Our creature comforts must be the glue that holds civilized society together in its tenuous bond. Take them away, and you’ll have the violent, devastating world of “The Rover.”
Set in the Australian countryside, “The Rover” takes place ten years after a global economic collapse. It follows a hardened loner named Eric as he pursues three men who stole his car. Along the way, he captures the brother of one of the thieves, and they form what I’ll generously call an uneasy bond.
This might sound like the set up for a Mel Gibson movie: “Mad Max Beyond the Economic Collapse.” But “The Rover” is no summer blockbuster. Instead, it’s a depressing study of a post apocalyptic world. You can buy popcorn and a soda if you want to, but most of mine went unconsumed.
The world in which the film’s razor thin story takes place is unforgiving: A handful of scrawny humans live inside the dilapidated buildings that pepper a dusty, desolate landscape. There’s little water, less food, and nearly no gas. The paucity of resources and the hot Australian sun have boiled mankind down to his basest survival instincts: killing for the scraps that remain.
While establishing this world in the opening moments of the film, director David Michôd uses lengthy still shots in which nothing happens to emphasize the lack of motion. Mankind has already died, he seems to be saying, and this is a portrait of his last breath hissing out of his lifeless lungs.
Eric initially seems to be a product of this environment. He says little, speaking only when he wants something. His tendency to repeat the same statement or question until he gets the response he wants is unnerving, especially when he uses a pointed gun to punctuate his desire for an answer: “Where did they go?” he repeatedly asks a woman who might or might not know where the thieves went, each time putting a loaded pistol closer to her skull. “What’s your name?” she keeps asking in return. The dialogue in “The Rover” is as sparse as the scenery, but still nothing less than brilliant. You can hear what mankind has lost in each exhausted phrase.
The script is equally clever. It reveals little about Eric through exposition, but rather allows us to discover snippets of this man’s character through his actions. He kills quickly and without remorse; he’s good with a gun; and he died one day ten years ago, and has been a walking corpse ever since. The scene in which he describes that day to another character is the only bit of traditional exposition in the movie. You’ll be hungry for something – anything – in the way of an explanation by that time, making the scene that much more powerful.
Equally well done is Michôd’s direction. I liked his use of mounted rather than handheld shots; they grounded me in the world he created. And I didn’t miss the showy visuals or elaborate camera movements of a big budget action movie, but appreciated being allowed to sink into each moment without being jerked out of it. This approach served the story nicely. I also like Michôd’s knack for communicating a character’s state of mind through his or her actions. In one scene, a shop owner refuses to tell Eric what he needs to know (at his own peril) until he buys something. Eric reaches to the side and grabs a tin can without ever taking his eyes off of the other man. All he cares about is finding his car. Michôd trusts his viewers to understand context, and filled “The Rover” with similar moments.
All of this said, my favorite things about “The Rover” are its performances. Guy Pearce is masterful as Eric. He does most of his acting with his eyes and body language, but when he does open his mouth, you can almost smell the stench of a dead man’s rotting innards. His performance carried me through the movie to its final, ironic, shot. Just as good as Pearce is Robert Pattinson as Rey, the brother of one of the thieves and a mentally handicapped young man. If you have any bad taste from the “Twilight” movies lingering in your mouth, his performance in “The Rover” will wash it away. I will likely re-watch “The Rover” just to see these two superb actors working together again.
“The Rover” is not fun, but it is good filmmaking. You might grow impatient with the lack of story, but instead of offering a narrative-based experience, it’s an exercise in mounting dread – not of what will happen to its characters, for whom you will have little sympathy, but of the loose threads that bind society together coming unraveled. As you watch in the air conditioned comfort of a multiplex theater, you might find yourself gripping your popcorn and soda a little tighter.
Three-and-a-half stars out of four. Rated R for language and bloody violence.