It's 1922; somewhere in the Australian Outback. An Aboriginal man is accused of murdering a white woman, and three white men - the Fanatic (Gary Sweet), the Follower (Damon Gameau) and the Veteran (Grant Page) - are out to find him with the aid of an indigenous bushman, the Tracker (David Gulpilil). En route, the other three all suffer under the Fanatic's racist and violent attitude, as he is prepared to do truly anything to acquire their bounty.
This effort by Australia's art house auteur Rolf de Heer, who's made two other films about indigenous Australians (2006's Ten Canoes and 2014's Charlie's Country) is a somewhat striking but overall quite uneven experience. David Gulpilil deservedly won the 2002 Best Actor AFI Award for his beautifully dignified and authoritative turn, and Sweet and Gameau back him up solidly. De Heer's plotting of the narrative and visualisation of the landscape are respectively logical and ravishing, but his judgment has one almost fatal flaw: the music soundtrack. All throughout this film are original songs by Graham Tardiff (and sung, albeit beautifully, by Archie Roach) which are thematically entirely suitable but musically just do not fit the period setting at all; most of them have a rock or folk rock arrangement. Perhaps I'm missing the point, but I found that choice deeply jarring and slightly inappropriate.
Overall, The Tracker does have its absorbing, thought-provoking moments, and I believe de Heer's sincerity about telling Aboriginal stories (he's really a Dutch Australian), but I think his aesthetic approach here was quite miscalculated. Warwick Thornton (who is indigenous) covered similar territory far better 15 years later with Sweet Country.
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