THE ROVER

After taking critics and audiences by surprise four years ago with his incredible debut film ‘Animal Kingdom’, Australian writer and director David Michôd has delivered his highly-anticipated second feature, ‘The Rover’. Reuniting with actor Guy Pearce, he’s wisely chosen to take a step away from complex crime sagas and crafted something a tad more unusual. After making one of the most acclaimed Australian films of this century, Michôd challenges himself with a far more ambitious and ambiguous project.

‘The Rover’ begins with a title card establishing the location as Australia, ten years after The Collapse, before launching us into its post-apocalyptic outback landscape. The film never explains what kind of apocalypse it was, but everything suggests that it was an economic one. Eric (Guy Pearce) stops at a bar in the outback for a drink of water, when his car is stolen by a gang of armed men. He begins to pursue them across the outback to get his car back, even though he’s found himself another. Along the way he encounters Rey (Robert Pattinson), the brother of one of the men, who had been left for dead after a shooting. Initially, Eric forces Rey to lead him to his brother and Eric’s car, but as they journey across country, both men find in the other a chance for personal salvation and understanding that they’ve so sorely lacked.

Where ‘Animal Kingdom’ was an almost operatic family saga, ‘The Rover’ works more as a fable. At first, its simplicity is a tad confusing, with you expecting something far more robust and in line with Michôd’s previous work, but the slow burn of the film and its considerable breathing space allow for a strangely hypnotic and dream-like experience. The screenplay is sparse, dialogue constructed of simple sentences often repeated continuously and a narrative that unfolds in an almost episodic manner. This is also reflected in the filmmaking, which is still extraordinary and beautiful, but without the spit and polish of ‘Animal Kingdom’. One of Michôd’s strengths as an artist is that his work has a distinctly European flavour, and this is most evident in ‘The Rover’ in his approach to storytelling and dealing with his representation of environment and landscape. He and cinematographer Natasha Braier approach the Australian landscape in a manner that emphasises its bleakness and ugliness rather than its beauty. This probably has a lot to do with the narrative, but it also makes for a refreshing change from the same tired clichés. This is also reflected in Antony Partos’ score, a discordant symphony of ambient sounds more akin to the work of Jonny Greenwood, which just adds to the other-worldliness of the film. Rather than sticking with the same styles and principles that already proved so successful with ‘Animal Kingdom’, Michôd and his team have done the daring thing and pushed themselves into new territory. The film moves slowly and rarely gives away any exposition or explanation, but something about its confidence and intensity make it a distinctive entry into the Australian canon. This isn’t popular filmmaking by any stretch of the imagination; this is Australian cinema by way of a European sensibility, emphasising character and landscape over action and dialogue, and thus far more intriguing.