Director John Curran’s Tracks is a road trip film with a twist: there is no road, there is no car, and the journey revolves around one person. Mia Wasikowska plays Robyn Davidson, a real-life free spirit who in the mid 1970s decided to trek 1700 miles across the Western Australian desert accompanied by four camels and a dog.
There’s a lot of walking, a lot of blinking into the sun, a handful of encounters with a motley array of passers-by and a whiff of romance. Freelance photographer Rick (Adam Driver) takes a fancy to Robyn but quickly discovers her love life, like every other part of her existence, is played strictly on her terms.
In her bullish temperament, lonely existence and fierce independence, Davidson is a cinematic descendant of Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis) from My Brilliant Career, caring nothing for societal conventions and devoted to a particular cause/way of life.
In Tracks we see those character traits in the context of an “animal person”, her dislike for people translating into trust and affection for non-human companions. Her faithful pooch is called Diggity. One of the film’s most touching sequences depicts another dog she loved, and lost, as a child.
On her journey Davidson befriends, in her own stoical manner, members of remote indigenous communities. Perhaps indigenous people relate to because her journey is a kind of walkabout. It offers no material gain (at least none she is angling for) and no logical reason to do it. It’s clear — without the film explicitly saying so — that the journey is spiritual. Tracks follows in the footsteps of Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971) and Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002).
The film looks gorgeous. While cinematographer Mandy Walker (who also shot Lantana and Shattered Glass) soaks up vast landscapes of sunburnt settings her palette is kept wet, with a wide span of shades, hues and light.
It’s terrific to see Mia Wasikowska in such meaty role in a locally made film. Her performance is iron-willed but charming. Full of subtle gestures, her explicit emotional moments resonate partly because they are rare and controlled.
Adapted from Davidson’s own memoirs, the screenplay (by Marion Nelson) makes a point that a certain kind of courage can entail a certain kind of lonely dignity. During long slabs when the film isn’t saying or doing much, Wasikowska gives it depth and spirit.
This was first published at Daily Review.