The Proposal (2005), Hell of Outback

IMAGE – Wild Outback

Performed by Silver Salt from the negative Super 35 mm, this 4K restoration whose color calibration was supervised by John Hillcoat and the French ops leader Benoit Delhomme, we arrive in a controlled UHD Dolby Vision transfer where bleached and dusty photography can display in all its terrible beauty.

With great stability, well cleaned (except for occasional white spots) and flooded with a thin layer of natural grain (smoothed at a recovery), the image is much more detailed than in HD (the dirt on clothes, dried leaves, sweat on faces, crevices in rock formations, scaly paint) retains a certain sweetness inherent in the source without losing precision.

The earthy palette delivers richer saturated hues (reds amber at the end of the day, bright blues from the sky, lush greens from Captain Stanley's garden), the contrast balance that is very high captures even better the stifling heat of Australia with bright whites and silky blacks (even if the shadows are rare), and the natively sober light sources are enhanced with gentleness (sunset, the brightness of the clouds, the reflections on the metal weapons, the glow of the campfires).

SOUND – Twilight complaints

Rhythmed by « silence » and a finely distilled obsessive musical score (by the composer Warren Ellis and the singer Nick Cave), this multi-channel soundtrack holds its dialogues (sometimes whispered but intelligible) at the front, opens the surround field (the omnipresence of flies, the wind blowing away) with good directivity (the inaugural shooting), uses deep bass (the shots, the movements of horses) and benefits from a dynamic with appreciable power.

CONCLUSION – What fresh hell is this?

Abandoned in a territory that does not know pity, men become animals when survival dominates values and laws. And it is not the present 4K Ultra HD, whose solid A/V performances accentuate the feverish atmosphere of the work, which will persuade us otherwise!