Cinecult: The Proposition

Originally run on 30 November 2009 in the Union Weekly.

The Proposition (2005)

"Australia, what fresh hell is this?"

It’s probably telling that The Proposition is one of my favorite films, since it’s one of the most stark and depressing films that’s come out in the past decade. It’s also the single best western to come out since Unforgiven, which is strange considering the film was written and directed by Australians and takes place on the same continent. It is an unusual place for a setting, but like Sergio Leone’s comic book melodramas or Akira Kurosawa’s samurai-filled iterations, taking the western down under breathes life into the genre. It’s an odd choice, but it’s the kind of choice that keeps the western alive.

The director of the film is John Hillcoat, an Australian who recently released the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. He’s clearly a man who knows how to put together a good movie, but what elevates The Proposition above most other films is the screenplay written by musician-cum-novelist-cum-former-heroin-addict Nick Cave, who also handles the score with bandmate Warren Ellis (not to be confused with the comic writer of the same name). Cave, though an Australian exile living in England, has an excellent handle on the western and American writing, an influence that’s quite clear in both his lyrics and in his debut Southern gothic novel, And The Ass Saw an Angel.

The film takes place in the year 1880, back before Australian independence, racial tolerance, and dental hygiene. The Australia of The Proposition isn’t the place we laughed at in that one episode of The Simpsons. Instead of koalas and lame jokes about knives, this Australia is one that’s basically unknown to us and, as I understand it, unknown to even the Aussies. This land is a fly-filled hellhole rife with delusional government officials, psychopaths, wars with the natives, and miles and miles of dirt. If the entirety of the United Kingdom was shaken up, all of the loose pieces of trash and deritus would wind up in Hillcoat and Cave’s vision the Land Down Under. It’s in this topsy-turvy terminal that our protagonist, Irish immigrant Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) finds himself caught up.

The opening of the film is rather telling. It begins with the police ambushing Charlie and his youngest brother, Mike, at a brothel in the middle of the desert stocked solely with Chinese prostitutes. It’s a loud, brutal fight and ends with the two Burns brothers captured by police. But they aren’t executed or sent to prison. Instead, police Captain Morris Stanley (Ray Winstone) offers them a proposition: If Charlie Burns kills his eldest brother, Arthur who is “an abomination,” by Christmas Day, Stanley will let Charlie and his younger brother go free, absolved of all of their crimes. If not, Mike will be put to death for the crimes of the two older brothers. From there, the movie unspools into an anarchic, bloody race against time across the sun scorched wilderness of Australia.

The eponymous proposition is about as Biblical (or maybe Faustian) of a pact as could ever be made, but unlike the Bible, there’s no moral to be found, there’s no lesson to be learned, and nothing seems to occur according to any divine purpose. Things just happen and they’re incredibly ugly when they do. The world of The Proposition is deeply flawed and demonstrates just how messy things can be when humans try to do the right thing. It’s an interesting inversion on the typical representation of the western as the forces of good battle the forces of evil, and it’s what makes this movie more than just a simple piece of genre.

The film is also chock-full of wonderful acting, including a performance by one of my favorite character actors of all time: John Hurt. Hurt plays Jellon Lamb, a verbose and sadistic bounty hunter, adventurer, and “man of no little education.” Hurt’s career has spanned about 50 years and he’s acted in projects ranging from fantastic fare like Hellboy and Alien to more serious dramas such as Midnight Express and The Elephant Man, as well as the other great western of the past two decades, Dead Man. With all of these films in mind, I’d be hard-pressed to find a movie where he’s more engaging than here. He’s creepy, threatening, and hilarious all wrapped into one man.

Now, while he is my favorite actor in the film, he’s really a part of a much larger ensemble of great actors. There’s the beautiful Emily Watson (Punch Drunk Love; Synecdoche, New York), as the delicate, but frustrated wife of Captain Stanley, as well as David Wenham (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 300) as the wonderfully named Eden Fletcher, the dandiest authoritarian that ever drifted into the Victorian Outback. Danny Huston (son of the great actor/director John Huston) is also great as the villainous older brother, Arthur, who is as vicious and frightening as he is charming, a difficult combination to pull off and is entirely appropriate for this film.

It’s a shame to know that The Proposition’s unrelenting grimness will keep a lot of people from seeing it and just as many from finishing it. Their loss, I suppose, because despite the film’s bleak treatment of humanity (and of Australia), there’s still a beauty to be found in all this. Hillcoat’s film shows that as wicked as we might become, there’s still redemption to be had, if only we can find it. There’s plenty more to be sussed out of the film, but if there’s anything more significant, I’d be hard-pressed to find it.

An Op-Ed by Marion “Cobra” Cobra Cobretti

Originally run on 16 November 2009 for the Union Weekly's spoof issue, The Grunion.



It’s Not Easy Being a One Man Army
by Marion “Cobra” Cobra Cobretti

I know that whenever people see me in my ’55 Mercury, my slicked back hair, mirrored aviators, vanity plates, and my devil-may-care attitude, they think, “Oh, there’s a guy who I wish I could be. Thank the stars above that he’s out there cleaning the garbage off our streets. I wish I could be him, or, failing that, his on-again-off-again lover.”

Well, citizen, I’m here to tell you that being a one-man war against crime isn’t as easy as it looks.

A lot of pencil-pushing nerdlingers at Internal Affairs try to tell me that using explosive-tipped, armor piercing bullets in a mall to shoot a shop-lifter is incredibly dangerous, but I’ll tell you what’s more dangerous: Not shooting a shop-lifter in a crowded mall with bullets made to kill full grown elephants. That shop-lifter could have been Charles Manson or an NVA spy. I bet you feel stupid now, don’t you?

My chief is always getting on my case too, with a lot of nit-picking about “beating the mayor’s nephew with a tire iron” and “setting fire to the Reagan library.” What would he know about good police work? How was I to know that the low-life was picking up his grandmother from a retirement home. He was parked in a loading zone and that’s breaking the law. He should have had more respect for the statutes and amendments that make up this fine country, and nothing gets me more angry than punks with no respect. Except litter.

Not too long ago a serial killer was terrorizing Los Angeles, silently killing old folks in their sleep without leaving a trace of evidence. The morgue said it was a case of “natural deaths,” but you know what I say, I say that there’s nothing natural about death. And I have a PhD from the School of Hard Knocks, so yeah, I think I know a thing or medical science, so scramble that, you bunch of eggheads.

After about two days of investigating and twelve million dollars in damage, I finally solved the case. As it turns out it was a cult of Satanist biker communists. As I always say, “When in doubt, it’s a cult of Satanist biker communists.” That’s rule number two of the Cobra Playbook. Rule number one is “Always bring a toothbrush,” because proper hygiene is always a must.

What keeps me on the straight and narrow is my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s right, scum suckers, the king Cobra believes in a power higher than himself. “But Cobra,” you say from behind your plates of chili and your cum stained pants, “Religion is for the weak.” No! You’re weak, dirtbag! Nothing is more badass than God. He killed tons of Egyptians, one of the hardest groups of people on Earth to kill. He also made tigers, muscle cars, and me, the Cobra.

So the next time you see me throwing hand grenades from the back of a moving truck at black market pornographers, just remember that dealing out justice isn’t as glamorous as it looks.

Putin the Best Foot Forward

Originally written on 17 November under the nom de plume Julio Harkonnen. Image by the wonderful Clay Cooper.

May 21st

I’ve rarely ever been black bagged. Also, I’ve rarely ever been thrown into a car trunk by Russian spewing Special Forces. I must say that I really wouldn’t recommend it, either.

After several hours of bumpy roads, I was dragged out of a car and down a flight of concrete stairs. There, in a dingy basement, my eyes tried to adjust to the first light I had seen for hours. There, hunched over the carcass of what was once a white Siberian tiger was the man I was summoned to meet. He started separating the feline’s hide from its flesh as he whistled what sounded like “L’Internationale.” After a couple of seconds he stopped sawing and looked at me.

“Ah, you are journalist, yes?”

Yes?

“Come in for bro-grab.” Before I had an opportunity to meet him or dive out of the way, he was on me like an angry bear. He then released me and looked me over. “Yes, you will do.”

I wondered how hard it would be to get tiger blood out of flannel. It wouldn’t be the last unique question I’d ask on my travels.

That was how I met former Russian president Vladimir Putin.

***

What I found out in my first few hours with Vladimir was he was not much on shirts. At first I thought he was just really proud of his communism-forged abs, but after I while I discovered it was just a cover for a severe chaffing problem. He would stay half naked for most of our travels.

After a few awkward moments, he pulled from his Jordache jeans a piece of yellow, lined paper. He unfolded it on the table and cleared his throat. “I come to America.” He stopped right there and raised a single eyebrow at me. I considered agreeing with him that, yes, he did come to America, but then he went on. “For years I think to myself, ‘Vladi, these Yankees, they are not like us Russians, yes?’ [Yes] I think I want to—how you say—road trip. See what makes Yankees click. I want to see Real America.”

Through his vodka-laced voice and my heat stroke I could hear that he was serious, he wanted me to write about his—our—journey through the arteries of America. He had selected me—probably for my lack of a home security system and any close family ties—to chronicle this pilgrimage.

***

Vladimir took me by the arm outside. There in the waning daylight he showed me what he called “The Sturgeon,” a massive, red, convertible Cadillac. This was to be our ferry and Vladimir was to be the Virgil to my Dante. That is if I understood Wikipedia correctly.

May 24nd

We stopped at some nameless greasy spoon across from a Shell station. I’d been holding in a 64 oz. Mountain Dew since we started and Vladimir refused to stop because we were “good time making” (He then cackled and stomped on the accelerator). So when we finally did stop at a restaurant I had barely undone my button-fly before the call hit me. When I returned there was a slice of pie and a cup of coffee to greet me at our table. I told Vlad that I wasn’t hungry, but then he gave me that I-will-gulag-the-fuck-out-of-you look, so I took a bite out of my own sense of self-preservation.

I washed down the bite with a slug of black coffee and he started laughing.

“Ha! I poison your coffee make!” he said as he slapped his knee.

“Huh?” is all I could get out.

“Polonium!” Then he busted out even louder, making a diabetic amputee with a shirt that said ‘God Don’t Make Junk’ to turn around and stink-eye us. “Oh man, you should sees your face! I totally had gots your going!”

He’s said this at every single meal we’ve had together. I’m starting to think he’s not joking around.

May 28th

Vladimir has an entire collection of knives. I have no idea where he got these things from or why he has eighty-nine of them. The trunk is full of them. That and the mummified remains of a timber wolf.

He shrugged. “He looked at me.” He sniffed. “Once.”

May 30th

“I call it the Rasputin,” he says to me, pouring the Stoli through a funnel filled with ice into an Iron Man collector’s cup. He said this as if he was answering a question I never thought to ask. “Is three measures vodka.” He poured a little bit more. “And two measures vodka.” The bottle went dry and sailed out the window. “Is real man’s drink.”

I told him I could man the Sturgeon if he wanted to. He waved me off and said that I needed to “nut up” and that I was acting like “a Kazakh.” For some reason, I thought of Thanksgiving at my parents’ house.

June 4th

I couldn’t tell if it was the time we ran out of gas outside of Del Rio or the time he got high on mescaline and drove through a field of sheep, but something inside him changed. Right as I gave up on wondering what he was thinking, he spoke up. “I am grow blue-ball violent.” I was sure this was a collection of words that made sense to Vladimir, but to me the meaning was entirely lost. “I am in need of combat. I am need to see wolverine fight! But wheres?”

I had to admit I didn’t know where. Conflict was something I saved for hypothetical discussions I had with my boss or for the internet. So I couldn’t aid him in his quest for animal-bound violence. Not that I wanted to.

As we reached the top of a hill, he looked out to where the Earth met the sky. “We will goes to land of the Aztecs. We’s will journal to Mexico.” Sanity and reason, I would later find out, left us on that hill.

June 6th

What follows was written down after all was said and done. My notebook was lost when the Sturgeon lost a tire and burst into flames against an elm tree. When I regained consciousness, I found Vladimir standing over me smirking. It appeared, in the confusion, he had lost his shirt.

He nodded at me and winked. Without a word, miles from anywhere, we began to walk.

***

The black wilderness seemed to stretch for hundreds of miles in every direction and thousands of years into the past. It was as though we were in a land that man had never walked through before. Even Nature seemed to be absent from the earth we walked over. It was just us two and our footfalls.

Out of the moonless night Vladimir said, “I think I maybe get it. Maybe not what I cames for, but I know something.” He stopped and took up a handful of pebbles and sand. “I knows something.” He let the gravel fall from between his fingers.

Just then I saw it. Civilization. A glittering beacon out in the middle of this expanse of misery. We started running for it. Or I thought we did. Hours of Hell ended in a few seconds of sprinting (followed by ten minutes of breathless hobbling). I collapsed against the tin side of a truck stop. A bearded man that looked like Jerry Garcia spat a mouthful of tobacco a few inches from my foot. I told him that I needed to find a phone and that my friend Vladimir and I had an accident and we needed to call for help. The man just stared at me.

“Who’s Vladimir?”

I looked to my left and my right, but Vladimir was nowhere to be found. Sometime in my dash for salvation he had slipped away into the night. Maybe it had something to do with what he found out on that walk or maybe it had to do with the mushrooms he ate or maybe, just maybe Vladimir was the kind of man that needed to be lost in the shadow of the Earth.

[Editor’s Note: The writer could not be found for editorial purposes. Though, when his
apartment was checked on, it looked like he had packed and his suitcases were missing.]

JOYCE V. SHAKESPEARE

Originally run on 3 November 2008

This is currently mounted on the wall of a good friend of mine. And if you're wondering, I pronounce it Sheik-ah-speer, like all good gentlemen.

The Only Good Ganguro is a Dead Ganguro

Originally run on 3 November 2008.

There’s a lot of pretty great stuff about Japan—ramen, Akira Kurosawa, ninja, robots and the elderly, but there’s also an ugly underside to the Land of the Rising Sun. No, I’m not talking about cheap anime, tentacle porn, the Rape of Nanking or one of the highest suicide rate in the industrialized world, I’m talking about some of the less obvious things that haunt the neon streets of old Yamato. Specifically, I’m talking about this horrible thing the kids have deemed the “ganguro.”

The origin of the word ganguro apparently comes from the Japanese word for “blackface,” so it’s good to know that racist stereotyping isn’t isolated to our half of the globe. The fashion consists of what I assume are color-blind female youths tanning their skin into Oompa-Loompa hues and bleaching their hair into nuclear whites. It is one of the uglier things I’ve seen people inflict on themselves and I’ve seen the BME Pain Olympics. Apparently this fashion was sort of developed as a direct challenge to traditional Japanese beauty, where women are supposed to be small, quiet and pale (Scientifically, it appears that ganguro style is as far away from the geisha as possible without segueing into another species). Luckily this questionable chic that started in the 90’s has been tapering off in popularity ever since the dawn of the new millennium. My guess is that one of these girls ended up looking in the mirror.

You could probably make an argument about me being some racist, misogynist imperialist, but come on—Look at these broads. Tell me with a straight face that there’s anything about that picture that could be considered a good idea. Unless, of course, you’re desperate for a Halloween costume.

Image from the foulest pits of hell and Google.