THE PROPOSITION, the majestic and bold new film written by music icon
Nick Cave (with a score by Cave and longtime collaborator / Dirty Three
frontman Warren Ellis available on Mute Records) opens in New York and
Los Angeles Friday May 5th. Select cities to follow:
Friday May 5th
NY @ The Angelika Film Center, AMC Empire 25 Lincoln Square
LA @The Nu Art, 11272 Santa Monica Boulevard,
Friday May 19th
Chicago @ Music Box Theater
Friday May 26th
Atlanta @ Midtown
Boston @ Kendall Square
Dallas @ The Magnolia
CD @ Landmark Bethesda
Houston @ The Angelika
Minneapolis @ The Lagoon
Philadelphia @ The Ritz
Portland @ Regal Fox
San Diego @ The Ken
San Francisco @ The Lumiere
More TBA
Directed by John Hilcoat, THE PROPOSITION is a visually stunning tale
of loyalty, betrayal, and retribution set in Australia’s Outback
frontier in the 1880’s. The soundtrack for the film, out now on Mute Records,
incorporates soft chamber pieces, ghostly moodscapes and whispered
laments. Story and music are closely intertwined and these 16 tracks are as
starkly beautiful as the landscape of the film. “I always heard it
musically, and I guess it’s written rhythmically as well” Cave explains,
“There are moments of intense violence and there are also moments of
long, lyrical, quiet sadness.”
THE PROPOSITION features explosive performances by Guy Pearce
(MEMENTO), Ray Winstone (SEXY BEAST), Danny Huston (THE CONSTANT GARDENER), John
Hurt (ELEPHANT MAN), and Emily Watson (BREAKING THE WAVES). The film
will open on Friday, May 5 in New York at the Angelika Film Center and
AMC Empire 25, and in Los Angeles, with a national roll-out to follow.
Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) is a renegade living in Australia’s lawless
frontier who, along with his two brothers, is wanted for a grisly
murder. After being captured by local law enforcer Captain Stanley (Ray
Winstone), he is presented with an impossible proposition: the only way to
save his younger brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) from the gallows is to
track down and kill his psychotic older brother Arthur (Danny Huston),
who Stanley believes to be the ringleader in the violence. Meanwhile,
Captain Stanley has other problems with which to contend. Having given
up their comfortable life in England, he is desperate to shield his
luminous wife Martha (Emily Watson) from the brutalities of their new
surroundings. However, his attempts at “civilizing” the lawless émigrés and
renegade Aborigines only makes matters worse. An uneasy sense of
foreboding grows as events close in and each character faces a punishing
moral dilemma that leads inexorably to a devastating climax.
Though THE PROPOSITION evokes, in iconography and scope, the great
American western, Cave and Hillcoat’s vision of nineteenth century
Australia is wilder than anything ever imagined out west. Ex-cons, bounty
hunters, homicidal brutes, sadistic Brits and vengeful natives battle over
an untamed land swarming with flies and scorched by an unrelenting sun.
As emotionally engaging as it is shockingly, authentically violent, and
as breathtakingly beautiful as it is bleak, THE PROPOSITION is
riveting, visceral cinema, visualized and acted with brio and punctuated by
Cave and Ellis’s unmistakably haunting score.
http://www.thepropositionfilm.com
http://www.nickcaveandthebadseeds.com