The Proposition vs Little Fish

If I seem a little nervous, it’s because I saw The Proposition a couple hours ago, and I’m still a little on edge. You just don’t know when a bullet is going to fly into your house, or a spear will land in your chest, or a swarm of flies will cover your entire back and no one will tell you. Actually, that last one probably set off the greatest of the many visceral reactions I had to The Proposition: time and again flies land on faces, eyes, mouths, and no one says anything or brushes them away. And in one scene in particular, everybody’s covered in ‘em; we’re talking flies so thick you can’t see the color of a guy’s jacket, and nobody’s doing that ugh-get-em-off-me dance.

It’s because it’s a western, I suppose, that the characters in The Proposition are so tough and hardened and non-flinchy. If you’re still suspicious, know this: The Proposition is not just a western. It’s an Australian western, and it’s the most badass time you’ll have at the movies, bar none. Sometimes I see a badass movie and feel badass myself. The Proposition was so badass I felt about a foot tall as I walked out of the theater. If Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name were to encounter the men of The Proposition, he would have said “Seriously guys, can’t we just talk this through? I bet we can work things out without any more violence.”

The Proposition, for as mind-bending as it can be at times, is fairly simple. Two members of a gang of outlaw brothers have been captured after an especially brutal massacre in which a family was murdered and their home burned to the ground. It’s a wonder there was a capture; the shoot-out preceding it was so bloody and thorough (remember the end of Bonnie and Clyde? Put that at the very beginning, and multiply the violence by, say, a mile.) Anyway, the two brothers captured are Charlie, whose lankiness is topped only by his anger; and Mikey, who is described as mentally disabled, but seems more afraid than anything else. The local law, if he can be called that, is Captain Stanley, and he offers Charlie a deal: Mikey will hang on Christmas day, or he’ll go free if Charlie will go out and deliver on the bounty of his older brother Arthur. He agrees. What follows is the most brutal western I recall ever seeing, which I guess is notable by itself, but The Proposition is also an engaging drama; a commentary on the nature of violence; a portrait of a marriage; an examination of what happens when native cultures meet outsiders bearing technology; and exhilarating, breathtaking, eye-covering action. Oh, and flies.

I’ve intentionally not mentioned the actors involved in The Proposition yet, because it’s the sort of movie that pretty much demands you not pay attention to performances, or try to place where you’ve seen the actors before. Here’s a list: Guy Pearce, Emily Watson, Danny Huston, Ray Winstone, John Hurt. Is that enough for you? They’re all crazy good, delivering lyrical dialogue between stabbings. Watson has a heartbreaking moment in a bathtub, mourning her murdered friend, and Huston’s Arthur speaks as though he were classically trained in elocution—when he’s not decapitating, shooting, cutting or gutting whatever or whoever’s in reach.

The Proposition was directed by John Hillcoat, who has crafted a film that is simultaneously astonishing to behold and possibly a nail in the coffin of Australian tourism (all that Crocodile Dundee goodwill down the toilet! Counterclockwise, of course). More importantly, The Proposition was written and scored by Nick Cave (yes, that Nick Cave), who keeps simplicity the focus in terms of storytelling (needless travels up and down hills on horseback are absent, as are campfires and hunting. It’s obvious these guys are taking care of things; Cave must have figured a few of the hows and whens could be skipped. He was right.) As a result, there’s time for things like the world’s shortest happy Christmas, and a beautiful Irish lullaby juxtaposed with a hideous flogging that is so endless it never even ends.

Little Fish presents another vision of Australia, this one in the present day. Like The Proposition, it’s a version of Down Under I was unfamiliar with, and while it didn’t slap me around like The Proposition, Little Fish moved me anyway, in quieter, weirder ways.

Cate Blanchett, always good, always surprising, plays Tracy, a recovering heroin addict who hopes to open her own video store. That’s pretty much it. Tracy walks around wrapped in sadness, socializing with her fellow former junkie friends and family. Among them is an unrecognizable (and every bit as good) Hugo Weaving, and Martin Henderson as Tracy’s disabled brother.

Little Fish is slow and unassuming; it’s one of those movies that stupid people complain aren’t about anything. It’s about lives, and about searching for alternatives to the things that were your original alternatives. What do you do when the only suitable cure you’ve found is bad for you? Little Fish winds around and around, dipping a couple times into violence, and once into the ocean in a scene as casually beautiful as its star. There’s not much resolved in Little Fish, which is how I’m guessing its director, Rowan Woods, wanted things. Moments play out like they would in life: the family spends a birthday party avoiding the obvious topics, opting instead to pose for awkward photos (the frames freeze with each flash, showing how the pictures turned out, and how much they reveal). Life goes on and on for Tracy and her circle of loved ones, like it does for all of us not out on the dusty prairie. Sometimes even if there aren’t bullets flying through the windows, it sure as hell feels that way.

The Proposition: A
Little Fish: B