The Proposition (Australia, 2005)
Directed by John Hillcoat
Starring Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Richard Wilson, John Hurt

In any kind of ideas-driven film, there has to be a balance between the ideas being addressed and the characters through whom such ideas are conveyed. And in any genre film it's easy to get the balance wrong because of the availability of stock plots and characters - something which is especially true with westerns.

At one end of the spectrum, we have There Will Be Blood - a film with substance pouring from its every orifice, but only one convincing character through which this can be channelled. Because no-one else can rival Daniel Day-Lewis, none of the ideas about imperialism, economics and religion create anything like the emotional impact they should. At the other end, we have The Proposition, a western with many rich performances from a very well-chosen cast, but which is ultimately a little too straightforward in its execution.On the good side, The Proposition does a very good job of demonstrating just how hardy the western genre is, showing how its conventions can be applied to any environment with the same effect. Until we first hear Guy Pearce's Irish lilt or Ray Winstone's throaty London growl, we could have sworn that we were back in the Wild West. In throwing us off so cleanly in its opening section, the film amply demonstrates how the familiar trademarks of westerns are not restricted or confined by geography, any more than the ideas which such films attempt to address.This hardiness is cemented by the central performances, which take the various stock characters and adapt them to their new surroundings to create a number of memorable turns. Ray Winstone's troubled Captain Stanley is the outback's equivalent of the battle-worn sheriff, someone who has seen one too many gunfights and longs for peace while despairingly mindful that it is impossible. On top of his usual gruff posturing and natural aggression, Winstone brings a vulnerable quality to the part which makes him more compelling.The other performers are equally impressive. Emily Watson continues to be the go-to actress for delicate, sensitive female characters. She succeeds where Meryl Streep has so often failed, namely being emotionally wrought and highly strung without being showy or attention-seeking. David Wenham casts off the mantle of Faramir as the uptight, lip-curling Eden Fletcher, who seeks order and justice without really understanding what is needed to achieve either. And Guy Pearce remains one of the most underrated actors of his generation: very few people could go from the grimy, scuzzy Charlie Burns to Andy Warhol in under 12 months.With this rich cast in place, we begin to appreciate the various ideas which The Proposition is trying to raise. The setting of 1880s Australia instinctively raises the issue of imperialism, and that is confirmed by the early section of the film. Stanley constantly talks about his desire to "civilise this land" by whatever means. His clashes with Fletcher are not simply a difference in personality, but a reflection of differing attitudes to justice and 'the colonials'.Fletcher is the new boy in town and wants to do things by the book: he insists on having Mickey Burns flogged to death since the 'proposition' was not binding in law. Stanley, meanwhile, has been out there long enough to know you sometimes have to compromise, letting a small evil slip through the net so you can deal with the big evil. But he has not become entirely lost to the landscape, retaining his military dress and insisting upon turkey at Christmas.Although there is imperial politics hanging over the events in The Proposition, the focus is much more on the personal than the political. To a certain extent the film argues that the actual working nature of the British Empire was determined more by individual desire than anything more noble or idealistic (insofar as empire-building could be either of those things). Neither Stanley nor Fletcher ever mention 'the old country' or appeal to high ideals to justify their actions. It could even be argued that Stanley's motivations behind his deal with Charlie Burns was motivated out of nothing more than wanting peace with his wife (which makes his final scene all the more ironic).Coming from a script by Nick Cave, The Proposition has its fair share of grim Biblical imagery. The brutal dilemmas faced by the characters mirror various stories in the Old Testament about individuals being called upon to commit murder in the name of justice and righteousness. Charlie's act is both a betrayal of his own kin and an attempt to save it, mirroring Cain's conflicted nature when he murdered Abel in Genesis. And the level of violent retribution is worthy of anything in the book of Judges; the raping of Stanley's wife is no less repulsive than Ehud's murder of the fat king Eglon, or Jael driving a tent peg through her master's temples as he slept.Like Winter's Bone a few years later, The Proposition also has atmosphere to spare. John Hillcoat shoots the scenes of Charlie Burns' quest with a completely unfussy eye, letting the landscape speak for itself. While he does become more intrusive, he shoots conversation in close-up so that we can almost taste the sweat and feel the flies on the characters' faces. Music plays its role as well: in addition to the original score by Nick Cave and fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis, the opening shootout is carefully choreographed so that the bullets hitting the brothel become a form of percussion.However, The Proposition also has the same basic flaw as Winter's Bone - namely that the story is far too thin even for its short running time. Atmosphere and score can only do so much in pulling us in, before the actual narrative and themes have to step in and take over. Sadly, once all Cave's music and sense of dread is stripped away, the remaining story is deceptively and disappointing simple, and nothing is resolved in a satisfying manner.

The sequences in the outback have great potential within them in terms of generating tension. The fearful comments of the Aborigines hint towards Apocalypse Now, with Charlie going deeper into the wilderness in search of his own personal Kurtz. But as with Hillcoat's subsequent film The Road, neither the script nor the direction allow a genuine sense of horror to build, and it becomes more about the journey itself than the meaning behind it. The scenery-chewing performances by John Hurt and Danny Huston may be good fun, but they undercut the sense of dread, making us feel like we are going round in circles.This increasing lack of dread means that the existential implications of the story are also stifled. In No Country for Old Men, the relatively simple progression of the story was married to a deep-rooted examination of the nature of evil and the motivation behind it. You therefore felt that even when something happened which was abrupt or overly straightforward, there was a reason for it. The Proposition simply doesn't have that sense of weight which makes a good western into a great one, and that makes the violence in the last twenty minutes feel all the more gratuitous.The Proposition is a promisingly decent debut for Hillcoat, who on the basis of The Road seems to be improving as a filmmaker. All the ingredients for a well-executed western are to be found in it, and in its acting and aesthetics it is well-crafted. But like Mad Max 3 before it, the film never lives up to the promise of the ideas that it raises, resulting in a film which is enjoyable but only memorable in passing.

Rating:
Verdict: Great characters, shame about the story

Winter's Bone (USA, 2010)
Directed by Debra Granik
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garrett Dillahunt, Dale Dickey

There has always been a certain amount of prejudice surrounding festival films, particularly films which cause a stir at Sundance. Without wishing to sound snobbish, the recent output of films from said festival has been a complete mixed bag. The good or interesting efforts, like Teeth and The Killer Inside Me, demonstrate the resourcefulness of low-budget filmmakers, while The Squid and the Whale and Little Miss Sunshine are either too quirky and cute for their own good, or far too smug to be taken seriously.Winter's Bone is one of the better recent offerings from the Sundance 'stable', containing a number of interesting scenes and beautiful visuals anchored by a remarkable central performance by Jennifer Lawrence. The film attempts to explore addiction in an unconventional way, drawing on fairy tales and the work of Terence Malick to show the plight of one family in the Ozark Mountains. It's heavily flawed and narratively uneven, but there is also much here to be admired.

On the good side, Winter's Bone has a haunting visual sensibility which is enhanced through Michael McDonough's beautiful cinematography. The film was shot entirely on location in the mountains of Arkansas and Missouri, and Granik's camera really pulls you into this isolated community. The screen is bathed is silvery greys and a range of blue shades to create an air of melancholy and convey just how long everything has been here. None of the buildings look like they were built specifically for the shoots, all the roads are rocky and the vehicles are beaten-up and battle-scarred.Like Slumdog Millionaire and Precious before it, Winter's Bone has been accused in some quarters of 'poverty porn', i.e. of examining poverty-stricken individuals or communities in such a way as to belittle them to cause guilt or entertainment to the viewing public. The merest glance at the plot summary for any of these films renders this argument totally bankrupt, and that is particularly true for Winter's Bone. Instead of getting us to revel in depictions of people who are vulnerable or inferior, the film is about said individuals demonstrating strength and resourcefulness.

The film is anchored by a brilliant central performance by relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence. Several critics have compared her to Jodie Foster (with whom she is due to star in The Beaver), and the comparison is valid to a very large extent. There is the same sense of intuition, of someone who knows exactly how to play a scene without any Method-like familiarity with the situation, and whose understatement both comforts an audience and engages them in increasingly sinister circumstances. It's a strong performance of a very interesting heroine figure.Although it is staged and acted naturalistically, so much of Winter's Bone plays out like an epic poem or a Grimm's fairy tale. Like many fairy tales, our heroine has to go off on a quest, and on the way has to confront a (literal) brood of menacing antagonists, out to either forestall her or destroy her altogether. And this is not a more recent Disney vehicle, in which the plot is so formulaic that we know that Ree will survive and learn something in the process. The stakes here are very high, and very real, as demonstrated by the really uncomfortable scenes where Ree is beaten up and kidnapped.

As a treatment of addiction, the film takes a very different approach to the likes of Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream, which focus very much on the personal turmoil of the characters and their escaping into fantasy. The drug element of Winter's Bone is much more incidental, something which is condemned fleetingly by several characters but which also seems to be a tolerated part of the community. There are brief hints that the substance has made Ree's mother so helpless, and Ree herself is repulsed by the drug. But there is no attempt to turn the story into a TV-movie of the week about the triumph of the human spirit; the crystal meth becomes another unseen menace, cohabiting with the other characters.Winter's Bone is also about blood (in the familial sense) and the code of silence in communities. In one key exchange, Lawrence is attempting to extract information from Dale Dickey; when she is reluctant to tell her anything, she shouts: "doesn't our blood mean anything to you?". It's a film very much about the cadence of people's voices, and what is implied by silence is every bit as important as what is actually said. We've seen dozens of films about suburban neighbourhoods in which the neighbours shun or turn on newcomers who ask questions. But few have managed to transfer this to a rural setting, and Winter's Bone deserves commendation for this.

The problems with the film, however, are every bit as noticeable as its assets. For one thing, the story is very thin, and the resulting slow pace to spread the story out makes the film seem a lot longer than 100 minutes. Like the later work of Terence Malick, it's a film which relies as much on the tone and the shape of the landscape to keep our attention as it does on character development, and there are moments where Winter's Bone veers too close to the first half of The New World, in terms of its plodding storytelling.Because the story is so thin, the most harrowing moments of the film do not carry nearly as much weight as they should. The scenes of Ree being beaten up and threatened by the townsfolk serve their purpose, even if the degree of violence is not justified half as well as in The Killer Inside Me. But the final twist involving a trip to a secret location and bones being severed somehow doesn't fit with all that has gone before. As with The Road, it's not the twist itself that is the problem, it's the execution - there's so little effective build-up that there isn't the tension needed to make it as shocking as it needs to be.

On top of this, a lot of the scenes in Winter's Bone are diverting and, frankly, a bit dull. We don't really need to see Ree attempting to teach her young brother to skin a squirrel to eat, or showing him how to use a gun to shoot the things. Scenes like this play out too slowly and distract from the matter in hand; this in turn lowers the level of suspense and hence the twists are not all that remarkable. The mother, who never speaks, is almost a superfluous character. We understand how isolated and endangered Ree and her siblings are without her, and she makes very little impact on the events that unfold.In years to come Winter's Bone will probably be known more as a calling card for Lawrence than as a genuinely great movie in its own right. It could do for her career what Taxi Driver or Bugsy Malone did for Foster's, and on the basis of this she deserves the same level of success. Beyond that it's a decent work with an interesting slant on addiction and some solid direction from Granik. But its slight nature and troublesome execution make its hard to fully recommend it.

Rating: 3/5
Verdict: Long on beauty, short on story