Review of The Tracker

Here's the basic premise of a fine indigenous film:

The TrackerThe Tracker is an Australian drama film produced in 2002. It was directed and written by Rolf de Heer. It is a set in 1922 in outback Australia where a racist white colonial policeman (Gary Sweet) used the tracking ability of an Indigenous Australian tracker (David Gulpilil) to find the murderer of a white woman.And here are some reviews:

The TrackerWith characters simply called the Tracker, the Fanatic, the Follower, and the Veteran, this action-oriented morality tale is gripping, even if it is more than a tad pedantic. Set in 1922, the film follows the Aboriginal Tracker (Gulpilil, who played a similar character in Rabbit-Proof Fence), as he leads three white men through the mountainous Australian outback on a hunt for an Aborigine accused of murdering a white woman. Having vowed not "to let the black bastard get away from me," the Fanatic senses that the Tracker may be intentionally allowing the accused to run free. He threatens the Tracker, "If I don't catch him, it will be your ears I take back with me." Repeatedly, the Tracker obsequiously answers, "Yes, Boss. Okay Boss." Yet, in a close-up, he is amused as the men fruitlessly fire away at unseen assailants. Eventually, to ensure that the Tracker doesn't flee in the night before the men can catch their quarry, the Fanatic chains him with a collar.

Gary Sweet's subtle performance (the Fanatic) shows how the terror of a man who is out of his element fuels his pomposity and anger. The entire cast is equally strong. And in a departure from period films, a middle-of-the road rock soundtrack, with such lyrics as "Now we are no longer free, we're dispossessed," is sung by Archie Roach, an Aboriginal singer with a voice like Elvis Costello's. Although the characters are clichéd and largely symbolic, their path takes surprising turns. Interspersed with moments of great suspense, the tragic cat-and-mouse survival adventure overshadows the heavy-handed didacticism. Kent Turner'The Tracker'The party's leader, the Fanatic (Gary Sweet, resembling a young John Cleese), is a bullyboy caricature of the angry, punitive, racist white man. The Follower (Damon Gameau) is a raw young soldier who's taken aback at the Fanatic's virulence, while the Veteran (Grant Page) is a middle-aged farmer who disapproves of the Fanatic but keeps his opinions to himself.

The Tracker is quiet and sometimes droll, with an almost supernatural ability to read the landscape. He addresses the whites as "boss" and offers double-edged observations: "No such thing as an innocent black," he says after the party's deadly encounter with a small band of natives. He is carefully, almost cheerfully subservient, but the Fanatic notices that, somehow, the pursuers are always half a day behind the fugitive.

Deep in the bush country, the trackers lose their extra horse and supplies to an Aboriginal lance that seems to emerge from nowhere, and it's clear the party is being watched. The Tracker tells them to hurry up or they'll never get their man, and we start to wonder who's really in charge.

The use of a daunting, mysterious landscape, the pace and the fablelike simplicity suggest that director Rolf has been studying classic Westerns. He does nicely employing techniques that in other hands might be intrusive, such as a repeated shot that begins as a close-up of the tracking party, then zooms back and back until the characters become tiny figures barely visible against an impressive swath of bush country. He also makes good use of cutaway shots that substitute primitive paintings for violent scenes. The soundtrack, however, with folk ballads written by the director, becomes a distraction.

See the film mainly for the quiet and powerful work of Gulpilil in the title role.The TrackerOne of the films I wanted to include in my Australian article, but didn’t because I couldn’t obtain the region 4 DVD in time, was Rolf de Heer’s The Tracker (2002), a potent and formally inventive depiction of three white, mounted police in the 1920s who chase a black Aboriginal fugitive deep into the bush. The police are guided by a forced-labor Aboriginal tracker, played by Walkabout’s David Gulpilil, who played a similar but much less developed role in Philip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence the same year. The film’s drama rises from the tensions of the Tracker’s position; his professional efficiency versus his growing alarm at the officers’ unbridled racism, and his duty to the law versus the oppressive system it represents.

The film exhibits some of the dominant themes in Australian cinema–its respect for nature (recorded in stately compositions), sense of isolation (the four characters are alone throughout most of the film), emphasis on mateship (loyalties become crucial when tensions flare), and even its valorization of the underdog: the drama turns on the Tracker’s ability to use his lowly position to gain the upper hand.

The Tracker has been called a neo-Western, and that genre context extends further than the film’s visual motifs of desert, felt hats and horses, into its minimalist dramatic set-up and broad ethical strokes. In fact, each of the characters is named in the credits according to an archetype (The Veteran, The Fanatic, The Follower) and introduced in the film with text (a man who has been drafted, a man who rejects statistics, a man unaccustomed to expeditions). By foregrounding these elements, the film emphasizes its fable qualities and sets the stage for its moral structure, which hinges on the merging of power and racism and the possibility of resistance.

The story provides the foundation for a character study with strong ensemble performances; as The Tracker, Gulpilil is particularly memorable with his weathered face and seemingly effortless ability to transition between mysterious nobility and clownish nonchalance. In fact, Gulpilil is so good at exhibiting the former quality that he is often relegated to playing minor, Noble Aboriginal roles in lesser films; it’s nice to see him granted more room to flesh out a character here.More reviews from Variety and Roger Ebert.

Rob's review:  I'd say these reviews have accurately summarized The Tracker's qualities. It's one of the better indigenous movies--almost as good as Rabbit-Proof Fence. Rob's rating: 8.0 of 10.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.