Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, fleeting profanity and partial nudity
By Derrick Bang
We’ll probably never truly know
why 25-year-old Robyn Davidson arrived in central Australia’s Alice Springs in
1975, and then spent two years learning how to train and manage the country’s
remarkable wild camels.
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| No matter how harsh the environment, Robyn (Mia Wasikowska) resolutely rises each morning and embarks on another daylong trek across the Australian Outback, accompanied solely by four camels and her faithful dog. |
She had endured a childhood
marred by disappointment and tragedy — her mother having committed suicide when
Robyn was only 11 — so it’s easy to believe that she had personal demons to
exorcise, and things to prove to herself.
Nor are we apt to know what then
prompted the young woman to embark on an ill-advised solo trek from Alice
Springs to where the Indian Ocean lapped against the West Australian coast,
accompanied only by four camels and her beloved black dog, Diggity. The
1,700-mile journey across the harsh and unforgiving Australian Outback took
nine months, during which she easily could have died any number of times.
Some people embrace such trials
for the sheer challenge; as the saying goes, they climb the mountain or cross
the desert “because it’s there.” By her own admission, Davidson seems to have
undertaken this trip as a journey of personal discovery: a way to become a
better version of herself.
“When there is no one to remind
you what society’s rules are,” she has said, reflecting back on her journey,
“and there is nothing to keep you linked to that society, you had better be
prepared for some startling changes.”
The truly remarkable thing is
that director John Curran, scripter Marion Nelson and star Mia Wasikowska have
managed to bring Davidson’s incredible journey to the big screen with equal
emphasis on the glorious, majestically inhospitable Australian Outback itself,
and the impact it had on this solitary traveler. Their film is both a beautifully
composed glimpse of an often barren and yet beautiful land, and an intimate
portrait of an angry young woman trying to find inner peace.
And she is angry, as we first encounter her ... impatient, brittle and
quick to take offense, and yet also oddly vulnerable: a duality that Wasikowska
conveys quite well. She nails Robyn’s surface contradictions: uncomfortable in
the presence of other people, probably to the point of anthropophobia, and yet
dependent upon them for jobs, favors and money. And resentful of that same
dependence.
And yet when Wasikowska manages
one of Robyn’s shy, uncertain smiles, it lights up her entire face: easy to
see, then, why she and her unlikely expedition attracted the interest of the
National Geographic Society, which agreed to fund her trip in exchange for
photographic coverage.
But that comes a bit later. Aside
from a fleeting flashback to childhood — the significance of which remains
unexplained, for a time — we catch up with Robyn as she arrives in Alice
Springs. The immediate goal is being trained to interact with the camels, to
which end she apprentices with down-on-his-luck camel wrangler Kurt Posel
(Rainer Bock), a nasty, petty little man who takes full advantage of his
hard-working trainee.
Posel’s belligerence notwithstanding,
Robyn does learn a lot ... but that does her little good when he ultimately
cheats her. She subsequently fares much better with the more supportive Sallay
Mahomet (John Flaus), a successful camel driver who takes a paternal interest
in the young woman, even as he insists that her intentions are sheer folly.
The other hitch is financial:
Robyn lacks money. Any money. She
reluctantly contacts National Geographic
and accepts their offer of support — for camel saddles, packs, supplies and
other essentials — in exchange for documentation of the journey. She therefore
tolerates the assigned “watcher”: young but already veteran photo-journalist
Rick Smolan (Adam Driver), whom she had met via friends while he was in Alice
Springs on assignment for Time
Magazine.
Curran encourages Driver to
overplay Rick’s goofy, nerdy nature: a mild misstep that’s initially
distracting, because — as introduced — we can’t imagine how this guy ever could
have become a photojournalist, let alone survived in the global hot spots where
assignments have taken him. I suspect a desire for overemphasized contrast,
since Rick’s cheerful bounce is everything the withdrawn Robyn loathes in a
person.
Robyn tries to insist on a single
photo session; Rick explains that Geographic
wants far more. They eventually agree that he’ll meet up with her five times,
and she’ll have to tolerate each of his exhaustive shoots.
Her attitude about his presence
is intriguing. It’s far more than simply viewing Rick’s photo demands as
irritating; she clearly resents his efforts to turn her into a model, complete
with “cute” shots atop her camels. She seems to share the aboriginal dislike
for cameras in general, as if she fears having part of her soul stolen or,
worse, stripped bare and then displayed for the world to see.
The resulting dynamic is
engaging, because Rick — despite being rebuffed at every turn — quickly comes
to care for Robyn, even growing concerned on her behalf.
The same is true of Mr. Eddy, a
respected Aboriginal elder — casually dubbed an “Old Fella” — who accompanies
Robyn for a portion of the trip, in order to guide her away from sacred spots.
Mr. Eddy is played by Rolley Minutma, a genuine elder whose native language is
Pitjantjatjara, which Robyn works to teach herself.
(If the film’s press notes are to
be believed, Minutma was thoroughly familiar with the story of Robyn’s journey,
having heard it told and re-told in many of the indigenous communities that she
visited.)
Minutma’s performance is enchanting,
because his Mr. Eddy is a fascinating blend of regal dignity, spiritual wisdom
and childlike enthusiasm. At times, he talks with unrestrained animation,
leaving both Robyn and us viewers wondering what the heck he’s saying ...
because Curran and Nelson wisely refrain from supplying subtitles. Robyn
wouldn’t have understood him, at the time; sharing Wasikowska’s expressions of
amused bewilderment gives us a better sense of her reaction.
I’m inclined to believe, as well,
that Mr. Eddy serves as a “safe” bridge between Robyn’s stoic isolation and her
slow-to-develop greater comfort around other people.
Not that everybody warrants such
politeness. Physical hardship aside, one of the greatest problems Robyn faced,
as news of her journey spread, was the unwanted onslaught of tourists and
journalists tracking her down and wanting their own pictures. Nothing is worse than having something deeply
personal — as Robyn’s trek clearly was — co-opted by strangers, and turned into
fodder for pushy hangers-on.
Robyn’s few human companions aside,
mention must be made of the film’s other strong characters: her four camels,
each of whom displays considerable personality in odd and intimidating ways.
Lest you fear it difficult to tell one from the next, that’s not a problem
here. The dominant bull, Dookie, is the most aggressive and first to raise an
alarm; the somewhat calmer Bubs is the lead camel, and the one Robyn rides,
when she chooses not to walk.
Zeleika is smaller and — as Robyn
discovers, shortly before she departs — pregnant: a bonus that provides her
with a fourth camel, baby Goliath, and a means of further encouraging her
little herd to stay together at all times.
All four of these oddly dignified
creatures are by turns threatening and hilarious, and they make guttural but
unexpectedly descriptive sounds that seem to convey a great deal about how
they’re thinking and feeling at any given moment.
Nelson’s thoughtful, analytical
script is drawn both from the May 1978 National
Geographic cover story that blended Smolan’s photographs with Davidson’s
text, and the full-length book (also called Tracks)
that public acclaim encouraged her to write two years later. Cinematographer
Mandy Walker similarly drew his lens choices and dusty, red-hued color palette
from the images in Smolan’s 1992 photo record of Davidson’s trip, From Alice to Ocean. The results are, in
a word, vibrant.
Bringing such a deeply personal
saga from printed page to the big screen is a challenge under any
circumstances, since we’re unable to share the writer’s thoughts and moods.
It’s even tougher when we spend most of our time with a single character who
doesn’t speak much under any circumstances, and not at all when on her own. And
yet Curran’s film is never boring or tedious: quite the contrary. Wasikowska’s
performance is riveting and laden with emotional complexity; she also looks
strong enough, and wiry enough, to be placed believably in this harsh
environment.
Inevitably, of course, we do need
to get inside Robyn’s head; Curran relies on the occasional flashbacks, along
with Wasikowska’s anguished features, to convey the despair to which this woman
almost succumbed, likely on numerous occasions.
The Australian Outback has a rich
cinematic history of similar “great journey” stories, and comparisons
inevitably will be made to 1971’s fairy tale-esque Walkabout, and 2002’s politically freighted Rabbit-Proof Fence. All three are marvelous stories, and great
reminders of the unexpected goals that people can achieve, when they put their
minds to it.
Tracks is compelling, disturbing, romantic,
occasionally mysterious and at times deeply heartbreaking. The real-world
Davidson and Smolan have professed themselves pleased and satisfied by the way
Curran’s film turned out, an opinion I’ve no doubt most viewers will share.
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