THE TRACKER
(three stars)
Racism, revenge in the Outback.
Running time: 90 minutes. Not rated (brief nudity, implied violence). At Cinema Village, 12th Street between Fifth Avenue and University Place.
THE talented writer-director Rolf de Heer has wrapped his Australian race relations allegory, “The Tracker,” in a package so poetic and potent that it’s equally effective as an engrossing drama.
A morality tale stripped back to a bare-bones narrative, it follows four men in 1922 as they trek across the stark Australian Outback on the trail of an Aboriginal man accused of murdering a white woman.
The characters are archetypes without names: There’s a cruel, racist policeman known only as the Fanatic (Gary Sweet, tipping sometimes into caricatured villainy), a fresh-faced recruit called the Follower (Damon Garneau) and the Veteran (Grant Page), an older man reluctantly drafted to join the ill-fated expedition.
The bully Fanatic is loudly in charge, but the Tracker, slyly underplayed by the superb indigenous actor David Gulpilil (“Walkabout,” “Rabbit-Proof Fence”), is the real leader of the group.
The scout’s heightened senses allow him to see and hear things his fellow travelers do not, and he hides a secret agenda behind his obedient-servant mien.
As the group is drawn deeper into the unforgiving frontier landscape, the tension escalates and the balance of power shifts after the Fanatic’s deep-seated racist beliefs explode in a senseless massacre.
Violent incidents are implied, rather than shown graphically, thanks to de Heer’s innovative intercutting of painted scenes, which reflect the medium of traditional Aboriginal storytelling.
Dialogue is sparse in this leisurely paced chase; instead, the bluesy vocals of indigenous singer Archie Roach – singing de Heer’s lyrics – are layered over the action as a kind of musical narration.
More often than not, though, it is a close-up of the mesmerizing Gulpilil’s face that is worth a thousand words.