No more bad boy

From Bad Boy Bubby to his latest film The Tracker, Rolf de Heer has established a reputation as one of Australia's most respected film directors. With The Tracker selected for competition at the Venice Film Festival 2002, and a front-runner for several AFI awards, he spoke with The Blurb's David Edwards about his film.

The Blurb: Could you give us some background to how The Tracker came to be?
Rolf de Heer: The story is one I made up. It's not based on any specific historical incident; it's more a generalised "these are the kinds of things that happened, and this is what it was like". It was created with two things in mind. First, I wanted to make a film with a very small crew, out in the middle of nowhere, sleeping under the stars - kind of an adventure, you know. We'd had one week like that on Dingo in the Kimberley and it was not only by far the cheapest week of the shoot, it was also the most enjoyable. It was also the most disproportionately valuable week of the shoot; so I thought to do a whole film like that would be fantastic. Then I was doing research for a "first contact" story, set in coastal north Queensland, in which a cabin boy gets washed up on a beach and is found by an Aboriginal tribe who have never seen a white man before. In that research, I kept coming across profoundly interesting material about the extent of damage between black and white in the early days. So those two things put together must have synthesised something in my brain, and that became this story of The Tracker.

TB: In the film, no one has a name. What was the reasoning behind that?
RDH: It's just how it came out - but that sort of thing does happen to me quite a bit. I sometimes have difficulty writing dialogue for characters with names. You know, you find a name and give it to a character, but you know someone of the same name and that keeps coming back to you. So I try not to name characters until after I've written the script. There was an aspect of that involved. There was an aspect of generalising it that was involved. This journey into… the depths in a way, I just felt it was more "sealed" from distraction if they didn't have names.

TB: Was there a similar thinking behind the use of the paintings in the film?
RDH: An aspect of it turned out to be similar, although that wasn't the original intent. It was about how to depict screen violence without excessively turning off an audience; because a lot of people don't like it - I don't like it either. As people get better and better at screen violence, it's harder to have the desired effect. It's also harder for me to reach that level (laughs), and because people get used to it - even though they don't like it - it doesn't have the same effect. So the idea of the paintings was to deal with it in a different; but still thought-provoking way. And because paintings are more representational than specific film images, we tend to then generalise about them, and I think that's a good thing.

TB: The audience seemed to react more strongly to the paintings than they did to the live action.
RDH: Yeah. Yeah, it's funny isn't it? It's turned out to be very effective, and they sit in there pretty seamlessly in a way, even though they are quite blatant in a sense too. I'm delighted with how that's gone.

TB: And Archie Roach's music really complements the film.
RDH: Yeah, the music was the result of a long period of evolution. When the composer and I decided that we'd go for Archie, I don't think either of us understood how much extra he would bring to the words. Although Graham Tardif wrote the music and I wrote the words, Archie sang them. He's like a great actor, you know; and it was interesting working with him because I could direct him like an actor with his singing. He enjoyed that process immensely and so did I.

TB: David Gulpilil's role seems like it was written for him. Was that the case?
RDH: When I first wrote the story - which was 1991 - I can't remember if I had David in mind or not. But when the project started to come together 10 years later, we financed it on the basis of the 12-page treatment and I was casting before I wrote the script. Once we put all the finance together, then I began to write the script. So I wrote it knowing who my cast was; which is always a wonderful thing.

TB: Damon Gameau is the newcomer in the cast. How did you decide on him?
RDH: Damon had recently graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Arts. He'd done a play in Adelaide and I was told he was very good by a couple of people whose judgment I trust. So I rang him and he talked into a video camera for me - he didn't have a show reel because he hadn't done anything. He didn't have the money to come to Adelaide and I didn't have the money to go to Sydney, so I sat down and looked at this video and then I thought "Yep. Let's go". And He's very good.

TB: Gary Sweet is probably the most recognised face in the film. What was the process of getting him involved?
RDH: Different films get cast in different ways, and this film got cast in a fairly fluky way all around really. Gary was somebody who I'd known a little over the years; but I'd never thought specifically about casting him in anything I'd done. But then reading the background material, and there's a particular bloke in South Australian history who lived about a hundred years ago. I was reading this bloke's diaries and I went outside for a smoke and there was Gary Sweet, looking different and - within himself - being somehow different to what I'd seen before. And I thought, "He'd make a fantastic Fanatic". It wouldn't leave my head, and when I was reading the diaries, all I could see was Gary Sweet, you know. So I gave into it and went up to him the next day and asked if he was interested. Of course, he was, and we had a great working relationship.

TB: This is a very different role for Gary. Yet he seems to capture that kind of rage that the role demands. RDH: Gary is a much better actor than a lot of the stuff he's done has allowed him to be, in a
sense. I think the cast as a group delivers in a way that suits.

TB: This may be a politically sensitive issue, but what is it about South Australia. How do you get so many films made there?
RDH: Part of it is history. Part of the renaissance in the Australian film industry came through Don Dunstan in those years; so there's a history there to begin with. Also, we're sort of fortunate to have an infrastructure that, for example Perth doesn't have. But there's also no distraction to us as filmmakers of the overseas film and television productions turning up. And that's the other thing - we have very little of a television industry. I guess as a consequence, people think about films, smaller films; and so it's become like the boutique film capital of Australia.

TB: The Tracker has been selected for competition in Venice this year. Are you looking forward to that?
RDH: Ummm… yes and no (laughs). Yes, because I understand how important it is for the film in its overseas outing. I don't much like the media circus that comes with it, because it's just completely mental. But you put up with it. The film has resonances in Australia that it can't possibly have overseas, so you wonder whether the enthusiasm that I can sense here can in any way translate overseas. Even today though, I've been encouraged. My Italian partner has just shown the film to two journalists and they were so enthusiastic, he just couldn't believe it. And those two things - the fact it was selected and that people there are enthusiastic about it - gives me confidence to go to Venice because, you know, it's not going to be slaughtered. Films can, at the major festivals, get completely slaughtered and that can be very damaging. I'm lucky not have had that happen to me, but I know people who have. So the prospects are good.

TB: What about the recent track record of Australian films at major festival, because it hasn't been that great in the last couple of years?
RDH: These things work on so many levels, you can't even begin to figure this stuff out. For example, a few years ago there were 4 Australian films in Cannes - which then made it much more difficult for the next 3 or 4 years to get any Australian films in Cannes. Sometimes the more interesting films that might possibly be selected might not be ready in time; or they might be being held by the sales agent; or there might be a fear that they're going to get slaughtered in that particular festival. I mean, different festivals work better or worse for different films. And yes, it's been a little dry in the last few years - but then Beneath Clouds and Walking on Water were in Berlin. These things are cyclical anyway. At the moment, Korean films are the rage at international festivals, so that tends to squeeze out some others for a bit until that stabilizes.

TB: Do you think The Tracker has the kind of appeal that will translate to international audiences?
RDH: It quite possibly has a universal appeal as cinema and as entertainment, whatever that might be. It has a slightly different appeal overseas - I think necessarily so - as people overseas don't have out history and don't have our current politics. But there are interesting enough things about the film - apparently - characters and a story they engage with; there's beauty and there's humour, there's extraordinary landscapes. There's the stuff of cinema, you know. I think there's also interest, from an outsider's point of view, of things that overseas people have no idea about in a way. So I think it has potential - but we'll see (laughs).

TB: We've seen several Australian films with indigenous themes released in recent times. Why do you think that's happening now?
RDH: Well, I think there are a number of different issues at work. The first is The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith; which was a wonderful film. It wasn't a cheap film in its day - and it didn't work. Now, what happened was the distributors came to a conclusion - "films with indigenous themes don't work at the box office". So when a film with those themes came along, it would be handled very cautiously, and they wouldn't put the money into PA [promotion and advertising] that they should. Their conclusion therefore became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now I think there's a coincidence of circumstance that there are a number of films with some indigenous content, coming out one after another. Ivan Sen's film [Beneath Clouds], for example, is the fruition of many years of the Australian Film Commission having an indigenous unit and attempting to get indigenous people to the point where they can tell their own stories. That's something that started 10 years ago. Christine Olsen with Rabbit Proof Fence, she's had that for 5 or 6 years, and she finally got it to the point where a major international director [Philip Noyce] said he'd do it, so they could then put the finance together. Then quite separately you have Adelaide Festival of the Arts, and Peter Sellars as the new artistic director coming in and saying, "I want film as part of the Adelaide Festival". And he then says "This is what interests me in terms of films", so then you have a bit of money being put into a number of films that have those themes. And… then finally there's the reaction at the moment to the politics in this country at the moment in that area. This society is now getting to a point where it's beginning to deal with that sort of stuff.

David Edwards