at the movies
it's a banner day for film viewing for me today: i've seen two much anticipated films - Manda Bala (2.5/5 theater or nothing) and Eastern Promises (3/5 see it). I'm now rewatching The Proposition, which I'm seeing for comparison to 3:10 to Yuma (2.5/5 see it). I see the former as an "outsider's" western with readymade cult-appeal owing to the Nick Cave script. The latter is this year's big oscar contender, and it typically tries to evoke The Searchers' complication of the Western's society v. the outsider struggle without really threatening the family with the Nietzschean.
But now I've been watching to about a half hour into The Proposition. I see the marks of screenwriter Nick Cave's blunt historicism (Huston's Sheriff unexpectedly quotes Dorothy Parker, Hurt's cowboy racist is enamored of - and horrified by - the eugenic possiblities suggested by Darwin). I love Cave's ability to engage his menagerie of characters in an endless combination of small conflicts and power struggles (much as he did in And the Ass Saw the Angel), but sometimes it feels like, for better or worse, the scuffles are doing less to advance a narrative or thematic arc than to indulge Cave's clever sense of dialogue, his barstool pseudointellectual antagonism to more serious character study.
Don't get me wrong. I love Cave's dialog, and Hillcoat's direction here is magisterial. It's just that I've poured myself a cup of whiskey - Oban - which is fruity and smooth compared to the firewater consumed by the characters here. It is healthily alcoholic and will soften me to the pleasures of Cave's idiot banter.
But now I've been watching to about a half hour into The Proposition. I see the marks of screenwriter Nick Cave's blunt historicism (Huston's Sheriff unexpectedly quotes Dorothy Parker, Hurt's cowboy racist is enamored of - and horrified by - the eugenic possiblities suggested by Darwin). I love Cave's ability to engage his menagerie of characters in an endless combination of small conflicts and power struggles (much as he did in And the Ass Saw the Angel), but sometimes it feels like, for better or worse, the scuffles are doing less to advance a narrative or thematic arc than to indulge Cave's clever sense of dialogue, his barstool pseudointellectual antagonism to more serious character study.
Don't get me wrong. I love Cave's dialog, and Hillcoat's direction here is magisterial. It's just that I've poured myself a cup of whiskey - Oban - which is fruity and smooth compared to the firewater consumed by the characters here. It is healthily alcoholic and will soften me to the pleasures of Cave's idiot banter.