Rolf de Heer's The Tracker (2002) is a film obsessed with the writing and revising of histories—not on a particularly major level, mind you (it has no misconceptions about reworking the mass consciousness or anything), but on two smaller and generally more intimate ones—the first of which is cultural and the second of which is (almost) entirely cinematic.

The film's content, which is reinforced expertly by de Heer's use of stylistic devices, aims to 'write' the story of the film's title character, an Aboriginal tracker (David Gulpilil) who has been charged with the task of leading four white men on the trail of an Aboriginal man who is wanted for murder. Although the story is a fictitious one, de Heer's use of mock-historical paintings by artist Peter Coad and strangely pre-existent (if contemporary) folk music by Archie Roach both suggest that the film is a dramatisation of an actual event—an event that, if these artworks and pieces of music are anything to go by, has in actual fact been interpreted by Australian artists for decades (making the film the 'most recent' in a 'long line' of artworks). This gives the film a kind of validity in the wake of prior (if entirely fabricated) works, which it certainly doesn't need, but which supports it to no end.

Of course, these 'works-within-the-work' have other, formal purposes as well. For example, instead of actually showing (in a realistic or 'actual' sense) the white character's violence against indigenous Australians, de Heer cuts away to Coad's paintings, which are somehow much more troubling. There are a number of reasons for this. In de Heer's words, the use of Coad's paintings constitute a sort of "exploration into screen violence," (1) as while 'actual' violence has become a commodity of the cinema, the more representational violence of the paintings takes us by surprise. There's something brutal in their simplicity that would have surely been lost in a live-action (and therefore choreographed) version of events, however realistic. (2)

Arguably, we are disturbed by what our mind's eye sees when confronted with Coad's imagery; the paintings (and to a lesser extent Roach's songs) are kind of like inversed Brechtian techniques; not distancing us from the film's emotional content, but rather forcing us to bear witness by way of our own imaginations. The film encourages—if not forces—audience participation, engagement and discussion with its content and form.

Clearly, de Heer is 'writing' new pages for the Australian history books with this picture. He has created a story, seemingly from scratch, and reinforced it with the tangible witness of 'art': paintings, songs and now his own film. It doesn't matter that this 'history' is fictional, because the artwork and music, despite their own dubious origins (which the audience may or may not be aware of anyway) clearly proves that it 'isn't'. Like the countless appendices, fully realised languages and complex cartography of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy (though obviously less gargantuan in its size), the 'supporting materials' of de Heer's film can be said to add to its overall feeling of historical authenticity.

However, there is another type of history being written here—or rather revised and expanded upon—and that is the history of cinema, specifically in regards to the Western genre.

The easiest way to approach The Tracker as a revisionist Western is to hold it up against another—such as Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992) or Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1995)—and to draw parallels and connections between them while contrasting and comparing their ideas and styles. As with Leone, Eastwood and Jarmusch, de Heer takes the traditional forms and mythologies of the Western and—while retaining the visual and iconographic codes of the genre—contorts and reshapes them to uncover its hidden meanings, hypocrisies and underlying themes.

Full of horses, guns, steam engines and Indians, Jarmusch's Dead Man has all the semiotic elements of a traditional Western (and is also the film that The Tracker resembles most stylistically). Despite this ample supply of iconographic codes, however, the film is in almost no way traditional, especially when it comes to its thematic (and even narrative) content. Its protagonist, William Blake (Johnny Depp), is hardly a traditional Western hero in the mould of The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach (d. John Ford, 1939) and its notably unsensationalised violence is by no means a celebrated by-product of the protagonist's unbridled heroism as it is in the majority of traditional Westerns. Instead, it is revealed by Jarmusch to be absurd, unnecessary and almost always messy, the film becoming a damning critique on America and its unholy preoccupation with firearms.

The Tracker and de Heer operate in very much the same vein, utilising the generic codes of the Western (to both familiarise the audience with the film and to instil in them certain generic expectations) before inverting many of its privileged forms and mythologies in order to uncover numerous, startling truths—not only about the genre itself, but about the contemporary society that the film belongs to as well.

In fact, not only does The Tracker utilise all the visual codes of the genre—the horses, the hats, the guns and the like—but it also goes as far as to name its characters after standard character types that one might find in a traditional Western: the Tracker, the Veteran (Grant Page), the Follower (Damon Gameau) and the Fanatic (Gary Sweet), the latter of whom, of course, is more than a little reminiscent of Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (d. John Ford, 1956). (3)

However, no sooner are these codes established when de Heer's revisionism begins, the director substituting the traditionally white hero of the Western for a black Tracker and uncovering (through Coad's paintings, Leach's music and the general mechanics of the plot) the profound racism of the white settlers—the latter of which is yet another trace of The Searchers ' near-certain influence on de Heer. The film, as a result of this revisionism, forces us to call into question (a) the representation of indigenous persons and (b) the true nature of settlers, pioneers and cowboys (who are almost always white) throughout the entire history of the Western genre. (4) It also forces us to ask why this revision has taken place at this time in our history—not merely in regards to the genre, but (far more importantly) in regards to the attitudes it uncovers and forces us to confront. The mere fact of The Tracker 's existence—the fact that de Heer felt that he had to make this film, at this time, in this way—suggests that the attitudes of whites towards blacks that the film uncovers are something that he feels need to be discussed. The fact that he chooses for his vehicle a motion picture Western is merely a matter (perhaps) of poetics!

Indeed, de Heer is writing and revising (or at least forcing us to question) history on numerous levels in The Tracker. He deftly creates his own piece of fictionalised Australian history, backing it up with the 'testimony' of fabricated artworks, while at the same time conducting a rigorous, revisionist appraisal of the movie Western that forces us to confront the racism and bigotry that's implicit in both the genre and— by way of the film's own existence—contemporary Australian society.

Notes

1. Rolf de Heer. Interviewed on The Movie Show. Available on The Tracker DVD.
2. One can't help but ask about Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), the most affecting scene of which is a restaging of the abduction of Aboriginal children from their mothers. Would this scene be more or less powerful if were done in the representational manner of de Heer's violence in The Tracker?
3. The Searchers, of course, is an interesting case itself. While not a revisionist Western in the same way that Jarmusch or Leone's outright reworkings of the genre are, the film expresses a genuine scepticism about the traditional mythologies associated with the genre—mythologies that Ford's own films for a long while enforced and helped to create.
4. This includes the 'Australian Westerns' of Charles Chauvel; most notably Jedda (1955).