Walking for the cure

The question of purpose hangs over Tracks, an adaptation of Robyn Davidson’s eponymous book, which chronicles the author’s 1977 National Geographic-sponsored trek across 1,700 miles of Australian desert with four camels and a pooch. Davidson seems above all to desire solitude and escape from a so-called civilization corrupted by consumerism, sexism, racism and violence. We come to understand Davidson is also reckoning with childhood trauma. When asked point blank why she’s undertaking such a daunting, if not downright absurd journey, she claims that she wants to prove that any ordinary person can do what she’s doing. Yet it’s clear that Davidson is anything but ordinary. Though better prepared for her expedition than Timothy Treadwell (the subject of Werner Herzog’s excellent Grizzly Man) or Chris McCandless (the subject of Jon Krakauer’s masterful book Into the Wild and Sean Penn’s woefully naïve cinematic adaptation of the same name), Davidson comes to realize that there finally is no way to prepare for something so taxing on both body and psyche. What Tracks implies is that the true purpose of such a journey can only be revealed by doing it.

Similarly, you need to see Tracks to get a deeper sense of what it’s really about, and why it’s really quite good. Written by Marion Nelson and directed by John Curran (a curious director whose credits include The Painted Veil and Stone), the film’s flaws are exposed from the outset: a needless voice-over that feels like an emotional buffer rather than a way of heightening our connection to Davidson; and over-explanatory honey-hued flashbacks to childhood idyll. Davidson’s demands the evocation of loneliness and a sense of time’s passage—it requires an investment of time and attention. So the fact that the second half of Tracks, which clocks in at a reasonable 110 minutes, is considerably stronger than the first strikes me as legitimate.

Some highlights: Mandy Walker’s stunning cinematography eschews corny aerial splendour in favour of low-level vistas of heat-vapour and impossible expanse that feels more first-person than the alternative. The recurring appearance of Rick Smolan (a nicely measured performance from Adam Driver), the American photographer whose documentation of Davidson’s journey clearly played an enormous role in the formation of Tracks’ aesthetics, initially seems like a token love interest but becomes something far more interesting: a key to better understanding Davidson’s issues with intimacy and communication and the ways in which even well-intentioned people can violate the cultural dictates of aboriginal people. Speaking of which: Mr. Eddie, the Aboriginal elder played by Rolley Mintuma who serves as guide for part of Davidson’s journey, is easily the most charismatic and enigmatic figure in Tracks.

But I’m saving the best for last. Tracks has been in development for decades, but I’m so happy it took this long to get made for one simple reason: Mia Wasikowska, the young Australian actress who seems to turn up in every other interesting movie I’ve seen of late. Her remarkable work as Davidson feels immersive, a performance devoid of anything ingratiating or mawkish, a starring role without a single moment of winky movie star self-awareness. Davidson is a genuine adventurer, someone willing to do something without certainty of where it will lead, and Wasikowska does right by her subject by approaching the role with the same sense of surrender and attention. She never seems to be playing the end. Instead, she merely takes one step at a time.

                        

Stone: do you hear what he hears?

When Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro) calls upon his pastor for spiritual advice he’s told that god speaks to us in mysterious ways, though the pastor may not have imagined the Lord being channeled through a cornrow-sporting, pornographically minded, trash-talking convicted arsonist when he offered up that old chestnut. Mabry’s a parole officer on the verge of retirement, his last case to close being the aforementioned Gerald “Stone” Creeson (Edward Norton), who for all his abrasive locker room jive seems to have a good heart and an earnest desire to get out of jail and get his shit together. Stone comes across some New Agey pamphlet in the prison library that promises spiritual awakening to those who listen for the right sound, those ready to become god’s tuning fork. Stone’s awakening comes one day during lunch while staring at a nature scene mural on the mess hall wall.

Stone was written by Angus MacLachlan, who previously wrote the script for Junebug, based on his own play. Directed by Phil Morrison, Junebug was buoyed on a warm embracing of eccentricity and subtle playfulness with form. Stone, directed by John Curran, is far more somber and downplays its characters’ quirks, though it’s very easy to imagine its premise yielding a comedy, particularly once we factor Stone’s wife Lucetta (Milla Jovovich) into the mix, a talented seductress who's big into the healing power of magnets and aims to boost her husband’s chances of early release by getting cozy with Mabry. As wildly different in tone as Junebug and Stone are, their similarities constitute much of what’s most fascinating in both films: an interest in the line that divides religious practice from spiritual thirst, and in the fundamental role outsiders play in shaping a given community. I settled in for Stone mildly intrigued but expecting little. I was surprised by how deftly that sense of intrigue blossomed and held on right to the end.

Curran’s previous directorial credits include The Painted Veil and We Don’t Live Here Anymore, so it’s no wonder that he seems to take a special interest in flushing out the themes of marital disharmony in MacLachlan’s text. Stone spends much of his first encounter with Mabry boasting about how his wife’s a dime and quite possibly a nymphomaniac, while at the dame time insisting that she’s an alien—that’s the word he uses, “alien,” as in someone from another planet. (Was this picture made before or after The Fourth Kind?) Stone wants to know about Mabry’s marriage, how it works, how sexual interest is sustained over the decades, but Mabry proves to be the real stone in this relationship, refusing to disclose any personal details. The truth is that Mabry’s marriage to Madylyn (Frances Conroy), a tippling Bible thumper, appears deeply unhappy, probably sexless, and has probably been that way from the start, as the film’s disturbing prologue set in the early days of their domestic life clearly implies. This prologue is in fact utterly unnecessary—there’s no reason at all for us to know the specifics of Mabry’s dark side, and this dramatization, awkwardly using younger actors to play De Niro and Conroy, feels like something demanded by outside forces with little faith in an audience’s ability to read between the lines.

Curran doesn’t have the charm or penchant for aesthetic detours that Morrison displayed, but I wonder if his approach isn’t actually more closely aligned to MacLachlan’s intentions. In any case, I don’t think anything he does here really hurts the story’s integrity, and the device of manifesting Stone’s obsession with listening for that magic sound through an aural landscape of Christian radio broadcasts, insect buzzing, and an immersive piece of glassy ambient music from Jon Brion is accumulatively effective. As well, Curran should perhaps take some credit for bringing out the best in his leads. There’s an engrossing chemistry between De Niro and Norton, and a near palpable heat coming off of Jovovich, who imbues what could have been a one-dimensional supporting role with considerable complexity.

I'm not claiming the film is entirely successful on every front, but I worry that some viewers—most certainly some critics—might be put off by Stone simply because it’s hard to tell what this film’s trying to be. I’ve seen it described as a thriller, which feels way off the mark, and I’ve read Manohla Dargis’ New York Times review, which tries to finger at as failed neo-noir, which seems even more off the rails. Stone doesn’t adhere to genre, not does it defy genre in any flamboyant way. I don’t know what to call it, but I think its ambitions are noble and the results substantial… if you only listen closely enough.

Witness the sickness: The Killer Inside Me

Lou Ford’s father was a doctor, and though he hides his intellect behind folksy platitudes Lou was more than capable of following dad’s footsteps. But Lou got stuck maybe, as deputy sheriff in the ironically named backwater of Central City, Texas, and as the reluctant betrothed to a local schoolteacher named Amy. The couple “just drifted together like straws in a puddle.” Those are Lou’s words, or rather Jim Thompson’s, whose 1952 novel The Killer Inside Me, one of this infernally gifted author’s most incisive portraits of a doomed and deranged mind, serves as the basis for the same-titled movie from director Michael Winterbottom. Scripted by John Curran with considerable fidelity to its source material, it’s an admirable, slick, horrifying and problematic adaptation, and is now available on home video.

Lou’s sent to run a prostitute named Joyce out of town, but when he delivers the message Joyce attacks him, and a cloud of ice drapes over Lou’s normally placid face. He retaliates with brute force, only to discover that beatings and bondage are Joyce’s cup of tea. They become lovers, but soon Lou gets an idea for a way to exact revenge on a local big shot, an idea that involves murdering both the big shot’s son and Joyce. Killing Joyce is supposed to exorcise “the sickness,” which is how Lou describes his fearsome urge to exact violence on others, women especially—women who love him most especially. But the sickness only spreads and one killing just leads to another, until simple plan slips into apocalyptic parody.

The casting of Casey Affleck as Lou is inspired both for his physicality—Thompson described Lou as lean and wiry, clean-cut, friendly, and 29—and his vocal peculiarity, that voice that creaks like an asthmatic 12-year-old. Affleck was the best thing in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and exhibits similarly creepy nuance and repressed ferocity here. Jessica Alba as Joyce is inspired in a different way. Her supple performance aside, it’s her sweet, heartbreaking smile that helps make it so difficult to witness Lou pounding her face in like a cantaloupe. The killings in The Killer Inside Me are appalling yet somehow detached at the same time, perhaps because Melissa Parmenter and Joel Cadbury’s score is so heavy with portent it takes you out of the moment.

Stunning moments abound, not the least being Lou’s final encounter with Amy, smartly played by Kate Hudson. But there are other issues keeping The Killer Inside Me from being as penetrating as it could have been and more alienating that it probably needs to be. There’s a moment in the novel where Lou explicitly states that he is literally writing what we’re reading, which we ultimately come to realize is deliciously nonsensical. Thompson was a masterful handler of the unreliable narrator, and many of the claims made in Lou’s first-person account become suspect. This is a precarious thing to realize on screen since the imagination is so much more powerful and flexible than the framed, explicit image, particularly when trying to register Thompson's violence. To read it is deeply disturbing; to see it is merely disgusting.