ROTTERDAM: Elaine On WHALE RIDER, THE TRACKER, DOLLS, and Miike's DEADLY OUTLAW: REKKA!!

(Written and directed by Rolf de Heer, Australia)

2002 was a good year for Aboriginal films, or at least for Aboriginal-themed films. Philip Noyce got a bit of a discussion started with "Rabbit-Proof Fence"; now Rolf de Heer adds a twist with "The Tracker," starring the same ubiquitous Aboriginal movie star who graced the screen in "Rabbit-Proof Fence," David Gulpilil. However, the involvement of Gulpilil is where the similarities between the two films end. Whereas Noyce gave the "whitification" of Aboriginal children in the 1930s the Hollywood treatment, "The Tracker" is a more Australian-feeling, more allegorical take on antipodean history. And while it isn't subtle, it has a lot else going for it.

"The Tracker" is a road movie of sorts. It is 1922, and four men who have never met before set out on a trip through the outback to capture an Aboriginal accused of murdering a white woman. The leader of the pack is a ruthless police man only referred to as "the Fanatic," who relies heavily on an Aboriginal guide in his service (the eponymous "Tracker"). Rounding out the team are a green-as-grass, nervous young police man ("the Follower") and a quiet middle-aged fellow whose part in the proceedings remains shady ("the Veteran"). The Fanatic (played with superb, er, fanaticism by Gary Sweet) firmly believes in the Aboriginal's tracking skills. At the same time, he violently distrusts him, because as a black man, the Tracker cannot possibly be up to anything good. The two other members of the team look on the relationship between the Fanatic and the Tracker with wonder. Although they resent the way the Fanatic abuses the Tracker, they do not stand up to him; partly because he is so explosive, and partly because, unlike the Fanatic, they question the Aboriginal's tracking skills. Although it takes them a long time to come out and say it, they believe that the Tracker might be making things up to save his own skin. And so, tension mounting, they enter the bush, forced to rely on the Fanatic and the Tracker but caring for neither of them. For a while, things seem to go the Fanatic's way: his team is hot on the heels of the fugitive, and no one questions his authority. Then, however, things get out of hand. A chance encounter with a group of Aboriginals ends in a massacre in which the Fanatic shoots several unarmed Aboriginals through the head. Although the hierarchy within the group remains unchanged, the incident does affect the way the Veteran and the Follower (a great role by newcomer Damon Gameau) feel about the leaders of their expedition. As they head farther into the outback, the hierarchy between the men shifts, and the story works towards a climax which raises questions about leading and following, justice and revenge, and the grey territory between black and white. In the end, all the characters learn a lesson, and the viewer is reminded once again that good and evil come in many shapes.

Three things set "The Tracker" apart from the conventional good-versus-evil film. First of all, there is the sparseness of information on the characters. Instead of giving his protagonists a background, a motivation for the hardship to which they subject themselves, De Heer uses them allegorically, as personifications of character traits or beliefs that help propel the story onwards. This lack of emotional investment makes the film hard to get into at first, but in the end, it all works out splendidly. In a story like this, trivia don't matter; by focusing on bare essentials, De Heer gives the film an acuteness which might otherwise be lacking.

Secondly, the film refuses to glorify the violence which is an inherent part of the story. Rather than revelling in or even exploiting the brutal way in which the Fanatic murders Aboriginals, De Heer interrupts the action to hold up paintings - simple, child-like paintings of the horrible events that take place off screen. Although the paintings seriously halt the flow of the film, they are an effective tool to make the viewer think about what happens in the story, rather than just taking it in. No amount of Hollywood gore could achieve the same effect.

Finally, there is the music. To drive home the awkwardness of the Tracker's position as a mediator between black and white, De Heer had some lyrics about loneliness and the relationship between the races written, which he then had Aboriginal singer Archie Roach record and added to the travel scenes so as to convey the inner turmoil of the outwardly stoic Tracker. Although the songs are overused, they do add something to the film - a haunting, melancholy quality that stays with one long after the credits have stopped rolling. It's a brilliant match between sound and vision, the one feeding off the other, and both coming off stronger for it.

But it isn't all about technical brilliance. As interesting as the artistic gimmicks are, what ultimately makes the film work is not its allegorical nature or the painted substitutes for violent scenes but its Australianness. I'm not talking about accents or phrases here, but about the interaction between the characters, which is so laconic, so quintessentially Australian that it cannot fail to elicit some giggles. Take, for instance, the Tracker's response to the Fanatic's chaining him up and pointing a gun at him: "No worries, boss." And what does the Tracker say when the Fanatic accuses him of having tried to murder him? "No hard feelings, boss." Only an Australian could come up with an answer like that and remain credible. The fact that the character coming up with the answers here is not a white Russell Crowe lookalike but an Aboriginal only serves to make it more fascinating.

The Australianness of the film isn't limited to the phlegmatic ruggedness of the characters, either. A prominent part in the movie is played by the landscape, which goes a long way to explain how Australians got so rugged in the first place. Raw, uncultivated and breathtakingly uncompromising, the outback scenery depicted in "The Tracker" is as impressive as anything shown in "The Lord of the Rings" (hey, let's stir up some Australian-New Zealand rivalry!), if not actually more so. It is inhospitable enough to make one shiver, yet romantic enough to make one wish to book a bush safari straight away. And while films aren't meant to be taken as travel commercials, there is a lot to be said for movies which make one want to book a trip to the other side of the globe.

With or without a tracker.

DOLLS

(Written and directed by Takeshi Kitano, Japan)

Bound. That is the word to describe the characters in Takeshi Kitano's "Dolls," which follows three strange couples through the vicissitudes of life. Without realising it, the couples are bound - both internally (individual to individual) and to each other. And all are bound to the Master, dolls dancing to the tune of the great puppeteer known as Fate.

Puppets are everywhere in Kitano's latest. So, as the title suggests, are dolls. They are there from the opening, which takes the viewer to a traditional bunraku performance. In front of an audience, singers, musicians and puppeteers act out a love story known to countless generations of Japanese school children. The puppets they use are big, but the real novelty, to western eyes, is that the puppeteers remain visible. Rather than moving their puppets by strings, they hold them in their hands, moving heads and limbs whenever the story dictates they should. And although they dress in inconspicuous black, they are a clearly recognisable force in the background, making no effort to hide themselves from view.

Thus the stage is set for three modern-day love stories, which are presented with a melancholy and dreaminess rarely encountered in western films. The first couple we meet are Matsumoto and Sawako. Egged on by his ambitious parents, Matsumoto dumps his girlfriend Sawako to marry his boss' daughter. On the day of his wedding, he is told that Sawako has tried to kill herself. The suicide attempt wasn't successful, but it has caused great damage; Sawako has lost her mind and has retreated into a world only she can enter. Stunned with guilt and grief, Matsumoto jilts his bride and sets out to rescue his ex. Together they renounce life as they have known it, choosing instead to roam the world bound to each other by a bit of chord. On the way, they meet two equally tragic couples: an old yakuza who has just discovered that the woman he left thirty years ago is still waiting for him, and a young man who goes to horrible lengths to be with the woman he adores, a pop star who has gone into retreat to prevent fans from seeing her disfigured face. What these three couples have in common is that in all cases, the men perceive things, while the women, for whatever reason, are too blind to see what is obvious to the viewer. They are dolls, white-faced and beautifully clad, and like their counterparts in the bunraku performance that opens the film, they are sightless.

This is, without a shadow of a doubt, Takeshi Kitano's most magnificent film, and strange though it may sound, it contains only the barest hint of violence. It is not a yakuza film, but rather a picture book, a fairy tale brought to life with so much poetry that it takes one's breath away. Remember the beauty of the firework fight in "Sonatine"? Well, "Dolls" is that scene extended to feature-film length. It is 113 minutes of beauty, melancholy and serene, and if it doesn't quite draw you in story-wise, it does at least keep your eyes glued to the screen.

Consider what it is that Kitano puts on that screen. Gone are the shoot-outs, slick-dressed gangsters and violent cityscapes with which we have come to associate him; what he shows instead are guilt, remorse and longing personified by Yamamoto-clad dolls who roam the Japanese countryside at the time of its greatest beauty: cherry blossom orchards in spring, rose gardens in summer, red-leafed maple forests in autumn, and snowy mountains in winter. And as if that weren't enough, he throws in some seriously tragic characters, an unparallelled flair for flashbacks and flashforwards, a gorgeous zoom-out and some of the most beautiful metaphors ever put on screen. The result is the most lyrical poem never written – a souvenir from Nirvana, of utter, breath-taking beauty.

Put simply, "Dolls" is a masterpiece. It may not appeal to fans of Kitano's hard-boiled stuff, but in terms of melancholy, of metaphors and enchanting, dreamlike images, it is unrivalled. Those who are sensitive to poetic eye candy are going to eat it up.

DEADLY OUTLAW: REKKA

(Written by Takeshi Shigenori; directed by Takashi Miike, Japan)

Would someone please slip Takashi Miike a copy of "Cidade de Deus" (City of God)? It might give him a few pointers as to how to construct an interesting gangster film. He needs them. Badly.

Not that "Deadly Outlaw: Rekka" (a remake of an old Fukusaku Kinji classic) is a dull film, mind. Quite the contrary. It features all the Miike trademarks (grossly distorted faces, eyes that keep moving even after the head they are in has been chopped off, irate gangsters causing mayhem with rockets), plus the most insane necklace I have seen, consisting of two human hands circling the neck they tried to throttle just before being chopped off. It's just that there is no story. Not one that I could follow, anyway.

From what I could tell, "Deadly Outlaw" is about two gangs hell-bent on destroying each other, the Sanadas and the Otakis. One of the Sanada lieutenants is Kunisada (played by Miike regular Riki Takeuchi, deliciously overacting as always), a killing machine who gets kind of angry when the boss he loves like a father is murdered. He vows revenge, and sets out to get it with a friend who tries to hook him on a Korean girlfriend. Then the Bando clan joins the game, there are double crosses and double double crosses, and in the end, everybody dies. Or do they? I honestly couldn't tell.

Plotwise, "Deadly Outlaw: Rekka" is the weakest yakuza film Miike has made, and that is saying something. The plot is too convoluted, too carelessly handled to be remotely followable, and because the characters are interchangeable stupid gits who have no life outside the kill-and-rule existence that is the yakuza, you don't give a toss about who they are and what happens to them. The humour and the violence are there, though. From the squeaky voice of the Great Boss to the rocket that kills the bad guys (or were they the good guys?), there are considerably more Miike Moments in it than in last year's unbearably long and dull "Agitator," and they almost raise the film to an acceptable level.

Almost.

"Deadly Outlaw" is a good film to end an exhausting day at the movies with - the kind of bullet fest that will entertain you for an hour and a half without making the least bit of an impression on you. It is good fun as long as you do not expect to understand what it is all about. None of the people I watched the film with could give me a satisfying summary of it afterwards, and most, like me, couldn't be bothered to think one up. Still, most agreed that they had had a few good laughs, and so did I. No doubt, you will, too.

The necklace is quite funny, you know.

Finally, to those wondering why, given Rotterdam's reputation for discovering new talent, I am not covering slightly more obscure films: don't worry, I'll get round to it eventually. And to those wondering why, given my god-damned busy film-watching schedule, I am writing such frightfully long reviews: don't worry, I'll eventually get round to writing short reviews, too.

Signing off for today,

Elaine

New Miike? New Kitano? New Rolph De Heer? Man, I wish I had the budget to hit a festival like this... what a way to work out those January doldrums...

"Moriarty" out.