Film Review: Luminous Story of Disconnection in Organic ‘Tracks’

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Average: 5 (1 vote)

CHICAGO – “Do you ever wonder if the things that are meant to connect us … actually disconnect us?” This cheesy hypothesis as found in many millennial dramas has only caused the film world go to in circles about the quandary of handheld screens and social media. With its cool air, John Curran’s low-key adventure “Tracks” takes a line straight through that argument, providing a story of disconnection from distraction as set in a world when Apple products were only gadgets on re-runs of “Star Trek.”

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 3.5/5.0
Rating: 4.0/5.0

The story of “Tracks” is a true one, and follows free-spirit Robyn Davidson (Mia Wasikowska), a young woman in 1970s Australia who dreams of crossing 1,7000 miles through the western desert with four camels and her dog, while carrying only the necessities, like a compass. To get funding for the venture, she appeals to National Geographic Magazine, who agrees to fund her ambitious venture so long as they can document it with one of their photographers, Rick Smolan (a dorky Adam Driver, who is edited with the beats of the Road Runner). As Robyn fulfills a dream by enduring hard conditions and long passages of loneliness, Rick abruptly pops up at her checkpoints with cartoonish energy, and attempts to orchestrate fictional representations of a blood-sweat-tears experience.

With these embodiments of truth and fiction clashing together, “Tracks” is a film about the forces that impede on our natural course in life, and our ambitions. What is necessary when trying to connect with the world around us, and how much are we overcomplicating our time on Earth by becoming so distracted? “Tracks” expresses that there are the natural things in our world, and then there are the unnatural. What matters most though, is to exercise the ability to remove ourselves from the unnatural.

“Tracks” continues its limited release in Chicago on September 26th. Featuring Mia Wasikowska and Adam Driver. Directed by John Curran. Rated “R”

StarContinue reading for Nick Allen’s full review of “Tracks”

Mia Wasikowska
Mia Wasikowska in ‘Tracks’
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

StarContinue reading for Nick Allen’s full review of “Tracks”

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