< Home / Interviews / Critic / Bio / My articles in Japanese >

Proposition

Roundtable interview audio and written by Nobuhiro Hosoki

 

Music video director John Hillcoat has teamed up with rocker/screenwriter Nick Cave to take us into the sweltering, bug-infested Australian outback of the 1880's. When Charlie, an outlaw(Guy Pearce)stumble into a no-way-out predicament,Captain Stanley,the lawman(Ray Winstone) strikes a deal with him to pardon his imprisoned younger brother Mikey(Richard Wilson).

His devil's offer is to hunt down and slay Charlie's older brother, Arthur(Danny Huston), who's hidden himself in a canyon so remote that even natives can get near it. In such lawless, wide open spaces Charlie confronts a harsh and imminent danger.

Through the plot revolves around him, it's the performance of Ray Winstone, Emily Watson, and Danny Huston that fill the screen and clear up the dusty air with their complex but far from fragile characters. Like his counterparts in westerns, Guy Pearce never reveals his inner struggle beneath the facade of stoicism.

This is a film that captures the gritty atmosphere while poetic and melancholic--creating a new category for the western. Still, it's a film in the traditional style, one that is narrative of a vicious cycle of violence that ends in bloodshed. In here, Guy Pearce and Danny Huston offered their thoughts on a roundtable interview at the Regency Hotel in New York.