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| Mia Wasikowska (The Weinstein Company) |
John Curran’s Australian Outback travelogue Tracks is spare with dialogue, with
characterization and with story; it relies almost entirely on its audience’s
investment and ability to relate. Following Robyn Davidson (Mia
Wasikowska) trek hundreds of miles of pure desert for personal, mostly-unstated reasons, Curran's vision is
breathtakingly beautiful. He shoots as wide as the camera will allow, rendering
Robyn a mere dot below the limitless blue sky and surrounded by the sun-tinted
sand. His visual palate is exactly what it should be; if unsurprising, it takes
full advantage of the desert’s haunting boundlessness and astonishing, expansive
splendor. But what makes this film is its humanity. We know so little about
Robyn, and yet Wasikowska – in one of the year’s best performances – creates a damaged, prickly, driven, awkward human being. Tracks is sweepingly melancholic, bravely reliant on its audience
to connect to Robyn, to the universal feeling of isolation, and to its breathless
landscape. A-