Vicious of Oz

The Proposition
Toronto Film Festival

Set in 1880s Australia, The Proposition is a revenge story of impressive depth and detail, scripted by poet and musician Nick Cave and directed by John Hillcoat (who made the brutal prison drama Ghosts of the Civil Dead 17 years ago).

Police captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) offers outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) a deal: if Charlie kills his older brother (Danny Huston), who has been responsible for a vicious attack on a farming family, Stanley will spare the life of their little brother, Mikey.

It's a twisted, impossible deal, and is soon torpedoed by Stanley's superior, Fletcher (David Wenham), who has the boy lashed so brutally he eventually dies. On this stark foundation, Hillcoat and Cave have orchestrated an escalating opera of violence which touches on almost every aspect of Australian frontier history.

It is a world of ingrained racism - the English despise the Irish who despise the Aboriginals - and of a brutally arrogant but futile attempt to impose "civilised" values on an alien land.

Emily Watson is especially touching as Stanley's wife, Martha, struggling to maintain English propriety (complete with imported Christmas tree) behind her neat picket fence.

John Hurt turns in a delightful cameo as a cultured but ruthless bounty hunter. And Winstone is superb: brutal and ruthless at work but depressed to the point of immobility at home by not being able to give Martha the life she wants - or, in the end, to protect her from the violence that seems to grow out of the barren, red landscape.

Stunningly shot by Benoit Delhomme, The Proposition harks back to the great tradition of Australian films like The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, in which the landscape defined - and finally swallowed up - the characters.

It is a world without heroes or redemption, expertly realised, as disturbing as it is mesmerising - one of the best films to come out of Australia in years.