a barn- Theater
storming First Look
shootout
and keeps the blood dripping
long after the guns have been
holstered. In his first screenplay,
Australian musician Nick Cave
offers a take on the Australian
outback's wild west that would
leave John Wayne shaken.
It's a lawless stretch of empty
territory, all dirt, outlaws and
horrified townsfolk. Enter
Captain Stanley (the genial
Ray Winstone, "Sexy Beast"),
a portly English soul of gruff
affability new to the continent
and charged with the unenvi-
able task of cleaning house.
Poor Stanley looks perpetually
reluctant to shoulder the bloody
burden - he'll do what he must,
but only because his moral con-
viction is stronger than his
stomach.
It doesn't take him long to
decide where to start. When a
nearby family is pillaged and
raped, credit goes immediately
to the Burns gang, a band of
poor Irish brothers who would
be reminiscent of Australia's
famous Kelly gang if their
bloody antics of brutal thiev-
ery didn't completely lack Ned
Kelly's somewhat Robin Hood-
like nobility. In fact, Arthur (a
haunting Danny Huston, "21
Grams"), the Burns's oldest
brother and the family's driving
force, is actually of a question-
able mind. And his mania is the
homicidal kind.
So it's Christmas come early
for Captain Stanley when two of
the younger Burns brothers end
up in his holding cell. He wastes
no time in putting the titular
proposition on the table: Unless
Charlie, the older of the two
brothers (Guy Pearce, "Memen-
to," here rivaling Christian Bale
in "The Machinist" for intense
emaciation) can bring down the
deranged Arthur, their youngest
brother hangs. Charlie's got two
weeks. And one hell of a moral
impasse.
The bulk of "The Proposi-
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"Cold Mountain" is for pansies. So Is bathing.
tion" follows Charlie as he can-
vasses the barren outback for a
trace of his brother, and its pace
is as slow and heavy as his.
As a morality tale, the film
goes epic and biblical by turns,
but rather self-consciously.
While Charlie quests mano a
mano through the wilderness,
Cave's thick, operatic score
swoops in with strings and syn-
thesizers blazing as if to under-
line in neon the moment's great
symbolism. It's a heavy-hand-
edness the script doesn't need.
The simple plot is already so
beautifully ripe for Cave's many
subtle turns and mechanizations
that overstating its case leaves it
trivial.
Back on the homefront of
Captain Stanley's quiet town,
we also get a glimpse of bush-
ranger domesticity, and the
pervading sense of violence
lurking even in the so-called
safety of civilization. On one
hand, there's Stanley's lovely
little wife, Martha (Emily Wat-
son, "Punch-Drunk Love"), who
embodies all the feminine loyal-
ty her character's name implies.
She's another English new-
comer, a woman whose delicate
efforts to create a proper home
in the deserted outback actually
makes a heroine out of a model
housewife.
But even she stays to watch
when the youngest Burns broth-
er is dragged from his cell for
a brutal public flogging. His
back literally ripped to shreds,
the young teen, no more than a
boy, screams fitfully with every
snap; the townsfolk simply stand
by, immobile and gaping. In this
frontier, violence isn't reserved
only for the criminals - it's the
law of the land.
So how ignoble is it real-
ly for a group of brothers to
band together and wield that
law with their own hands? In a
place where everyone is out for
themselves to the bitterest end,
how can Charlie turn his back
from his brothers, a groupof
men who by the tie of famjly,
alone pledge to cover it for life?
Between the order of corrupt
law and the utter chaos of omni-
present violence, Cave's rivet-
ing account of the bushranger
outback only makes a case for
survival of the fittest.
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