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Apr. 25th, 2006 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonAfter posting about The Proposition last night, I kept thinking about its themes of social order/disorder. And here is what I thought.
Charley is truly the man without society, who exists beyond the bounds of any social order, for two reasons. One is that he turns his back on family, the one bond that very bad men had among them--granted it's to try to save another family member, the "innocent" among them, but still betrayal among brothers--Cain and Abel never letting it rest--is fundamentally an uncivilized act. It's even said to him that he is ultimately responsible for the death of Mikey, since he left the other brothers in the first place and put Mikey in a position to be captured. So he has killed all his brothers (perhaps the Aboriginal member of the Burns gang was a brother too; black bastard might have been an accurate description rather than a straight perjorative). But the larger reason came from Arthur: "Why do you never stop me?" It implied that Charley would be able to stop Arthur, that Arthur might even want to be stopped from being what he is and doing what he does. Charley is the man with the power to stop those acts from happening, yet he does not, although a socially-responsible man would. His betrayal of his brother came long before that gut shot. His apparent return to the world of law and order was no such thing. Did he kill the brother who was raping Martha to save Martha or spare Captain Stanley? Not really, I don't think. He killed him because that was a necessary step on the way to killing Arthur, and a counterbalance to the death of Mikey. Anything apparently heroic in his actions was unintentional; the betrayal of his brother was the ultimate rejection of all social restrictions and obligations. He had no answer for Arthur when Arthur asked him what he would do now, because there is nothing he can do. He is truly a man without home or heart.
I could be totally wrong about all this, but I have been listening to Nick Cave for an awfully long time. ;-)
Many of the reviews I've read made much of the Stanleys' efforts to civilize the outback, usually scoffing at them or calling them naive, but I think they were essentially good people who cared about social order, wanting the best for their fellow human beings, but were in a world where they could not reconcile the other social orders around them with their own. Their Aboriginal gardener leaving his shoes and handkerchief inside the garden gate as he returned to his own social order was the clearest symbol of that, but their interactions wth the white townspeople* also highlighted their differences. I wonder though if in some sense Stanley wasn't subverting his own ideals by his clever solution of using one brother to catch the other--he is the one who put the betrayal into motion, so is he any better than Charley, who became a bigger sociopath than Arthur in allowing Arthur to commit his heinious acts? Are we perhaps all sociopaths at heart, living in an uneasy balance with one another?
Though it's a pretty, delicate song and this was not a pretty, delicate story, the movie reminded me strongly of the song "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side," right down to the songs sung in the film about the moon and the stars. (an aside: gorgeous soundtrack, must purchase.)
*A slack-jawed, inbred fleabitten lot straight out of And the Ass Saw the Angel
Seeing work like this from Nick Cave is like beautiful clear clean water to a drought-stricken land. This is far more intelligent than any of the album music he's produced in the last few years. Though if the soundtrack holds up as well in person as it does in my memory, maybe I can hope that he got his muse back...
Charley is truly the man without society, who exists beyond the bounds of any social order, for two reasons. One is that he turns his back on family, the one bond that very bad men had among them--granted it's to try to save another family member, the "innocent" among them, but still betrayal among brothers--Cain and Abel never letting it rest--is fundamentally an uncivilized act. It's even said to him that he is ultimately responsible for the death of Mikey, since he left the other brothers in the first place and put Mikey in a position to be captured. So he has killed all his brothers (perhaps the Aboriginal member of the Burns gang was a brother too; black bastard might have been an accurate description rather than a straight perjorative). But the larger reason came from Arthur: "Why do you never stop me?" It implied that Charley would be able to stop Arthur, that Arthur might even want to be stopped from being what he is and doing what he does. Charley is the man with the power to stop those acts from happening, yet he does not, although a socially-responsible man would. His betrayal of his brother came long before that gut shot. His apparent return to the world of law and order was no such thing. Did he kill the brother who was raping Martha to save Martha or spare Captain Stanley? Not really, I don't think. He killed him because that was a necessary step on the way to killing Arthur, and a counterbalance to the death of Mikey. Anything apparently heroic in his actions was unintentional; the betrayal of his brother was the ultimate rejection of all social restrictions and obligations. He had no answer for Arthur when Arthur asked him what he would do now, because there is nothing he can do. He is truly a man without home or heart.
I could be totally wrong about all this, but I have been listening to Nick Cave for an awfully long time. ;-)
Many of the reviews I've read made much of the Stanleys' efforts to civilize the outback, usually scoffing at them or calling them naive, but I think they were essentially good people who cared about social order, wanting the best for their fellow human beings, but were in a world where they could not reconcile the other social orders around them with their own. Their Aboriginal gardener leaving his shoes and handkerchief inside the garden gate as he returned to his own social order was the clearest symbol of that, but their interactions wth the white townspeople* also highlighted their differences. I wonder though if in some sense Stanley wasn't subverting his own ideals by his clever solution of using one brother to catch the other--he is the one who put the betrayal into motion, so is he any better than Charley, who became a bigger sociopath than Arthur in allowing Arthur to commit his heinious acts? Are we perhaps all sociopaths at heart, living in an uneasy balance with one another?
Though it's a pretty, delicate song and this was not a pretty, delicate story, the movie reminded me strongly of the song "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side," right down to the songs sung in the film about the moon and the stars. (an aside: gorgeous soundtrack, must purchase.)
*A slack-jawed, inbred fleabitten lot straight out of And the Ass Saw the Angel
Seeing work like this from Nick Cave is like beautiful clear clean water to a drought-stricken land. This is far more intelligent than any of the album music he's produced in the last few years. Though if the soundtrack holds up as well in person as it does in my memory, maybe I can hope that he got his muse back...
