Senator Andrew Bartlett
Thursday, September 29, 2005
 
The Proposition
I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago that I was attending the Parliament House screening – which I believe was the first public screening in Australia – of "The Proposition". This film is written by Nick Cave, as is the music score in conjunction with Warren Ellis, the violinist from the Bad Seeds (and the Dirty Three). It has Guy Pearce in the main role. While Nick has done some acting in a few films and contributed to scripts and scores, this is his biggest contribution to a full length film.

For those readers who don't know, I am a huge Nick Cave fan, having every album he has released over more than 20 years, plus many singles, b-sides and individual songs. He's also written a fascinating novel and a range of other smaller pieces, including lectures on the nature of the love song and an introduction to a publication of the Gospel of St Mark. I cited him as a key influence of mine in my first speech to the Senate back in 1997.

The film is being formally released in Australia next week, and tonight there is a preview screening in Sydney which Nick Cave and Director John Hillcoat are attending. As seems to happen every time Nick has done a public appearance in Australia in the last few years, either the Senate has been sitting or I’ve been out of the country. Of course, if I’d decided to go to Senate Committee hearings, instead of speak at a conference in New Zealand, I would already be in Sydney today. Aaannnnyway, I figured this was as good a time as any to provide a few thoughts and impressions of the film for anyone who might be interested.

Firstly, I have to say that the film watching experience is given an unusual edge when the movie is introduced by the Arts Minister, Senator Rod Kemp, and you are told you are sharing the viewing experience with people like Philip Ruddock and various other Liberal and Labor MPs. For some reason, the film was also attended by the Ambassadors for Israel and South Korea.

The overarching assessment I have to make is that the film is well acted, well written, has a really good and interesting musical score, fascinating multi-layered themes and story and is definitely worth seeing. BUT it is also very brutal and fairly graphic in its violence. It is the sort of film that would be pretty brutal and confronting in its impact even if the violence was only implied, so if you really don’t like that sort of thing, then I’m afraid I’d have to recommend you give the film a miss. Otherwise, it is definitely worth seeing.

The film is very much in the western genre, but it is also unmistakably Australian. It was filmed around Winton in the far west of my home state (and electorate) of Queensland. The landscape is a character in its own right and is portrayed to very good effect. The film is set in the 1880s and doesn’t put any veneer on the harshness of the life and conditions that people lived in at the time. As an aside, the iconic Australian ballad, Waltzing Matilda, often cited as our unofficial national anthem, was written by Banjo Patterson near Winton in the 1890s.

Almost every character of note has a range of facets, with even the most unsympathetic still having some features which, while perhaps not always endearing or redeeming, at least show a different side. This is a bit of a hallmark of Nick Cave’s work, as he likes to reveal and explore the paradoxes and different sides that lie beneath the surface of the human condition and which often belie the simple stereotype or initial assumptions about a person. Perhaps also typically of Nick, the only character who is revolting and ghastly in a one dimensional way is also the only one who seems to avoid having anything particularly unpleasant happen to them.

The film unfolds in a way which is not totally unpredictable, but which still has some interesting twists and turns visited upon various people. The basic idea is pretty simple. There is an outlaw gang of three brothers, and two are captured. The middle brother is told by the police chief that his younger brother will hang in a week’s time (on Christmas Day) unless he agrees to track down and kill his older brother, who is seen as the most guilty and violent ringleader of the gang. But while the central storyline is simple, the way the themes are explored and unfold, and the way characters deal with and respond to the challenges and environment they are confronted with is certainly sufficient to keep the intellect stimulated throughout.

Despite the fact that the main character has an imminent deadline to fulfil if he wishes to save the life of his younger brother, I found the pace of the film to be fairly measured, and even a bit meandering in paces. Whilst there are plenty of violent incidents, I wouldn’t call the film action packed. Its strength is in the story and its characters and how they are portrayed.

I suppose you could say the central proposition of the title is a bit reminiscent of “Sophie’s Choice”, but the storyline and underlying themes are more evocative of one of Clint Eastwood’s most renowned westerns, “The Unforgiven”. Clint’s comment in that film, as someone is about to meet an unfortunate fate, that “deserve’s got nothing to do with it” remains a favourite of mine. It is particularly apt for many of the things that I see happen in politics.

The roles played by Aboriginal people are worthy of comment and analysis in itself. While it is fair to say that there is no aboriginal person in a leading role, the role of indigenous people themselves is important. Longstanding and well known indigenous actor David Gulpilil plays a significant role as a black member of the local police force. Others play roles as traditional tribal aboriginal people, and there is also an aboriginal member of the outlaw gang at the centre of the main storyline of the film. Leah Purcell, a multi-skilled performer, but perhaps better known to me as a singer in and around Brisbane, also has a small but well-acted part.

Simple, callous racism is frequently displayed, but it is not gratuitous. A massacre of a local tribe is portrayed matter of factly and barely without comment – which was undoubtedly the way killings of black people often occurred at the time. Whilst the environment displayed in the film seems like a world away, it is only a little over a lifetime ago. Our failure to acknowledge some of the less pleasant things, some from the very recent past, which built modern Australian society, continues to blind us to things that constrain our future and explain aspects of our present.

The cruelty and brutality displayed in the film was almost omnipresent, and it is easy to think of it as a museum piece relic of a long-gone past – the determined goal of the film’s police chief to ‘civilise the place’ having long been achieved. However, sometimes I feel we’ve just become skilled at putting a highly polished and civilised veneer over our actions (and our own perceptions), but are still capable of brutality that is no less callous and savage.

The film started and concluded with some historic archival photos of Australia, and a simple song, sung with a child’s thin unpolished voice that created a sense of both innocence and foreboding.

In introducing the film, Rod Kemp said he believed descriptions like “brutal, yet gentle” might be apt. Perhaps he was thinking of his own performances in Question Time, but when I saw him in the Senate a couple of days late, he said he now thought “numbing” might be accurate (about the film, not his Senate performances).

A few days later, I ran into one of the Ambassadors who was at the screening – who I don’t know, but who recognised me because I was sitting in front of him. He asked me how I found the film. Suffice to say he found the violence fairly confronting.

All in all, I think it’s an excellent film which shows Australia can produce high quality movies. It is also confronting and brutal, and it messed with my head a bit. I will try to see it again.

If you want a different take on it, read this review from the Hollywood Reporter from the film's showing at the recent Toronto Film Festival. The review is also highly positive, although it does give away a little bit more of the story than I think a review should. However, it certainly won’t ruin the film for you if you read it.

PS - Some other reviews: Peter Thompson from the Sunday program, Lawrie Zion in The Australian, In Film Australia, Urban Cinefile, hoopla.nu and Variety. (warning: some of these give away quite a lot of the storyline).

Also, from May 2006 when the film debuted in the USA, is a review from Village Voice.


EPILOGUE:
As this snippet in The Australian shows, Winton is hoping to get a bit of boost from the film – both from tourists and possibly other filming opportunities.

While I’ve visited Longreach a number of times, which is not too far to the east (well about 180 kilometres, which is ‘not too far’ once you get that far into the outback) and been to Mt Isa a few hundred kilometres to the west, I’ve never been to Winton. The film certainly made me feel like visiting there; although not for the climate - one of the film financiers told me it was over 50 degrees Celsius in the sun when they were shooting the film, and I know from visiting other similar places that the abundance of flies portrayed in the film weren’t artificially placed there.

Winton is already known for being the birthplace of Waltzing Matilda – it’s the reason why the long highway through the region is known as the Matilda Highway - and the town also wrestles to this day with Longreach for the title of being the birthplace of Qantas. (I think the first board meeting of Qantas occurred in Winton, but the first flight took off from Longreach). Maybe “The Proposition” will give it a third reason for fame well into the future.


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