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The Proposition est le troisième film de John Hillcoat, le monsieur de l’apocalyptique The Road. Ce qui découle de ce western aux allures atypiques est d’une coquille remarquablement belle, mais sonnant souvent creux.
Venons-en aux points positifs, qui sont avant tout et presque essentiellement formels. Primo, il faut avouer qu’Hillcoat et ses copains ont fait un remarquable travail sur la photographie, avec de nombreux plans crépusculaires offrant de formidables images. Ensuite, il n’y a pas à dire, on retrouve aussi le style Hillcoat à la réalisation, avec une caméra souvent en mouvement, composée de beaucoup de travellings. Ensuite, il a pu compter sur la musique de Warren Ellis et Nick Cave (ce dernier étant aussi le scénariste du film, je vais y revenir) pour offrir de très beaux morceaux musicaux, bien que trop souvent utilisés à mon goût.
Le problème de l’oeuvre se situe sur le fond. Si on peut évidemment faire le lien avec ces nombreux plans de couchers de soleil et la relation entre les frères avec une apothéose quelque peu malheureuse, on ne peut que rester sceptique sur le travail effectué par Cave. En effet, ça raconte de belles choses, ça a des phrases très profondes, il existe une certaine poésie, mais la question que l’on se pose, c’est pourquoi? Ca me plait, mais ça me semble tellement contradictoire par rapport aux personnages, à ces salauds, à cette Australie d’époque, qui n’était encore un continent presque rempli de rebuts de l’Angleterre. A ce niveau, j’ai personnellement préféré le travail effectué sur L’assassinat de Jesse James par le lâche Robert Fort. Voilà, le western poétique à voir.

First there is an intense shoot-out at an isolated homestead in the middle of the desert. After the gunsmoke clears a burly lawman warily walks into the shattered cabin hoping to intimidate the bloodied scoundrel hiding inside. Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) is after the outlaw’s brother, a deranged assassin hiding in the mountains. In exchange for his brother’s death, the captain agrees to pardon the outlaw (Guy Pearce) and his younger brother Mikey (Richard Wilson), who is mentally disabled and unaware of much of what goes on, sparing them the noose.
If this set-up sounds a lot like the work of Sergio Leone it’s because The Proposition is essentially a classic Western. Betrayal, family, and the veneer of civilization over brutality are again here dominant themes. The only difference is it’s set in the Outback in the 1880s, a time when the American West was welcoming the coming of the railway, while all signs of civilization still lay in the unseen distance from the Australian bush country.
And yet, on paper The Proposition (written by Nick Cave, an Australian musician known for his experimental and intelligent compositions) deviates little from the world familiar to John Ford because the Outback has as much of a mythological place in Australian popular conscience as the frontier does in America. It’s a land of the unknown and its existence shaped national character.
The ones who knew this land best, the Aborigines, were treated much the same as the Native Americans who first roamed the plains. John Hillcoat keeps them in the background, as the white settlers did for many years, coming into the foreground only when they are needed by the whites. In one scene, the white policemen chain them together, calling them “black bastards”. Ford also kept his Native American characters largely in the back, bringing the forward only when they were needed to pose a threat. Ford did this to soften history, Hillcoat does it because he knows his country’s difficult past.
Nonetheless, Australia has a look and feel like no other place. It is in its very uniqueness that it is most like America, a nation of many faces first inhabited by societies in touch with the land and its mysteries. It is against this canvas that Hillcoat has made a stunning, mesmerizing, and haunting movie tinted by the golden sun ever upon it.
As Charlie Burns (Pearce, really good in this somber role) sets off to find his brother Arthur far off in the foreboding hills, the tale takes on a mysterious air of almost David Lynchian proportions. There are startling kooks and dangerous fools along the way who also have their eye on capturing Arthur, none more memorable than the maniacal old recluse played by John Hurt. Most vile is Sam, the fugitive with an angelic voice.
The Proposition is a film beautiful in its very coarseness. Homages to The Searchers abound in the film’s frequent use of doors for shots, and the shot of the massacred family’s graves was obviously inspired by Once Upon a Time in the West. Even in horror there is sometimes beauty and even the most brutal moments in the movie have a poetic allure.
The Proposition is frightening because of the ever presence of the supernatural. Arthur is said to be so evil that the Aborigines believe him to be a shape-shifter, labeling him “the Dog Man”. What is real and what is legend? Is there even a distinction? As in the other great Australian movie, Picnic at Hanging Rock, myth and normality overlap in The Proposition, but the real mysteries are the motives behind human actions.
The more we discover, the more we want to know. Arthur (an unrecognizable Danny Huston) remains a mysterious figure, even after we see his camp. He values his brothers and his posse, but capable of heinous crimes. We know little of Charlie, but enough to know he is struggling with his decision to kill his brother.
Captain Stanley also has a driving force and that is his personal connection to the Burns gang. His wife Martha (the talented Emily Watson) wants them caught and dead. Before fleeing town, the Burns brothers raped and murdered her friends, including a pregnant woman. She wants to know more about her friends’ attackers, but her husband protects her from the realities of the massacre. But the Captain is a weak man and when the townsfolk learn of his proposition with Charlie Burns, they shun him and his wife. When Martha finds out that rape was involved in the attack, she also goes against her husband’s plan, allowing Mikey to be flogged.
But Captain Stanley was the man elected by Her Majesty’s Services and brought over from England to civilize the land. As the lawman on the verge of a breakdown, Ray Winstone delivers the best performance of his already prolific career. Watching his wife grow a rose garden, hopelessly attempting to recreate her home in England, the captain knows all too well how irrelevant his concept of law is in this strange new land. Reality and native lore overlap here, but so do civilization and brutality. In their final confrontation with the criminals Stanley hunted obsessively, the Stanleys may have finally learned that their colonial tendencies come to nothing after all.

This is a great modern western that stands out above most because of its dark, moody, atmosphere (probably due to nick cave’s influence). For years, there have been plenty of Australian films that many would consider a “western”, but this may be the first (or at least most successful) crossover to incorporate Aborigines. In ‘The Proposition’, Guy Pierce is hired by Ray Winstone (in one of his best performances ever) to hunt down and kill a sadistic gang of outlaws under the command of Pierce’s brother (played by Danny Huston). This movie is way more bloody and violent than your average cowboy movie. Fans of Deadwood or The Assassination of Jesse James should enjoy this movie.