meddlecore The Tracker is a beautiful yet disturbing film by Rolf De Heer about Ignorance, Racism, Biggotry and Tribal Justice in the Australian Outback in the 1920's. It follows a group of 3 white Australian men- young, middle aged and old- who are tracking a "black fella" who has been accused of killing a white woman. This man has escaped and wandered into the wilderness- back toward his home. The three men are being led by an aboriginal tracker played by the magnificent David Gulpilil, whom you may remember from films like De Heer's Ten Canoes, Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence, Weir's The Last Wave and Roeg's Walkabout...to name a few. De Heer intercuts the story of the men with aboriginal paintings depicting the events occurring. This provides for a much more dramatic experience, as it shows how such events had a drastic impact on the aboriginal people and their culture.The middle aged man (also the ranking officer) is a sadistic racist fu ck who believes that, "the only good black fella, is a dead black fella", as he and the tracker awkwardly joke. It is clear from the beginning that the tracker is leading them astray because he knows the man's motive- as he feels it is necessary to use force to keep ALL black men in check (as well as his fellow officers). Tensions rise between the officers, the tracker and the ranking officer when he brutally murders a number of innocent aboriginals, hanging one from a tree as a "warning" for the rest. The saddest part is that he ironically believes that he is cleansing the land of people who have "morally declined" and "don't speak the truth" (whatever that means). From here things take a drastic turn and De Heer takes us on a journey from which we learn a lesson about Tribal Justice.The beautiful locations, wonderful cinematography, mind grabbing plot and great acting make this film a joy to watch despite it's somewhat disturbing content and subject matter. This is a wonderful film that can't be missed.

John Holden Many movies choose topics so that they can't be attacked or questioned: racism, the Holocaust, genocide, pederasty, the heroes of 911, Hitler, etc. This is about one of them: extreme racism in Australia. Nevertheless, the movie sucks.The characters are one-dimensional (this is probably intentional - the characters are named for their traits). There's no character development at all. Gulpilil is great, as always. The rest are flat.Far and away the worst thing is the soundtrack. Remember when John Wayne tells the woman that he's a loner, gets on his horse and rides away while she cries and looks pained? Just then some music comes up. Some weak ballady thing "He rides alone; his heart of stone; he knows the path; the wayward wind; ..." whatever. It's an RCH away a lounge song. Tracker has music at this level throughout. It's not just intrusive or weird. It's completely out of phase with the movie. And it's so bad it's painful.Tracker much like a high-school film project about racism: you know you're not going to get an A if you defend it; you know it's bad; so you have characters with names such as Mr White; Mr Black; Mr Bigot; ... And your parents are really proud of you.See the brilliant "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksnmith" (1978) and don't waste a minute on this one.

Howard Schumann In 2002, Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence attacked the Australian government's policy of forcibly removing mixed race Aborigines from their families, sending them to government camps to be sold as servants, converted to Christianity, and eventually assimilated into white society. Just released on DVD and set six years earlier in 1922, Australian Indie director Rolf de Heer's The Tracker is a parable that also explores racism in Australia but on an even darker level, reflecting, according to de Heer, the practices and attitudes of that era towards the Aboriginal people. As three white men and an Aboriginal tracker set out on horseback to search for a black fugitive (Noel Wilton) accused of killing a white woman, the search through the stunning landscape of the Flinders Ranges becomes an exercise in savagery that raises questions about genocide.The travelers in the search party are nameless and referred to only as The Fanatic (Gary Sweet), The Follower (Damon Gameau), and The Veteran (stuntman Grant Page). They are characters who are both individuals and archetypes who seem to represent racial discrimination and its passive acceptance. The Fanatic is the pompous police officer who is shown as repulsively intolerant of blacks and an individual that will not hesitate to kill. The Follower is his young and innocent assistant who is startled by The Fanatic's relentless racism yet too inexperienced to make a move. The Veteran is an old timer who will not challenge authority.In The Tracker, De Heer employs two effective and original touches. One is the use of ten original songs composed by Graham Tardif, with lyrics by de Heer, and performed by Archie Roach, an Aboriginal singer who sounds like Tom Waits. Like the Neil Young score in Jim Jarmusch's subversive Western, Dead Man, the continual music can be intrusive but it creates a mood of solemnity. In another device, de Heer cuts away from scenes of violence to show still shots of Peter Coad paintings done in a simple primitive style. The raw emotion of Roach's songs and Coad's expressive artwork establish a record of the horror and allow us to relate to the mythic quality of the drama.The Tracker plays the part of a fool saying to the officer "Yes, Boss. Okay Boss" yet, like Feste in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, he is a knowing fool, a man of humor and irony and an instinctive intelligence about the natural world, its spirits and its sacred places. When The Fanatic tells him to show The Follower the signs he is following, he points to one stone in a field of thousands saying, "Dis stone in the wrong place, belong over here", underneath almost dry, he gone couple of hours." revealing knowledge of the place of every stone. We know that The Tracker, though outwardly subservient, is the one who is really in charge and that the search party would be lost without him. As The Fanatic forces The Follower and The Veteran to participate in murder, the groundwork is laid for revenge and retribution.The Tracker is a beautiful and powerful film that bears witness to the time when there was no talk of Aboriginal reconciliation and no hope for it. Damon Gameau shows great promise as the young man who has developed that rare quality called conscience and we identify with his strength of character. The highlight performance of the film, however, is that of charismatic native actor David Gulpilul. He portrays a man of simple dignity, not a "noble savage" or a faithful "Jacky Jacky" figure necessary to white dominance of the frontier but simply a man who has a profound sense of the world around him. Through him de Heer allows us to glimpse the possibility of establishing a true multi-racial society where people respect each other as equals.

mossy1 This is a powerful film by the way the terrible beauty of the Australian outback is captured. Also by the haunting soundtrack. The story is very basic, the evil white man is chasing an Aboriginal charged with murdering a white woman. The tracker is helping the policeman to track the fugitive through the outback. The policeman also has a young gullible constable with him and also an older man. The trouble is that the plot is far too simplistic. The aboriginals are painted as noble intelligent savages while the whites are evil or at best stupid and naive. The tracker (David Gulpilil) is portrayed as far smarter and cunning than his white boss. The really strange plot is why the tracker, who knows exactly where the fugitive is but won't tell his boss and keeps leading them further and further into the bush, why the tracker keeps leading the boss to groups of "innocent" aboriginals who the boss massacres. After another massacre the tracker decides to hang the boss and leads the follower to a group of Aboriginal elders who punish the fugitive for raping a black woman by spearing him through the leg(Aboriginal law). Again the noble savage myth because in Australia, aboriginal women are subject to domestic violence and are not protected by aboriginal law. In summary, go and see it for the incredible scenery and soundtrack but don't believe the plot in any way.