Everyone connected with this film should be extremely proud of the movie they created. I will mention specifically: Delhomme for his extraordinary cinematography; Eden for her beautifully stark Set Decoration; Hillcoat for impeccable direction and especially John Hurt in a small but tremendously evocative early role.
A staggeringly moving and uncompromising examination of contemporary emotions set against our early settlement history. The first thing I noticed about this film was the look of Guy Pearce's character's hair-dirty and stringy-something that Hollywood with it's pretensions and million-dollar babies would never allow. But these people looked bad, acted bad and I'm sure-smelt bad. In short, they were real people and they acted as real people in those monstrously uncompromising times would have acted.
My friend said after viewing the film, that he didn't believe early Australia had the same frontier gun culture that is so often displayed in American films of the same genre. I too do not believe that our early settlement revolved around the gun mania of American settlement but I was not bothered by the gun culture shown in The Proposition. I kept looking for bits that did not play right and I could not find any-the film played real to me from beginning to end. Although extremely violent in those parts where violence was called for, this violence did not seem out of place or overdone. I have tried to know something of our early settlement history and what I saw fitted into that mental picture well. The unimaginable violence we displayed to the Aboriginal people was masked and not really a part of what occurred in this film so if some of that violence was shown towards white settlers then it seemed to blend in this film.
An extraordinary film and I hope against hope that it will be eminently successful and therefore lead to the creation of other films based upon our early settlement history.
A staggeringly moving and uncompromising examination of contemporary emotions set against our early settlement history. The first thing I noticed about this film was the look of Guy Pearce's character's hair-dirty and stringy-something that Hollywood with it's pretensions and million-dollar babies would never allow. But these people looked bad, acted bad and I'm sure-smelt bad. In short, they were real people and they acted as real people in those monstrously uncompromising times would have acted.
My friend said after viewing the film, that he didn't believe early Australia had the same frontier gun culture that is so often displayed in American films of the same genre. I too do not believe that our early settlement revolved around the gun mania of American settlement but I was not bothered by the gun culture shown in The Proposition. I kept looking for bits that did not play right and I could not find any-the film played real to me from beginning to end. Although extremely violent in those parts where violence was called for, this violence did not seem out of place or overdone. I have tried to know something of our early settlement history and what I saw fitted into that mental picture well. The unimaginable violence we displayed to the Aboriginal people was masked and not really a part of what occurred in this film so if some of that violence was shown towards white settlers then it seemed to blend in this film.
An extraordinary film and I hope against hope that it will be eminently successful and therefore lead to the creation of other films based upon our early settlement history.