The iconic American Western tends to be something that embodies a sense of adventure or promise of triumph. Whatever that capacity, it’s usually something along the lines of ‘everyone gets rich’ or somebody gets revenge. Walter Hill once described a Western as: “…ultimately a stripped down moral universe that is, whatever the dramatic problems are, beyond the normal avenues of social control and social alleviation of the problem.”
While American classics like Stagecoach, High Noon, Rio Bravo and True Grit all helped to mythologize and romanticise the Wild West, it was Sergio Leone and his Italian “spaghetti-Westerns” that helped shape the genre in ways that brought a real sense of epic intimacy and emotional weight to them that was often overlooked prior to monumental films like the “Dollars” trilogy.
What Leone’s films did have in common with the American Western films prior to the 1960s was that they also had a kind of operatic quality to them. There was still an underlying sense of prosperity associated with them, be it through hunting for gold or robbing banks. In many ways Leone’s main characters were more like pirates, with strange and offbeat figures weaving through opposing forces in an attempt to prosper. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is a fine example. Set in the American Civil War, the three titular characters basically adopt the attitude of “You fools can fight among yourselves, I’m in it for the money”.
The Proposition from 2005 is different when it comes to the American and European Westerns. Australia in the 1800s was not unlike America in the 1800s, but almost at complete opposites. Both emerging nations were the by-product of an abortive attempt at European (and fundamentally British) “settlement”, with a dominating presence of cultural imperialism. Both saw native and indigenous people as “sub-human” and imposed barbaric methods of genocide, enslavement and brutality upon them. Both attempted to “civilise” and control a land that was ultimately untameable and uncontrollable.
Where The Proposition differs from the usual Western conventions is the bleak and desolate nature of the film. There is almost no shred of hope in it. It’s almost like an Absurdist film, with the quintessential “quest” we see in many Westerns discarded in favour of an ultimatum that tests the resolve of Guy Pearce’s Charlie Burns character. Still set in a time when the Australian accent was barely developed, the clear hierarchical structure in the film is encapsulated by those in authority speaking in British accents as they attempt to control the unfortunate descendants of Irish convicts.
Control is a key theme in The Proposition. How can you control a land like the Australian outback in the 1800s? How can you civilise it? The implication of bizarre methods of order that were exclusively British in nature is portrayed in the film as they essentially were – ludicrous. The presence of the Church in a land that is ultimately ‘pagan’ and brimming with the aura of the Aboriginal Dreamtime is an ongoing element of the film and adds a surreal, mysterious and supernatural framework for all the characters to exist in. The stubborn and persistent figures of authority strive to place order but those around them have a deep seated sense of hopelessness, that the whole process is futile. It truly seems like the ends of earth.
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