Rolf de Heer's The Tracker (2002) stands among a number of recent Australian films exploring white-Aboriginal relations. David Gulpilil gets the lead role, the same year he played a similar character in Rabbit-Proof Fence. It's a frustrating film, visually accomplished, yet couching its story as an allegory somehow inscrutable and obvious at once.
The story takes place in 1922, with a quartet of lawmen tracking an Aboriginal fugitive (Noel Wilton) across Australia. Their leader is The Fanatic (Gary Sweet), a savage racist; there's also the Veteran (Grant Page), an older, moderating figure, and the Follower (Damon Gameau), a callow shave tail. The Tracker (David Gulpilil) obligingly leads the posse into the desert, but violent encounters multiply while the fugitive remains elusive. Is The Tracker a compliant "tame" Aborigine or a closet traitor?
The Tracker is a typically Aussie oddity. Mixing elliptical narrative, musical interludes (courtesy of folk singer Archie Roach) and harshly beautiful landscapes, De Heer's direction resembles John Hillcoat's later The Proposition. But De Heer avoids Hillcoat's grisly carnage, instead cutting to stylized tapestries when violence flares. We get the point enough watching the Fanatic taunt a band of Aborigines at gunpoint without exploding heads and graphic viscera. Such sequences place the film on a mythic level, outside the province of realism.
Conflicts so drawn, The Tracker becomes an opaque morality play. The manhunt plot quickly becomes an afterthought, but the characters are too shallow to hold our attention. The Tracker convincingly evolves from groveling to passive resistance and open rebellion, but the whites remain broad archetypes. And when De Heer stops for dialogue, we get ill-judged scenes like the Fanatic explaining his "White Man's Burden" philosophy at tedious length. Mixing allegorical imagery with author's messages may accrue art house approbation, but it's not dramatically satisfying.
David Gulpilil has been cinema's go-to Aborigine since Walkabout. He's a natural star, visually striking, dignified yet likeable, which serves him even in weaker roles. Gulpilil though gets beyond the cliche, finding resentment and twisted humor underneath the Tracker's obsequiousness. Here's a man downtrodden throughout life, kowtowing to survive while relishing a chance to strike back. Gulpilil's so powerful that he dominates the film; his white costars, saddled anyway with one-note characters, can scarcely compete.
The Tracker makes an uneven experience, burdened by its professed significance. Somewhere underneath De Heer's analogizing there's a worthwhile story; a straightforward Aussie Western might have worked better.
