★★★★☆
Four Stars
What’s the point? That’s the question at the core of David Michod’s The Rover, a brooding thriller set in the Australian outback ten years after the unexplained collapse of human civilisation. The film stars Guy Pearce as a mysterious man determined to retrieve his stolen car, who enlists the help of the car thief’s brother, played by Robert Pattinson in a transformative performance. As the pair attempt to track down both the car and its new owner, a tense and beautifully acted character driven story emerges which allows the film to explore the devastating consequences of the delusions we create to maintain the human spirit.
The derivative plot and setting recall any number of post apocalyptic films from Mad Max to The Book of Eli, but the film is quickly distinguished from its genre contemporaries by Michod’s investment in his character’s remaining shreds of humanity, even if the admittedly strong production design provides little that audiences haven’t seen before. The dystopian outback sets the tone for the film, where every dust road and wooden shack are as run down and worn out as their inhabitants. Lights give off a sickly glow, windows and doors slide laboriously along their frames, and people lounge in their chairs for days on end.
Every character we encounter is waiting for something – for a customer, for a loved one, for death. Though set in Australia, the film is unashamedly a Western, its lone gunslinger hero a cipher for the story’s concerns with independence and liberty. However, the film plays with genre convention and subverts expectations. An early scene set in a matriarch’s drug den recalls any number of frontier town brothels, but Michod drags the trope into much darker, more disturbing territory. This frontier isn’t on the cusp of anything, it’s at the end of it.
Pearce is melancholy but ferocious in his performance as our mysterious protagonist, bringing an exhausted menace to the film. His unclear motivations and single mindedness make for an intriguing first act, but it is only after the arrival of Pattinson that the audience is able to emotionally connect with the film. If it is Pearce’s Eric and his stolen car that provide the film’s plot, it’s Pattinson’s Reynolds that provides its heart. Whilst Eric tests the audience’s patience with an unsympathetic protagonist, Reynolds becomes the audience’s surrogate, terrified, unsure of himself and adrift in this bleak inhumane world. Whilst Reynold’s arc is the most accessible in the film, it is also the most heartbreaking, as his misguided attempts at independence lead him round in circles.
Pattinson is remarkable in the role, with no trace of Twilight‘s pensive Edward Cullen in the darting eyes, jittering limbs and quivering jaw of his emaciated Reynolds, who flinches from an imagined attack anytime someone speaks. The film is at its most engaging when both actors share the screen, with Pattinson’s magnificently watchable freneticism perfectly complementing Pearce’s recessive presence. This tension between performers reinforces the instability of their character’s power dynamic, which sustains the film’s momentum to its conclusion.
Despite the film’s broad vistas and endless roads, it still manages to maintain an oppressively suspenseful tone through its ability to make us care about its small cast of unpredictable and violent characters. The shallow colour palette employed by cinematographer Natasha Braier captures the tired frustration of our characters, whilst her creeping cameras create a sense of unease that keeps the audience alert. In one memorable sequence a camera gradually zooms in on the face of a terrified Pattinson, hiding from bullets behind a motel bed, inviting us to empathise with these characters in their most vulnerable moments. In this way Michod foregrounds the human emotions which could have easily become lost in the dusty wasteland.
Antony Partos’ terrific original score, atonal and abrasive, creates a sense of anticipation, building and building all the way through to the end of the credits. The film features a few moments of levity including perhaps the most left field musical cue in recent memory – you’ll know it when you hear it – which feel incongruous to the film’s otherwise cohesive tone due to their clumsy execution. The film’s self regard can stretch the audience’s patience at times, with moments of unintentional ridiculousness leading to stifled laughter in the screening I attended.
The Rover is magnificently acted, gorgeously shot and wonderfully scored, and tells a complex human story through a tense but straightforward plot. However, it is a film as bleak as the world it depicts, arriving at depressing conclusions about liberty and delusion, and uninterested in offering any real catharsis. The audience in my screening stayed in their seats for almost the entirety of the credit roll. The cinema felt like it was waiting for the ending, for its reassuring resolution. The Rover leaves you, like its characters with a sense of feeling incomplete – the story has concluded, but now we’re left without purpose. This lack of comfort is both its greatest weakness and its masterstroke. Indeed, what is the point?
