Peter Bradshaw 

Tracks review – a road movie without a sense of direction

Mia Wasikowska is forceful as Robyn Davidson, but this drama travels emotionally light, writes Peter Bradshaw
  
  

2013, TRACKS
Convincing portrayal … Mia Wasikowska in Tracks. Photograph: Allstar/Momentum Pictures/Sportsphoto Ltd Photograph: Allstar/MOMENTUM PICTURES/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Tracks is a good-looking movie, acted with intelligence and conviction, a road movie with no road – but also, perhaps, one with no great sense of narrative direction. It is about a remarkable journey undertaken in 1977 by travel writer Robyn Davidson, who in her 20s made a 1700-mile solo trek across the burning deserts of Western Australia with four camels. Her courage and determination saw off those who patronised her as an eccentric, and Davidson's experience was immortalised in a National Geographic photojournalism series.

Davidson is forcefully and convincingly played by Mia Wasikowska, and Adam Driver is the photographer, Rick Smolan, who falls painfully in love with the enigmatic and self-reliant heroine. The indigenous Australian guide on whom Robyn relies is played with delicacy and charm by Roly Mintuma. It's watchable and accessible drama but in terms of real emotional complexity, it travels light. Davidson is apparently exorcising her personal demons on the journey, but her backstory is cursorily portrayed; the issue of white Australia's relationship with the indigenous peoples is respectfully treated. It is an attractive, heartfelt work, and Wasikowska carries it with grace.

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*