Pick of the Week:  "The Proposition"

6/26/08

-This land will be civilized.

    Clint Eastwood, meet John Hillcoat.  With his first major feature effort, the rookie Aussie director has crafted a Western greater than "Unforgiven", indeed greater than any Western I have ever seen and it doesn't even take place on our continent.  It is a Greek tragedy of Outback slaughter set in brutal 1880s Australia, a merciless blood-spattered visualization of ends being hacked to pieces by the means.  It is a portrait of "civilization" slitting its own throat with the knife of barbarism and hypocrisy.  And it is nothing short of brilliant. 
    Guy Pierce is wonderfully sullen and introspective as a desert outlaw named Charlie Burns forced to bring his older brother Arthur into custody to save his younger one from the gallows.  This twisted method of apprehending the eldest sibling is concocted by a lawman named Captain Stanley, played by Ray Winstone.  His character is a hard-nosed yet gentile enforcer convinced of the rightness of his means to bring the British brand of civilization to the Australian badlands, even as the hypocrisy and inner ruthlessness of such ideology and its practicality become glaringly apparent.  He believes that Arthur is a monster devoid of any decency, and he's absolutely right.  But his willingness to manipulate the familial bonds his culture claims to value so much, as well as his decision to sit by and watch his society's power structure eagerly take a hand in the treachery and horrific bloodshed it seeks to eradicate, leads him to become a tragic figure highlighted by the righteousness of his intentions and doomed by the folly and ignorance of his methodology.  Winstone's performance is a masterpiece. 
    It is that special brand of "civilized" treachery that brings the demons of the older brothers down from the hills and onto Winstone's town, and the resulting carnage is a brutal opera of the dark side of man ripping his societal structure to shreds, and despite the horrific violence let loose by the unapologetically depraved Arthur and the conflicted yet revenge-driven Charlie, the punishment seems fitting up to a point.  That point is where Charlie, an honest blend of both the moral awareness and the base animalism of mankind, must step in.  The final scene is an ultra-violent wonder to behold, and in my opinion it surpasses the similarly bloody end of Eastwood's masterpiece. 
    Make no mistake, this film is incredibly violent and is not for young viewers.  But it is also a violence that should be seen by anyone who blindly believes in the moral right of Western civilization to impose its ways on peoples it sees as inferior and brutal, no matter how brutally it goes about such imposition.  Hillcoat has composed a hot-blooded, visually lyrical symphony of ideals and self-righteous intentions having the rung pulled out from under them by the very viciousness they require in order to triumph.  I can't wait to see his vision brought to an even bleaker physical and moral landscape: the ashen, post-apocalyptic deathlands of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", due later this year.