In 1880s Australia, Charlie Burns and his gang engage in a gunfight with the police. All gang members except Charlie and his younger brother Mikey are killed. Captain Morris Stanley tells Charlie that he will have Mikey executed by Christmas, which is in 9 days. Stanley offers to free both Mikey and Charlie if Charlie agrees to kill his older brother Arthur Burns, who is wanted for rape and murder. Mikey remains in custody while Charlie sets out to kill their brother. During a raid, the police capture some Aboriginal people who call Arthur a "dog man" and report that no one goes near his cave.
Riding in search of Arthur, Charlie comes to the charred remains of the home where the Burns gang raped pregnant Eliza Hopkins and murdered her and her family. Along the way, he encounters an inebriated old man named Jellon Lamb in a cantina where the owner has been speared to death. Charlie realizes Lamb is a bounty hunter pursuing the Burns brothers and knocks him out. Later, Charlie awakes and is speared in the chest by a group of Aboriginal men. Before passing out, he sees the man who speared him get shot in the head.
In town, Eden Fletcher, who hired Stanley to "clean up" the area, orders that Mikey be given one hundred lashes as punishment for the rape and murder of the Hopkins family. Stanley is aghast at this, as he believes Mikey is not responsible for his actions and the flogging will kill him, and because it will break his deal with Charlie and bring the Burns gang's revenge upon him and his wife. Stanley sends Sergeant Lawrence away with tracker Jacko and other men to "investigate" the reported slaying of Dan O'Riley (the dead man in the cantina) by a group of Aboriginal people.
Charlie wakes up in his brother Arthur's camp, located in caves among desolate mountains. Arthur's gang consists of Samuel Stoat, a woman named Queenie who tends to Charlie's wound, and an Aboriginal man called Two-Bob. As he recovers, Charlie has several opportunities to kill his brother but does not. He lies to Arthur that Mikey is not with him because he has met a woman.
Captain Stanley attempts to defend Mikey at gunpoint from the bloodthirsty townspeople but is overruled once Martha arrives and insists on revenge for her dead friends. Mikey is flogged and fatally wounded. The townspeople grow tired at the excessive display, Martha faints, and Stanley flings the bloody whip at Fletcher, who fires him. Back at the abandoned cantina, Sergeant Lawrence and his men have found and massacred a group of Aboriginal people. Arthur and Two-Bob find Lawrence's group while they sleep and kill Jacko and Sergeant Lawrence. Before Arthur stomps Lawrence to death, Lawrence tells Arthur that Charlie has been sent to kill him.
Lamb enters Arthur's camp and ties up Samuel and Charlie, both of whom are sleeping. Lamb is shot in the stomach by the returning Two-Bob. Arthur stabs Lamb in the heart; Charlie points his revolver at Arthur, but instead shoots Lamb in the head, putting him out of his misery. He finally informs Arthur that Mikey is in custody and is set to hang. Charlie decides to break out Mikey; Arthur, Samuel and Charlie ride into town dressed in the clothes taken from the slain officers, while Two-Bob poses as an Aboriginal man they have captured. Once at the jail, the men free Mikey, and Charlie and Two-Bob ride off with him, but the injured Mikey dies in Charlie's arms. Arthur and Samuel remain to behead the two officers in the jail.
Stanley fears retribution and makes preparations, but he and Martha let their guard down to have a peaceful Christmas dinner. Shortly after the Stanleys say grace, Arthur and Samuel shoot open the door and invade their home. Arthur pulls Stanley into another room and brutally beats him. Samuel drags Martha inside, and Arthur has Stanley watch as Samuel begins to rape Martha. Charlie walks in and informs Arthur of Mikey's death; Arthur ignores him and encourages Charlie to listen to Samuel's beautiful singing. Charlie shoots Samuel in the head, then shoots Arthur twice, disgusted by his conduct. Arthur staggers out of the house and Charlie follows to find him seated on the ground. Arthur asks Charlie what his next move is, and dies.
The film's soundtrack, titled The Proposition, was released shortly after the film in October 2005. The music was composed and performed by Nick Cave and violinist Warren Ellis.
All tracks are directly reproduced from the musical interludes in the film, and feature little alteration from the film score. Many songs on the album are slow-tempo and ballad-like, and the violin work of Warren Ellis becomes the central voice of the album for much of the time. The album is instrumentally focused, and is a departure from Cave's band-oriented compositions. Cave's unusual vocal performances on the "Rider" trilogy of songs brings a particularly haunting and uneasy tone to the album.
Reception
Box office
The Proposition received a limited release in North America opening in three theatres and grossed $32,681, with an average of $10,893 per theatre and ranking #46 at the box office. The widest release in the United States for the film was 200 theatres and it ended up earning $1,903,434. The film also grossed $3,145,259 internationally including $1,567,266 in Australia and $1,157,037 in the United Kingdom for a total of $5,048,693.[3][4]
Critical response
The Proposition received positive reviews from film critics and has a score of 85% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 129 reviews, with an average rating of 7.30/10. The critical consensus states: "Brutal, unflinching, and violent, but thought-provoking and with excellent performances, this Australian western is the one of the best examples of the genre to come along in recent times."[5] The film also has a score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 31 critics.[6]
At the Movies critic Margaret Pomeranz called it an "extraordinary film [that] explores the elliptical nature of class, race, colonisation and family. … All the performances are strong but once again Guy Pearce brings a strange power to Charlie and Ray Winstone is truly fine as Stanley. And Danny Huston is oddly perfect as Arthur. It’s a strange, unsettling film, ultimately quite moving, it’s impossible not to respond to it strongly. It’s not an easy access film. It’s violent and the motivation of the characters is sometimes oblique."[7]
Co-host David Stratton thought that The Proposition was "a fascinating depiction of the outback in this period, and I've never seen an Australian film which told what is basically a bushranging story in such an unusual way. So, it has a lot of originality there. And it has fine performances. I thought Danny Huston was extraordinary, actually. He's an actor I usually don't respond to, but I thought he was excellent in this role. So, there's a lot of intriguing elements to this film, but I did find the violence almost unwatchable."[8]
Roger Ebert, giving it four out of four, described the film as "a movie you cannot turn away from; it is so pitiless and uncompromising, so filled with pathos and disregarded innocence, that it is a record of those things we pray to be delivered from". AM New York, The Austin Chronicle and Entertainment Insider also gave the film four out of four.[9][10]
Ty Burr of The Boston Globe acclaimed the film as "a near-masterpiece of mood and menace, and one that deserves to be seen on the largest screen possible".[11]
J. R. Jones of the Chicago Reader said: "This Aussie feature perfectly re-creates the charbroiled landscapes and cruel psychodrama of the old Sergio Leone westerns, with John Hurt particularly fine as a raging old mountain goat." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly opined the film as "a pitiless yet elegiac Australian Western as caked with beauty as it is with blood".[12]
Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal labelled the film "a visionary tale of a fragile civilizing impulse crushed by family loyalty and a lust for revenge in the vast outback of the late 19th century".[13]
Nick Rogers of Suite101.com remarked: "John Hillcoat's violence-probing Western feels as uncompromisingly bleak, royally widescreen and graphically violent as any Sam Peckinpah opus - a sunburned, grimy-nailed saga of point-blank executions and blood wrung from a cat o' nine tails."[13]
As noted in behind-the-scenes features included on The Proposition DVD, the film is regarded as uncommonly accurate in depicting indigenous Australian culture of the late 19th century, and when filming in the outback, the cast and crew took great pains to follow the advice of indigenous consultants. In an interview included on the DVD, Lewis even compares the depiction of indigenous cultures in The Proposition to the landmark film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), in which Lewis starred.
Home media
The DVD was released in the United States by First Look Pictures on 19 September 2006.
Tartan Video's Region 2 DVD release in the UK was a two-disc release and contains these additional features: audio commentary by Nick Cave and John Hillcoat on disc 1, exclusive interviews with Guy Pearce and Danny Huston (25 minutes), a "meet the cast and crew" feature (35 minutes), a "making of" feature (118 minutes) and a theatrical trailer on disc 2.
