... with a little help from cinematography, of course, is the barren Australian Outback, the real star of The Proposition. When the two older Burns Brothers sit on their mesa gazing at the sunset, stirred by its beauty, it's hard to fathom their viciousness. We know they're both killers, psychopaths, utter outcasts from a community that is already the fly-specked outer fringe of civilization. We know - because it's the premise of the film - that one brother might have to kill the other before the last frame. There are actually four brothers in the gang but the younger two are mentally limited. They're being pursued by 'the law' more assiduously than previously because of a raid on a homestead during which they murdered a whole family after raping a pregnant woman. They're not morally -- or aesthetically -- appealing, these Burns brothers, but the craft of film-making is such that we the audience feel more empathy for them than for the nasty customers -- drunken slob troopers, bounty hunters, and one well-dressed prig who must be the town banker -- who are howling for their blood. The only well-meaning chap in sight is Captain Stanley, a hired law enforcer who has brought his genteel wife to this badlands. The Captain dreams that it's his role to bring order to this frontier, but even he is morally compromised from the first scene, in which he makes the "proposition" that brother Charlie Burns should murder his older brother Arthur in order to save his younger brother Mikey from hanging on Christmas Day. Besides, what the frontier really wants of him is the extermination of the aborigines. The man hasn't a prayer! His role is truly quixotic.
Now, in some films, one might look for back-fill, -- causation, clues -- about how the Burns Brothers became outcasts, but there are no explanations to be had in The Proposition. Things are. Period.
There's a lot of the harrowing atmosphere of a Patrick White novel, "Voss" for instance, in this film. Patrick White was Australia's sole Nobel Prize for Literature winner, so far. Like the 'bounty hunter' who tangles with the Burns Brothers, Patrick White's characters are often haggard, filthy, desiccated men with backgrounds of education and class. They are, at the same time, more degenerate and more metaphysical than your average gunslinger in an American western shoot-em-up. As far as I know, the script of The Proposition isn't based on anything of White's, but it could have been. Or perhaps it's really Australia; it's the harsh history of Australia that infuses both Patrick White's novels and this film.
Still, I found myself not quite accepting the climax of the film, which I have to refrain from disclosing. I'm not quite desiccated enough myself to be content with "Things are". My reluctance to merely believe in an act that seems unbelievable is the reason for my deduction of a star from my rating.
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The Proposition Blu ray - The Proposition is a visually stunning tale of loyalty, betrayal and retribution set on the frontier of 1880's Australia. In the harsh, unforgiving landscape of the Outback, Charlie Burns is presented with an impossible proposition by local law enforcer Captain Stanley; the only way to save his younger brother Mikey from the gallows is to track down and kill Arthur, his psychotic older brot
