The Rover (2014, David Michôd)

Whilst nesting by an open fire one night there's a mid-point in The Rover where Guy Pearce's jaded former farmer contemptuously asks Robert Pattinson's southern half-wit why he's telling him a rather inconsequential story involving an elderly couple he knew when he was younger. The reply is both tender and human - that it was simply his memories and that a story doesn't have to have a purpose.

This is a revealing moment in David Michôd's exceptional follow up to Animal Kingdom; not only an artistic statement regarding cinema and The Rover's place in it, but one that encapsulates the film's questions of humanity and what it means to be survive even in the harshest conditions.

Taking place in Australia 10 years after an economic collapse, the film follows Eric (Pearce), a hollow survivor like so many just getting by day-by-day in a highly volatile and desolate world. Opening with two lingering shots; the first of a gaunt, unfilled vista, the second of Eric's face in profile as he stares into nothing. Both shots are equally empty, lacking any remnant of life. In a couple of moments, however, Eric's world will soon once again be given purpose as once he exits his car and heads to a nearby bar for a drink (as if it'll be his last) his vehicle is stolen by a gang escaping an unseen bloody massacre. What ensues is an almost comical obsessive game of cat and mouse as Eric hunts down his car - this theft has given him a mission, a purpose in a world devoid of emotion.

Animal Kingdom showed Michôd looking at the primal aspects of a crime family, showing the moral depths involved to that subterranean world of sorts. With The Rover he goes further in exploring the extent of humanity's decline; asking at what point of despair does life die beyond the psychical act of survival?

Guy Pearce as the central Eric brings this theme out tremendously as this great actor continues to do what great actors can; by showing internal torment and the mechanics of a character's thoughts without expressing vocally. At times Pearce allows Eric's cynical beaten mask to slip, revealing dormant compassion. His eventual double act with Robert Pattinson's Rey - the discarded, assumed dead brother of one of the men who hijacked Eric's car - brings this aspect out even more due to the juxtaposition provided by that characters childlike naivety. A simple minded quality that is both endearing and hazardous on their journey.

Post-apocalptic settings by default regress their characters and explore the human condition in the harshest lights and in this share the same thematic concerns as any film set in pre-civil times. For this it's then noticeable how much The Rover has in common with, let's say, The Proposition, that also stars Guy Pearce. One showing the dawn of civilisation while the other charting its decline. Antony Partos's score highlights this in the background with his music combining electronics with aboriginal sounds - modernity and the past collide. As if a western Michôd shoots in perfectly composed wide angles akin to the equally savage landscapes of Leone or Peckinpah and carries the primal screaming pain of the latter's Straw Dogs or Bring Me The Head Of Aldredo Garcia.

The Rover is a tight and compelling film that uses its emptiness to ponder mankind's ability (or inability) to fill an abyss. A road movie, a western of sorts, yet another post-apocalyptic thriller, this rises above expectation on its confidence of themes and the conviction of its very talented cast that also includes Scoot McNairy as Rey's less bumbling sibling. Michôd has delivered not only another solid film that transcends its simple nature on the page but has also bettered his attention grabbing debut to further hint at a possibly great filmmaker for the future.