Directed by fellow Aussie John Hillcoat, Cave’s The Proposition plays out like a violent ballad of brutal lyricism, like Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller or its closest kin, the films of Sam Peckinpah, though its bloodshed (of which there’s an abundance) lacks the balletlike butchery of The Wild Bunch. It is a tough, severe film that possesses moments of haunting beauty. It also taps a jugular vein of grim humor — something that would be imperative to have for anyone living in this unyielding landscape.

The film opens with violence, as a group of men and women, locked in a rough-board whorehouse, come under assault by unseen gunmen. Of the people trapped inside, only two will survive: brothers Mike (Richard Wilson) and Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce). The gunmen are from the local constabulary led by a Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone), who actually wanted to capture the Burns boys alive. Stanley’s mission is to bring down their brother, Arthur Burns, who has been responsible for a number of murderous outrages in the district.

Toward this end, Stanley strikes a fateful bargain with Charlie: If he doesn’t go out into the blasted wilderness and kill his brother Arthur, his kid brother, Mike, will hang on Christmas Day. That’s the proposition. Caged like an animal, Mike is paraded back into “civilization” while Charlie sets off to find his desperado sibling. The film then takes two different tacks. As Charlie hunts for Arthur, Mike is placed in a desperate situation, as the stolid, withered townsfolk, stoked by the local commissioner, seek revenge upon the boy for the slaying of a local family.

In this cutthroat land, violence will beget violence, until one man, covered in others’ blood, calls a halt to it all. But you sense that even this cease-fire will only be temporary. How could it be otherwise?

Benoit Delhomme’s cinematography is stunning for a film that has a palette limited to the most visceral reds and yellows and the dull dun of the Outback’s dustbowl. Cave also weaves his own edgy music through the narrative, giving The Proposition its balladic quality.

The performances are excellent. Aside from Hurt, Winstone’s Stanley, a flawed man with a missionary’s zeal to “civilize” the land, is excellent, as is Pearce, who has finally been given a project as worthy as Memento to sink his teeth into. Emily Watson is also fine as Martha Stanley, the captain’s wife, who insists on recreating Home Counties England in the middle of a desert.

The greatest co-stars in The Proposition, however, are the billions of flies that infest the scenery. Naturally drawn to rot and muck, they cover the living and the dead like coats. In one astonishing scene, the torpid townsfolk turn out for a flogging, as spectacle-based punishment is one of their few pleasures. Hillcoat closes in on their slack, expressionless faces while they watch the whipping, only moving their hands to fend off insects. Then the camera moves behind them, where we see their backsides and hat tops quivering with masses of flies.