Movie Review: THE PROPOSITION

There are movies that can be viewed as a metaphor for hell, but there are very few movies that make you feel like you are actually in hell. The movie is haunting and bloody, set in a blasted wasteland where everyone is out for blood, and even the ground seems like it wants to scorch the life away. And the FLIES! I have never seen a film where flies were an integral part of every scene (and I don't mean a single fly like in, say, THE FLY, but little clouds of them, buzzing in and out of the frame and landing on people's faces like little black harbingers of death). The plot centers on one brother who is sent to kill his older brother in order to keep his younger brother from the noose, but that is just what is happening on the surface. The screaming subtext of the movie is about hubris, and the dangerous futility of colonialism ( I say "screaming" subtext because if you haven't gotten the point during the opening credits, you aren't smart enough to watch this movie. Or any movie, for that matter.) I won't say much more, because I like for people to go into movies with a fairly clean slate, but suffice it to say that there is much more going on here that what you see on the screen, and what you see on the screen is going to stay in your head for a long, long time. Well worth a watch.