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http://www.omniture.com --> Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Nation & World Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Obituaries Weather Archive Hot Topics Photo Gallery Revels Etcetera Backpage O-Zone Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad Online Games August 26, 2006 Film's gritty content might be hard to swallow By Chris Honoré Tidings Correspondent Implicit in film-as-entertainment, Hollywood style, is the bargain with the audience that real life will be checked in the lobby. And though film as art possesses the ability to explore the human condition honestly, this powerful medium is compromised. Feature filmmakers and screenwriters far too often pause and ask themselves how much truth do they want to tell? How close to reality do they want to push the narrative? Most feature films, dramatic and comedy, create a world wherein the characters are burnished, the storyline contrived, and the ending often blandly satisfying, accounting for the term "Hollywood ending." Of course, the audience can shrug and insist that they don't go to movies to see real life. They go to be entertained, to be, in effect, lied to: there's enough real life just beyond the box office. Films need not remind us of truths that are all to painful, laced with disappointment and an abiding angst. Perhaps no period has been lied about more than the late 19th century frontier, be it American or Australian. It has been served up as a place populated by genial and sweet smelling people with wonderful teeth. But Hillcoat and his screenwriters decided to take "The Proposition" as close to the truth as possible; likely more truth than some audiences want to endure. Set in the Australian outback in the late 1800's — ruthless men with guns, many deeply damaged, some committing unspeakable acts — it is a mirror of America's wild wild West. The film tells a tale of one man's struggle to impose his vision of civilization, of law and order and security, on a country that is almost pathological in its violence and amorality. Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone), a soldier, and his wife, Martha (Emily Watson), have created an island of decorum and civility in a bleak, flat, sepia country so inhospitable that the white picket fence and rose garden that surrounds their house are completely unexpected, jarring, and certainly tenuous. As if English roses and whitewashed wood could ever act as revetments against a tide of murderous incivility. The inhabitants of this country are, like the rule of law, decaying: their teeth are brown, their hair dank, their clothes soiled and stiff. They exude rankness, and everywhere are the relentless flies, aggressively inserting themselves into every moment and tear duct. Their appearance serves the film remarkably well, for this is a dark tale of people on the fringe of society, not just geographically, but emotionally. Sociopaths who believe only in some Darwinian paradigm wherein you take what you want and kill the reluctant. But simultaneously, this is a film of conscience. It grapples not just with Stanley's struggle for moral equilibrium, but creates Stanley's moral equivalent in an outlaw named Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) who finally confronts the abyss and chooses another way. Hillcoat takes this film as close to the truth as possible and asks the audience not to turn away. And the actors, to a person, give remarkable performances. Ray Winstone is superb, as is Guy Pearce. Emily Watson, who portrays Stanley's wife is perfect. Keep in mind that "The Proposition" is violent, reminding filmgoers of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch." In the main, it is not a gratuitous violence; rather, it serves the narrative. This was a violent time. Opiates were used with abandon. Those who enforced the law, such as it was, were often outlaws themselves. It was a harsh life lived by silent, stoic people who were unreflective in the extreme. If this genre has appeal, if unvarnished portrayals of the West attract, then this is a film not to be missed. Leave a Comment: Advertisement: Advertisement: Paid Advertising Inkjet Printers Student Loans Water Filter Helzberg Diamonds Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Copyright © 2006 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.