Tracks [DVD] [2013]

A few summers ago I climbed Mount Raus on the Shiretoko Peninsula in northeastern Hokkaido, one of the last true wilderness areas in Japan. The region is remote, mountainous, heavily forested, rich in wildlife, devoid of people. It’s also bear country. For three days I met no one, not a single soul. I was where I wanted to be, alone in the wilderness.Or not quite.During the afternoon of the third day I sat in a clearing in the forest. All was quiet. I was still and empty, tired from walking, seated on a fallen log. Nothing going on with me: no sound, movement, thought. How long did I sit there? Who can say? Time wasn’t anything anymore. It seemed non-existent. I just sat in the sunlight and silence.A bird appeared, twittering on a branch. Then another flitted over. Then more. On the ground some chipmunks and squirrels gathered. In the forest Mama deer and her fawn stood stock still, staring intently at me like the others. But the deer were too timid and nervous to come closer. At length, a gesture from me, or perhaps a cough, startled my audience and it dispersed. It came and went, which is the way things are. It happened once, never again, but it happened.Stories of St. Francis of Assisi used to amuse me. I thought they had to be exaggerated. But what can one know when they lack imagination, sympathy and experience? I hadn’t been with animals the way he had because I was nothing like him. I lived the sort of life animals take no part in. I may have come from nature but I wasn’t in it. I had no conscious connection with the earth. Animals were just things in zoos, films and picture books, not family members, distant kin. I was estranged from them. I wasn’t really part of the earth.The memory of that forest glade in Hokkaido came back to me while watching this film. In it a young woman (Robyn Davidson) treks solo, or nearly alone, through the Australian outback, her only companions four camels and a dog.She was young, only 26, and the year was 1977. She was disaffected, tired of talk and city life. So many words and ideas, everyone she knew absorbed in culture. Which is fine, but she felt cut off, adrift. She needed something more, some kind of grounding, a connection with real things. The earth seemed a good place to start, so she decided to take it on. She was brave and had imagination. She would do it on her own, or nearly.She walked 2,700 kilometres with her camels from the hot heart of central Australia at Alice Springs all the way to the Indian Ocean. It took her over nine months. She got lost many times. She cried and despaired many times. But she carried on, refused to quit. She owned her choice, took responsibility for it.The journey changed her, as some journeys will. Physical changes in terrain, temperatures and weather mirrored her internal changes. She escaped the city but not herself. Here, without distractions, the land forced her to look at herself.It matters too that she is a woman. Wilderness is not meant for women. Or so the common wisdom goes. Too harsh, brutal, challenging. Too dangerous, hazardous, unpredictable. Wilderness, the patriarchal Bible tells us, is a thing to be subdued and conquered, not accommodated. So men go forth into it with their macho instruments of conquest — their guns and knives and axes. Without these they cannot survive.But she isn’t like this. She’s a traveller like a Bedouin, a nomad, not a conquistador. Her aim is to accommodate place in order to survive in it, accepting it and her place in it. This outlook and feeling resonates with some of the people she encounters. The native Australians, the aborigines, understand her mind and spirit. So, too, some of the white settlers, the cattle ranchers who live on the land and understand its ways. These people have no illusions. The earth has made them honest.The fools are the tourists and gawkers, the celebrity seekers who sometimes hound her with their cameras along the way, especially toward the end of her journey when publicity about it has seeped out. These people represent what Robyn has been walking away from, a crass and commercialised mentality, an attitude that doesn’t understand what she is doing.But it’s tough, even for her, as there are always thin lines in life. She has allowed National Geographic to sponsor her journey, and it has insisted that it be professionally photographed. Thus to enter Paradise, or her strange version of it, she has had to do a deal with the devil. At first she hates the photographer who sometimes links up with her. His name is Rick and he’s a motormouth American, high strung, friendly but neurotic, seemingly out of his element in the bush. Too much city in him.Robyn — beautifully and convincingly played by the gifted Mia Wasikowska — is quiet and introspective. She isn’t fond of words and what they enact. Nor does she much like many of the people who use them. Words conceal as much as they reveal. She wants a long break from them — both the words and the people. But Rick is not like her. He is garrulous and intrusive. He brings the noisy world with him, the one she wants to be rid of. Thus they don’t get along at all. She hates the camera; he loves to photograph her.And yet…There is almost always this curious phrase ‘and yet’ in life. Elizabeth in the end falls for Darcy. She didn’t know she would, but we felt she would. We saw her falling. Her passionate dislike of him, her prejudice, was irrational. She fought what she truly felt.They say Robyn and Rick are still good friends today. I like that thought. I also like her kiss of him in the film, Mia kissing the actor Adam Driver who plays Rick. It isn’t a romantic kiss. Not at all. It’s a desperate, feral, hungry, lonely kiss, the kiss of a woman cut off from her kind. It takes place in the harsh and brutal outback where there is no romance, no room for such luxuries. Rick is astounded when it happens. He nearly pulls away from her. But he overcomes the shock of it and comes to love it, her kisses. The look in his eyes says he adores and respects her. I find this way of things quite beautiful.If it’s a love story, it’s a different sort of one. It contains many of her loves: her love for Diggity, her dog; for her father and the memory of her mother; for her friends and the many kind people who help her along the way; and for the land, its beauty and harshness, and for the freedom it gives her to safely cross it.Why do the aboriginal peoples have their songlines? Why do they sing to the land and their ancestors whose voices inhabit it still? This film, pure and beautiful, gives hints as to why they might.T.E. Lawrence crossed the desert on his camels. He went with guns and fought an enemy, the Turks. The land was an obstacle to him, not a thing in particular to understand, at least not beyond the survival value such knowledge might provide. Robyn’s quest is different. In it there is difficulty, hardship, confusion and pain. Of course there is. But there are no enemies per se because there is no war, either on the land or in her mind. Her journey is spiritual as well as logistical. By the end she herself is nearly singing to the land, and we, the viewers, understand the elemental sanity and sense in this.

I absolutely loved this film. I saw a trailer to it on a DVD and I made a note of it to watch. I finally watched it and loved it. It is a great film, telling the true story about a young woman in the 70's who decides to head across the outback, meeting an array of characters, namely an American photographer, who she dislikes at first, then likes, as well as an Aboriginal man, who helps to guide her. The cinematography was brilliant, the acting great and the story - it was very powerful. Also, the relationship she has with her dog pulls at the heartstrings. Hell, the dog was so good, he/she deserved a BAFTA! All in all, a lovely 2 hour film, well worth watching.

How a young woman trekked across the Australian desert in the 70's with a few camels and supplies simply because she could is an amazing story. She was financially supported and tracked by the National Geographical magazine for the recording of her adventure but it was she who single handedly trained to manage the animals and survive long routes through what are dangerously remote, dry areas. Great film really enjoyed it.

Robin had a fiercely independent spirit and crossed the Australian desert against the advice and expectations of all who met her. She had a unique rapport with the aboriginal people and with animals.The film captured the searing heat and wide spaces and was an absorbing and sometimes humorous of an epic journey.

For those yearning for a real connection in a superficial world of distractions and material focus, of disconnected lives, "Tracks" is a welcomed antidote to our ADHD culture. The film depicts a young woman's nine month journey across the vast Australian desert - one where, through the environment and events, she confronts herself, along with her buried past, cultural views, and on a universal level, nature itself. From an emotional desert to the cleansing tides of the ocean, this is a journey into the psyche, into the soul of a person who is separate from everything except her animals - it's one where she encounters resistance from without and within, and is finally able to accept the caring of others. Most importantly, "Tracks" shows us a young woman who needs to challenge herself physically and emotionally, to extend her boundaries, and is determined to see it through. Nothing, however, is overdone or spoon-fed to the audience, everything is achieved through a naturalistic focus, no drummed up Hollywood melodrama or cliches. John Curran's direction is masterful and measured and the cinematography of Mandy Walker is breathtaking - a rich tapestry of color and glorious light, from subtle shade to blazing sun and starry nights, capturing the lonely panorama of the Australian Outback. The entire cast is pitch-perfect. Adam Driver and Roly Mintuma lend humorous and empathic support, the loyal black lab, Diggity, and the four camel companions are all distinct personalities, each an important player in the story. Ultimately, though, none of the film's emotional resonance would have been possible without the amazing central performance of Mia Wasikowska, who brilliantly embodies a loner going through an intense experience that's both external and internal. There are no over-the-top emotional speeches, rather she communicates a deep understanding of her character through body language and eyes, through her very presence, which casts a hypnotic spell that draws us in, allowing us to care about her, warts and all, and share her experience."Tracks" is a film that's nuanced and authentic, and all the more powerful for it - it's also joyous. Credit should also be given to Garth Stevenson's evocative score, a sublime reflection of the natural world. This is a tale that takes you on a personal journey that's both cultural and spiritual - one of haunting beauty that will linger long after the film has ended.