★★★☆☆
Three Stars
The first things we see of Robyn Davidson are, perhaps unsurprisingly, her sandal-clad feet. But as the opening shot spans upward, we realise that Tracks does not begin at the physical start of the young woman’s journey through the Australian bush and desert. Rather, John Curran’s last film unfolds with an initial, dream-like flashback of Davidson as a young girl, during the personal cataclysm which haunts her throughout the narrative, and is a profound part of her motivation for the extraordinary undertaking. Her drawn-out steps hit the rural dust of her parents’ farmyard, which she is leaving behind after her mother has hung herself, and she prepares to live alone with her aunt, away from her father, her sister, even her beloved dog.
Still, one should not think deduce from this that Tracks is a film solely centred on the psychological origins of Davidson’s record-breaking, and, let’s face it, near-suicidal plan of walking 1700 miles on foot through some of the harshest climactic conditions and least populated expanses of the world. Granted, Mia Wasikowska’s terse voice-over gives fleeting insights into the mental processes which impel her, like the generational “malaise” of her sex and class – the social privilege of a white woman in still segregated, 1970s Australia, which Robinson struggles under like a burden of guilt.
But the bulk of the film consists of an incredibly pared-down, unutterably beautiful recreation of the journey itself. There is no romanticising or elaboration necessary when the camera’s raw material is already so insanely self-sufficient. What is impressive in terms of cinematography is how well they have imbedded the human presence of Davidson into these landscapes, at times swallowing her up like a tiny dot on the brink of disappearing, at times letting her rise from the boiling mirages, a shivering slip of persistent willpower.
Meanwhile, if there is a social or political consciousness in the film, it irrupts abruptly, like an intrusion into the single-mindedness of Davidson’s endeavour – which is odd, given her involvement with the Aboriginal Land Rights movement. Still, questions like racism towards the aborigines are treated with a rawness which mirrors Davidson’s indignation. The violent slap which the white owner of the first hotel bar where Davidson works inflicts on an elderly aborigine who has strayed in may happen just beyond the door frame, but the sound echoes and the camera’s angle gives us the raised arm as it plummets down to contact. Likewise, the first look we get at the 27-year-old Robinson who will trek the astonishing distance is at her sleeping face, as the train which brings her to Alice Springs – her home during the two years of preparation for the journey – pulls into the station. When she hits the dusty high street, a decrepit truck roars past, with four men in the back who hoot and aim physical guns at her with leery laughter.
Nevertheless, the details of Davidson’s biography, and the brief glimpses into the conditions of 1970s rural Australia, remain but the parts of a whole. Tracks is a film which also charts Davidson’s personal evolution during her voyage, and the realisations she comes to through her various attachments, which are all the more significant given her avowed “aloneness”, the overwhelming solitude which her isolating enterprise is a paradoxical attempt to detach herself from. She develops strong, often largely silent ties: with the naturalised Afghan camel farmer Sallay Mohamet, the couple of aged settlers who offer her the rest of their home in the dead of the outback, the chatty, seemingly unbreakable Aborigine elder Mr Eddy who guides her through sacred lands from water point to water point – and, not least, National Geographic photographer Rick Smolan. Their complex relationship is also a significant feature of the film, but I’ll avoid spoilers and keep mum as to its nature.
Tracks is no flawless masterpiece. Some have perhaps rightly argued that it fails to kindle entirely, losing itself at times in an intermittence of aesthetic windings and psychologising scenes. But it is also an undeniably compelling film, full of strength, fear, and blisters. And the humanity at its core, sparingly conveyed by a fantastic cast, along with its lush cinematography, and the fact it is a true story, make it an impossibly stand-out film.
