Movie Review: John Hillcoat's The Proposition: The Frontier - Page 5

But these moments aren't central to the narrative. On the other hand, tragic exaltation verges on the hysterical, on the willfully florid and perverse, and The Proposition is none of these. Cave and Hillcoat see history as a process, the product of sallies that can't be perfectly judged beforehand. A decent attempt is not negligible because it miscarries. The emphasis is as much on Stanley's effort as he conceived of it, as on the baleful results.

The Proposition is perhaps most like Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962), which so methodically dispels the melodramatic view of frontiersmen on a collision course. Similarly, The Proposition depicts male brutality, both within and without the confines of the law, in a beautifully measured way that doesn't kill the intensity of the narrative — wild contrasts, ironic similarities, and all.

Article Author: Alan Dale

Alan Dale earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. He currently works as a corporate tax attorney in Portland, Oregon.

He is the author of What We Do Best: American Movie Comedies …

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