David Michôd (left) on the set with
his two stars
You should never stop
thinking about a life you’ve taken. That’s the price you pay for taking it.
—Eric (Guy Pearce)
Following the brilliance of his earlier film Animal
Kingdom (2010), one has come to expect great things from this Australian
director, who has turned to a particular style of end of the world, post-apocalyptic
film that continues the tradition of fellow Aussies George Miller, who
introduced us to the nihilist universe of MAD MAX (1979), but also John
Hillcoat, whose equally impressive films The
Proposition (2005), as well as his vision of Cormac McCarthy’s death march in The Road
(2009), both happen to feature the star of this film, Guy Pearce. It was Pearce, along with fellow Australian
actor Russell Crowe that broke onto the scene with utterly exhilarating performances
in the Hollywood film noir thriller LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997), where Crowe went on
to become a big star, now reduced to something of a caricature of himself,
while Pearce has continued to do stellar work all along. This film is impossible to imagine without
him in mind, as it’s largely a wordless, nightmarish, apocalyptic vision taking
place in a barren Australian wasteland set “10 years after the collapse,” with
no more specifics ever provided. Don’t
get to your seats late as what happens early determines the rhythm and tone of
the entire film, as Eric (Pearce) wanders into a lone bar in the middle of
nowhere, a quiet, dusty hole in the wall.
But through the window, we see a truck barreling down the highway upside
down, where the bloodied occupants crawl out afterwards, and like parasites stealing
other bodies as hosts, these three outlaws break into Eric’s car and drive off
into the emptiness of the outback. Being
the enterprising person that he is, Eric is able to get their truck unentangled
and goes off after them. After a brief
exchange on the road, where all Eric wants is his car back, he’s instead left
for dead on the highway as the outlaws continue on their path to oblivion. Things fall apart even further after that,
like a trek into the heart of darkness, where civilization as we once knew it
has all but disappeared, and what’s left is a savage graveyard of dead bodies
and souls, where killing people is the best way of getting what you want, as
words are a mere afterthought. What describes this film best is the strange
and eerie musical soundtrack by Antony Partos (who also scored Animal
Kingdom), much of which sounds like industrial noise, but it has the
capacity to reflect the altered sense of consciousness that pervades throughout
this dusty landscape, certainly as effective as the legendary music by Ennio
Morricone in Sergio Leone films, but supercharged with creepy effects.
Introduced through a flashback sequence, Robert Pattinson as
Rey is similarly left for dead on the roadside, and though badly wounded, he
crawls into a vehicle until unable to continue.
By a strange act of fate, these two are mysteriously brought together in
the vast emptiness, as Rey recognizes the car Eric is driving, claiming it
belongs to his brother. Eric demands to
know where his brother is, but doesn’t get far after giving him a crushing blow
that only knocks him out. Driving into a
surreal abyss, with dead bodies strung onto the passing telephone poles, it’s a
precautionary reminder of what to expect if one ventures further, like a
ghoulish nightmare. A visit to another
weird stop on the road leads him to a somewhat deranged grandmother (Gillian
Jones) who passes as the madam in a dingy brothel, who can’t seem to understand
why he’s so intent on finding his car, “What a thing to get worked up about in
this day and age,” where Eric picks up some weaponry, but at a heavy
price. The menacing tone exists
throughout the film, made even more pronounced when Rey comes to, where we
discover he’s something of a half-wit, viewed initially as little more than a
mangy dog left on the side of the road after being hit by a car, but slowly a
more resilient personality begins to take shape, almost by surprise, but not
until after Eric discovers the whereabouts of a doctor, a woman living in the
outback (Susan Prior), where one of the more somber scenes in the film is watching
Eric stumble upon a room with a dozen or so dogs in cages, where he sits and
stares at them, identifying with their state of captivity and their loss of
freedom, but they’re alive, all abandoned by their owners who disappeared into the
night never to return. After another
horrific scenario plays out, a continuing pattern that recurs throughout the
movie, breaking the mood of what is otherwise a movie set in quiet and near
silence, Eric brings his recovering patient along as they barrel down the
highway into the bleakness of the night.
While they presumably have a destination, as Rey’s condition improves,
he freely acknowledges where his brother is likely to be, Henry (Scoot
McNairy), and his two cohorts Caleb (Tawanda Maryimo) and Archie (David Field),
as he’s just as curious about finding them, especially after they abandoned
him.
Though they’re on the road for most of the picture, the film
is not so much a road movie, more a depiction of gruesome, neverending horror,
where the grim circumstances never relent, shown without any trace of humor,
but as time goes on, the movie delves into the psychological interiors of the
two men, both considerably damaged, though Rey’s mental confusion makes him
comparable to Lennie from Steinbeck’s depression novel Of Mice and Men, seen here as a kind of caged animal that doesn’t
know his own strength, who is instead constantly viewed through the fragility
of his mental weakness. At one point
he’s rambling on in the car about his farmer neighbors, this after learning
Eric was a farmer before the collapse, until he’s rudely interrupted by Eric
wondering why he’s telling him all this personal crap, and Rey meekly retorts,
“Not everything has to be about something.”
The movie comes to reflect the shifting tones between these two
characters, where there are subtle changes in their feelings toward each other,
where the audience is drawn into this as well, as initially the focus is upon
the heroic aspects of Eric, seen as a lone warrior against an out of control wilderness,
but slowly the viewer takes an interest in the more vulnerable Rey, whose
crazed ramblings may reflect the last vestiges of humanity. What’s intriguing about Rey is his need for
companionship, where he’s afraid of being left alone, where he’s the kind of
guy that can’t decide anything for himself, as he needs to be told what to
do. In one of the more hypnotic moments
of the film, in the still of night, while the two are sitting by a campfire, Eric
intently tells Rey not just what awful things have happened to him, but what
God has done to him, stripping through the layers, exposing his real fears,
leaving him utterly defenseless to the kind of pain that is ripping the earth
apart. It’s the closest we come to the
kind of excruciating pain and anguish, which is all that’s left in the
world. This film at least attempts to do
what Béla Tarr’s The Turin
Horse (2011), for instance, fails to do, which is get in touch with the end
stages of human emotions once the realization is made that all is lost. Rey has a flashback moment where the car
radio plays Keri
Hilson - Pretty Girl Rock - YouTube (4:14), a reminder of the superficial
vanity that once was, an era consumed by mindless impulses and myopic
convictions, replaced by a vast wasteland where there’s nobody left that cares. As bleak as they get, this all takes place
under the scorching 110 degree heat of the Australian outback with flies
everywhere, shot where it’s 9-hours by car in any direction to the nearest
civilization. Michôd is excellent in
creating a world that is frighteningly unforgiving and cruel, yet portrayed
through realism and raw emotions, where every last character has become
alienated from their former humanity, suggesting how easy it is for
civilization to simply disappear off the face of the earth. Something of a concept film, reminiscent of
those 50’s novels where nuclear fallout would inevitably destroy the world,
like Alas, Babylon, On the Beach, Level
7, or Fail-Safe, here one’s worst
fears have already become realized and there’s simply no answer for the
neverending sadness that greets each empty moment with an all-consuming
silence.
