Customer Reviews

The Proposition [VHS]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I found this film to be cliched in many ways, but also a clever and underrated, scenario. All the characters are fine actors, and if the story seems passe, it's because the era was purportedly the 1940s when this kind of material was scandalous..

I learned long ago that one's expectations have to do with one's eventual impression and I expected nothing from this movie. I was therefore, pleasantly surprised. It is, after all, a delightful love story with untoward plot twists.

Based in the 1930's, the film let's the viewer enter the world of Boston's elite Catholic. William Hurt wonderfully changes his face to the elder millionare who wants to gives his avante garde young wife everything and he'll take great risk to let her have the only thing he can't personally provide, a pregnancy. Madeline Stowe beautifully portays the author-wife with strength and sensitivity. Neil Patrick Howser (Doogie Howser?) plays the young surrogate that painfully and tragically falls in love with the wife. If all isn't complex enough, the best is saved for last as the priest who tells us this story (Kenneth Branaugh) epitomizes the passionate confusion between having and wanting and the consequences it brings. As Father Mikinnon states, "My God fishes, gets a headache, and stubs his toe... and he doesn't begrudge our being human". Touche'

Note: I saw this movie with XFinity OnDemand.

This is a vastly under-rated movie that got very little, if any, exposure when released in 1998. I don't know why it was savaged by the few critics who have seen it or why it got a very limited theatrical release, as it boasts an impressive cast: Academy Award nominee Kenneth Branagh (best known for his superb film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays) Madeleine Stowe, Academy Award winner William Hurt, Robert Loggia, Neil Patrick Harris and Blythe Danner. The story is engrossing from beginning to end and keeps you hooked until the end. Why is this film not on DVD? It's worth it. The performances are absolutely wonderful from such an acclaimed cast. My only criticism is that it should have been longer, with additional character development for Father McKinnon & Arthur Barrett and a better denouement between them.

This and "The End of the Affair" are two of the best movies I saw in the 90's. Both had great, imaginative story lines, with top notch actors. Nail biters to the end.

But the English language version is an involving film with a starry cast -- Kenneth Branaugh, William Hurt, Madeline Stowe, Robert Loggia, Gwyneth Paltrow's mother and the guy that played Doogie Howser.

It's the 1930ish story about wealthy Boston tycoon Hurt wanting someone to do his wife (Stowe) so she can get pregnant (Hurt apparently can't perform). Doogie gets selected from an audition and gets on with it -- then falls in love with the tycoon's wife.

Lots of turbulence and silly drama follow including a couple deaths, miscarriages and some other bad stuff. Hurt isn't very convincing as a weepy hubby and Branaugh plays a priest who ends up like the one in "Thorn Birds" except he doesn't show his behind. When confronted by his elder he saves himself from exile to the Vatican with some fancy talking.

The film ends well with absolution for some of the characters. This is high grade soap opera and mainly a chick flick. It's worth a night's entertainment but I wouldn't bother buying a German-language release even if it was subtitled. Wait around for an English release or wait for it to show up on one of your cable channels.

While the plot of this movie is lacking, at times, the quality performances given by Stowe, Hurt, and especially Branagh easily redeem the movie and make it one of the most riveting films I have ever seen.

If you enjoy movies with complex characters and a simple yet tricky plot this film will probably appeal to you because it is filled with great actors and a wonderfully intricate storyline as well as offering up a world of thorny possibilities.

The story takes place during the 1940's when influential people were held to extraordinary standards and morality meant much more than it does today. Society upheld Arthur Barret (William Hurt) and his beautiful wife Eleanor (Madeleine Stowe) but underneath their social relationship lurked a barrenness, literally. Arthur makes the choice to hire another man to impregnate his wife because of his own inability to do so. But what begins as a secret and interesting choice soon gets blown into another dimension once real feelings are mixed up between all of the parties involved. The young man employed as a stud, Roger Martin (Neil Patrick Harris), becomes enamored with Mrs. Barret and threatens to expose the couple to their society crowd. Lurking behind the scenes is housekeeper and busybody Syril Danning (Blythe Danner) who along with her employer put an end to the scandal. But all is not what it seems.

The actors are all very good in this film with the standouts being William Hurt, Madeleine Stowe and Neil Patrick Harris. Of course Kenneth Branagh is wonderful in his brief role here as well and Blythe Danner and Robert Loggia offer perfect supporting roles. It is a complicated story that leaves you wondering what you would have done in the same predicament especially during the 40's when everything seemed morally questionable. With all the availability for childbirth in this era it is hard to fathom how the problem of barrenness was dealt with in earlier times. Either way when a third party enters the realm of a marriage the proof comes out in the pudding or in the proposition.

Rick Ramage has written a nice and tidy little screenplay in THE PROPOSITION. Much like his other works in STIGMATA and HAUNTED, again the Roman Catholic Church plays a significant role in the unfolding of unusual and sometimes quite comical events in the lives of the wealthy Arthur and Eleanor Barret and a certain Roger Martin and Father Michael McKinnan.These four unlikely characters mix in a pre WW2 triste that includes God,lust and murder.Throw in the mysterious housekeeper and you have a quite interesting scenario that at times plays like a daytime soap opera, at times like a French farce and at times like a murder mystery.

Ramage has well defined characters and the five principle actors, William Hurt,Madeleine Stowe,Neil Patrick Harris,Kenneth Branagh and Blythe Danner do their utmost to infuse pathos,comedy and melodrama.What is odd about this screenplay is that it refuses to identify itself in specifically any genre which may add to a mixed-emotion reaction from some who need strict guidelines and tied up ends.Ramage asks some very interesting questions about morality,faith,intentions and forgiveness against a backdrop of feminist repression in 1935 Boston.

This film is actually quite a delightful surprise simply due to the different subject matter.The film is beautifully shot, acted and conceived.THE PROPOSITION has a lingering effect that is not easily forgotten. Really a first rate job by all involved.4 and 1/2 stars****.

I loved this movie. When it first came out, I found it to be one of the best to come out in a long time. I found it moving, full of deep emotions, and bittersweet -- all at the same time. It is romantic, yes, but so much more. In a nut shell, this movie reflects the the results of the choices we make in life, the pain and the joy of those choices.

This film has a very well conceived underlying idea, and it comes close to being one of the really great movies. It felt to me like it was based on a real experience of some kind. I found that it touched an emotional space of some depth. This struck me as similar to the "Winslow Boy" and "Man in the Iron Mask" in that you feel the author understands and therefore forgives the motivations of all the characters, even the baddies. I'd say these other two movies are slightly better written (getting 9.8s rather than a 9.5), because a few of the lines in this one feel a little bit forced, but there I'm picking nits. I get a solid flavor of universal significance, but it doesn't quite soar with it, like "Lawrence of Arabia" or "Onegin"

If what grabs you is sex and scandal, then this is not the film for you. The film is not about that. I think you have to take personal, human love seriously to get it. If you don't, it will just come across as a feeble attempt to shock -- an attempt which loses all its punch because the morals are pre-1960's. We're so advanced. We've moved so beyond that, don't ya know.

For some reason, I reminded of a line from "The Education of Henry Adams, concerning America around the turn of the 20th Century. He said something to the effect that Woman/the Madonna as a Force was giving way to an obsession with the Dynamo, that woman was perhaps no longer so much subservient to her man, but had become slave to the Machine instead. This film dates from a time when that transition was still taking place. It barely predates WWII.

Some of the acting is really great. Branaugh and Hurt have some truly exceptional moments. Hurt has a really difficult part to play -- he has to remain sort of ambiguous all the way to the end until his true colors are revealed, and at that point, all that has gone previously has to seem believable. I think he did that very well. Stowe works very well in her role. I was also very impressed with Blythe Danner as Syril. I think a case could be made that Syril is the true unsung hero in the story, sort of in the way that Samwise Gamgee is in "Lord of the Rings"