Line #2 Film/TheProposition


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8	->'''Cpt. Stanley''': Now, suppose you tell me what it is I want from you?\
9	'''Charlie Burns''': You want me to kill me brother.\
10	'''Cpt. Stanley''': I want you to kill your brother.
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12	''The Proposition'' is a 2005 film directed by John Hillcoat and written by Music/NickCave, who also composed the soundtrack with his ''Bad Seeds'' bandmate Warren Ellis. The film is a [[TheWestern Western]] set in [[UsefulNotes/AustralianHistory colonial Australia]] in the 1880s, and was described by Cave as a story full of beautiful sadness and longing, intercut with moments of intense violence.
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14	In the rural outback, Irish criminals Charlie Burns (Creator/GuyPearce) and his younger, mentally handicapped brother Mikey are caught by Captain Morris Stanley (Creator/RayWinstone) and his troopers. Stanley offers a deal: Charlie has until Christmas Day to find and kill his older brother Arthur (Creator/DannyHuston), leader of the feared and depraved Burns gang, or else Mikey will be hanged by the local authorities. As Charlie faces the question of which brother will live and which will die, Captain Stanley fights to bring civilisation -- and perhaps justice -- to the brutal, desolate landscape.
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16	The film also stars Creator/EmilyWatson as Martha, Captain Stanley's wife; Creator/DavidWenham as Eden Fletcher, the extremely British pillar of the local community; and Creator/JohnHurt as [[OneSceneWonder Jellon Lamb]], an elderly alcoholic bounty hunter.
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18	Cave, Ellis, and Hillcoat also collaborate on the 2009 film ''Film/TheRoad'', and again on 2012's ''Film/{{Lawless}}''.
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20	----
21	!!This Aussie Western includes examples of:
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23	%%* AxCrazy: Arthur and Sam.
24	* AssholeVictim: No tears are shed for the psychopathic [[spoiler: Arthur Burns and Samuel]], nor for most of the policemen that they kill (particularly [[spoiler: Sergeant Lawrence]], who is nearly as depraved as any member of the Burns gang).
25	* BatmanGambit: Captain Stanley makes a big gamble setting Charlie loose by assuming that he'll value Mikey's life enough to kill his older brother Arthur.
26	* BedouinRescueService: Inverted. The Aborigines throw a spear into Charlie, and he is rescued by Arthur.
27	* BigBrotherInstinct: Drives the motivations of both Charlie and Arthur. And then it turns out that [[spoiler: Arthur couldn't care less]].
28	* BittersweetEnding: Compared to most stories, it's a DownerEnding. Compared with anything else Music/NickCave has written, it's pretty happy.
29	* BlackAndGrayMorality: Although only one or two characters in the whole film qualify on the "gray" side. [[CrapsackWorld And they don't get to do a whole lot of heroic things throughout.]]
30	%%* BountyHunter: Jellon Lamb.
31	* BoomHeadshot: There are several:
32	** Sam shooting the Aborigine who speared Charlie (we see half of the man's head blown off).
33	** Charlie shooting [[spoiler: Jellon Lamb]] as Arthur tortures him as a MercyKill.
34	** Charlie shooting [[spoiler: Sam while Sam tries to rape Martha Stanley]].
35	* BoxedCrook: Charlie is used by Captain Stanley to track down his brother. Fletcher is quite unhappy about the idea of letting a criminal loose in order to catch a worse one.
36	* CainAndAbel: Down to their first initials; C and A. Ironically, the one with the "A" name is ''[[AxCrazy much]]'' worse.
37	%%* ClusterFBomb
38	%%* CueTheSun
39	* CrapsackWorld: Life in the outback is portrayed as a dirty, hardscrabble existence in a dusty wasteland populated by brutal bandits and equally brutal and corrupt lawmen.
40	* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Arthur Burns is a sadist who likes to inflict these on his victims, such as Jellon Lamb.
41	* CrucifiedHeroShot: Of Mikey (not really the hero, but still a victim figure) being flogged. If you listen carefully, you'll also notice that he's only given [[AsTheGoodBookSays 39 lashes]] out of the full 100 by the end of the scene.
42	%%* DamselInDistress: Martha, at the end.
43	* DisposableSexWorker: No-one appears bothered by the death of the Chinese prostitutes killed in the opening shootout.
44	* DreamingOfAWhiteChristmas: It's Australia, so it's a broiling hot summer. It doesn't stop Captain Stanley and Martha from imagining they are at home in England. At one point, Martha even uses cotton as snowflakes.
45	* DullSurprise: Arthur's reaction when his brother Charlie, fed up with his sociopathic behavior, [[spoiler: shoots him in the stomach after shooting Sam in the head. In the former instance, it's also an instance of MajorInjuryUnderreaction]].
46	* EmpathicEnvironment: Oh, the infinite and desolate plains of the Australian Outback during the blood-red sunset.
47	* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: Or in this case, younger brothers.
48	* EvenEvilHasStandards: In the backstory, Charlie and Mikey both abandoned Arthur after his MoralEventHorizon crossing. It's pretty clear that Charlie was himself a robber and probably a murderer as well, but what Arthur and Samuel did was unforgivable. Charlie also realizes that it isn't fair to draw his mildly mentally handicapped younger brother Mikey into the life of a bandit and outlaw where the most likely eventual outcome is to be shot or hanged.
49	* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Much of the soundtrack has names like "Sad Violin Thing".
50	* FauxAffablyEvil: Arthur's actions, other characters reactions and his past make it clear that he lost his affability a long time ago. In the end it turns out he doesn't even care [[spoiler: for his own family anymore]].
51	* ForcedToWatch: Two instances.
52	** After the first couple of dozen lashings, it's clear that the flogging of Mikey has become a slow execution by torture, and many of the leering townspeople and even Eden Fletcher look away from the gore. Captain Stanley hands Fletcher the bloody lash as if to tell him to at least own up to his own actions by watching.
53	** Arthur Burns beats up Captain Stanley but leaves him alive so that he could be forced to watch as Samuel rapes his (Stanley's) wife.
54	* GenreDeconstruction: Of TheWestern. A reviewer noted that the great authority figure in this genre, the sheriff, is emasculated here. It's most evident in the scenes where Captain Stanley has his authority completely undermined by Eden Fletcher, and is reduced to a pathetic bystander.
55	* HangingJudge: The pointlessly cruel Eden Fletcher.
56	%%* IWasJustPassingThrough
57	* HateSink: Eden Fletcher is arrogant, sadistic, and cowardly, and uses his wealth and power to lord over everybody else in town, including the police. He's show to be despicable to the point that even the murderous members of the Burns gang seem sympathetic by comparison.
58	* JudgeJuryAndExecutioner: Stanley and Fletcher fight over this.
59	* LandDownUnder: Played in a very un-stereotypical way
60	* LargeHam: Jellon Lamb, especially when he's drunk, and Sam [[spoiler: when he's pretending to be a policeman]].
61	* MercyKill:
62	** Charlie shoots [[spoiler: Jellon Lamb]] in the head rather than watching Arthur slowly dismember him alive with a knife.
63	** After Charlie shoots [[spoiler: Arthur]] in the stomach, he takes a second shot to the chest so that he would die more quickly and painlessly. [[spoiler: Arthur]] lives long enough to walk quite a distance even with the chest wound.
64	* MightyWhitey: Subverted and defied: the police think the Aborigines are sheltering Arthur, but in fact they hate and fear him. Some of them believe he's a werewolf.
65	* MoodDissonance: In many ways, ''The Proposition'' is a story of contrasts. The violent events and the natural beauty of the land - the outlaws even make mention of the beautiful sunset at one point. The stars in a field of blue seen from under a withered tree and then from behind prison bars. The genteel Christmas setting and the savage torture of the Stanleys at the end.
66	** The director has also pointed out the extreme dissonance in the "civilized" Victorian era and the violent settling of Australia. The outlaws are destroying the Victorian English attempts at beauty and order in the Australian wilderness, best represented by the trail of destruction at the end when the scruffy criminal Charlie stomps through the rose garden and the white fence.
67	* MoralityPet: Two-Bob implies that Arthur's brothers were this to him, and that their absence has made him worse.
68	* MoralMyopia: Arthur thinks like this. He loves his brothers and friends dearly, but for him, no one outside this little group is truly human.
69	** Fletcher seems to feel the same way, except about race and nationality, rather than Arthur's clannish sense of loyalty. Fletcher is fiercely protective of his white colonists, but utterly cavalier the lives of the Aborigines. In any story about colonialism and cultural conflict, this trope is inevitable.
70	* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: The Burns Gang, Eden Fletcher.
71	* ObliviouslyEvil: Martha Stanley. She coerces her husband into [[spoiler:having an essentially innocent boy flogged to death]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone but seems more horrified than pleased when she gets what she wanted]].
72	* OffstageVillainy: Actually done very well here with Arthur. When he first appears he's a charming, cultured man... and then [[spoiler:you see what he does to Jellon Lamb...]]
73	* OrderVersusChaos: The events of the film makes it explicit clear that Stanley can't and won't [[CatchPhrase "civilise this land"]]. It took putting chaos versus chaos to take down Arthur and destroyed any order and pretense of civilisation in the process.
74	* PromotionToParent: Arthur is implied to have raised Charlie and Mikey by himself.
75	* PoliceBrutality: While Captain Stanley is a gentleman, his men are not, to put it mildly.
76	* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Most of the characters in this movie. Both Jellon Lamb and Sam are heavily racist. Seemingly subverted with Arthur (possibly due to his FauxAffablyEvil nature) who has an Aborigine best friend and is not heard speaking ill of any race, despite being a complete psychopath. See MoralMyopia for more on that.
77	* PsychoForHire: Sergeant Lawrence who works under Captain Stanley. He is almost as horribly evil as any of the main villains, and leads a massacre of an aborigine village. Arthur may be worse than him, but when he murders this guy, it's his SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome.
78	* PunchClockVillain: The third member of Arthur's gang, Two-Bob, is a hard to hate: he is a resourceful and badass aborigine who just wants his land back, and is notably absent for Arthur and Sam's big MoralEventHorizon.
79	* PunctuatedPounding: "HELP! YOUR! FUCKING! SELF!"
80	* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil: Used in-universe.
81	--> '''Captain Stanley:''' You were right to part company with him. What happened at the Hopkins' place was unforgivable. Did you know that poor woman had a ''child in her belly''?
82	* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Captain Stanley. The rest of the police are as thuggish as the outlaws they pursue.
83	* RuleOfThree: The three Burns brothers.
84	* SadisticChoice: Right there in the premise: choose which of your brothers will live.
85	* SavingChristmas: The devastating climax.
86	* SceneryPorn: While the towns are in the middle of an otherwise bleak wasteland, some of the hills and other rock formations in the desert look magnificent, especially with the red earth against the backdrop of sunrises and sunsets.
87	* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: This is why Fletcher can make his own laws in the outback town.
88	* SeanConneryIsAboutToShootYou: Danny Huston, Guy Pearce, And Ray Winstone Are About To Shoot You
89	* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Both bounty hunter Jellon Lamb and outlaw Arthur Burns pride themselves in being cultured and well-read, and adopt an educated speech that stands in sharp contrast to the way everyone else in the Outback speaks.
90	* ShoutOut: Jellon Lamb's name is likely a reference to the Scottish murder ballad "Jellon Grame", about a man who murders his pregnant girlfriend and takes her child as his own only to be murdered by said child years later, much as Charlie is forced to murder his "father", Arthur. After all, it's not like Nick Cave is ignorant about [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Ballads murder ballads]].
91	* ShownTheirWork: According to the other [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Proposition Wiki]]: "As noted in behind-the-scenes features included on The Proposition DVD, the film is regarded as uncommonly accurate in depicting indigenous Australian culture of the late 1800s, and when filming in the outback, the cast and crew took great pains to follow the advice of indigenous consultants. In an interview included on the DVD, [Tom E.] Lewis even compares the depiction of indigenous cultures in The Proposition to the landmark film ''Film/TheChantOfJimmieBlacksmith'' (1978)." (Interestingly, that film's lead actor, Tom E. Lewis, plays Two-Bob in this movie.)
92	** A lot of behind-the-scenes work was done for this film. For example, the director John Hillcoat helped the actors prepare by giving them reading material and other sources for inspiration - Tom Budge (Sam) was given stuff about the My Lai massacre so he could get into the "war criminal" mindset, while David Wenham (Fletcher) was given books about Victorian English manners and etiquette.
93	* SignatureStyle: Nick Cave exercises his love of literary discussion, religious debating, and extreme amounts of violence. He even gets to work in some flowers in Martha's rose garden.
94	%%* SmugSnake: Eden Fletcher, so very much.
95	* SoundtrackDissonance: The hauntingly beautiful "Peggy Gordon" sung while the flogged Mikey is shrieking in agony. And again during a rape scene.
96	* SoWhatDoWeDoNow: [[spoiler:Arthur's last words at the end.]]
97	* TakeAThirdOption: Turns out not to work.
98	* TakeOurWordForIt: Jacko pointing out smoke on the horizon, which the white troopers can't see even when pointed out to them. We even get a shot of what Jacko sees, and if you look really, ''really'' closely, there is a tiny puff of what could be smoke.
99	* ATasteOfTheLash: [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill More than just a taste]]. Fletcher sentences the mentally handicapped Mikey to a hundred lashes from the cat o' nine tails. They don't even reach forty lashes before the previously baying audience have all [[NauseaFuel turned away in disgust and Mikey's back is reduced to bleeding ribbons]]. A blood-splattered Fletcher [[MoralEventHorizon still wants the full hundred lashes]].
100	* TitleDrop: "I wish to present you with a proposition..."
101	* TrojanPrisoner: Two-Bob does this to get the gang into the prison.
102	* TrueCompanions: Arthur's band of outlaws.
103	* VillainsOutShopping: Or rather, reciting poetry.
104	* WarriorPoet: Arthur, Sam, Captain Stanley, and Jellon Lamb. As has been noted, this is a Nick Cave movie.
105	* WatchingTheSunset: The film's ending between [[spoiler:Charlie and his dying brother, Arthur.]]
106	* WellIntentionedExtremist: Played with in the case of Captain Stanley. He seems like this initially when he pistol whips Mikey, but through the rest of the film, he's shown to be a decent and humane man in comparison to the other policemen (who may be extremist but certainly aren't well-intentioned).
107	* TheWestern: An Australian counterpart.
108	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
109	** Queenie (the female member of Arthur's gang) disappears entirely from the movie after a certain point.
110	** Two-Bob, the Aboriginal member of the gang isn't present for the finale.
111	** It's not clear whether Captain Stanley [[spoiler:survived his injuries]], though it's implied that he would probably make it.
112	** Fletcher doesn't appear [[spoiler: after discovering the two prison guards with their heads blown off, but he seems to have gotten off scot-free]].
113	* WhatNowEnding: You were expecting anything else from Music/NickCave?
114	* WickedCultured: Jellon Lamb, "man of no little education", and Arthur Burns. In Arthur's case, the trope is used to humanize him, rather than its standard use as just another villainous trapping.
115	* YourHeadAsplode: The natural consequences of averting PrettyLittleHeadshots, as seen on one of the Aboriginals who try to kill Charlie. Sam is delighted by this.
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Context Film / TheProposition