Tracks

I watched this film based on the jacket synopsis, the same one that is surprising repeated here on IMdb, about a train journey and flashbacks. There are no actual flashbacks in this film, although maybe some of the characters on the train are flashbacks in and of themselves.

That is the basic trouble with this film, it is impossible to work out what is real and what is not, Dennis Hopper's character is so tightly wound he is ultimately completely closed to the viewer. There is no intimacy here, no insight into the characters (any of them) or the point of the film as a whole.

And the ending makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and comes out of nowhere.

That said I was fascinated by the film and did watch till the end, hoping to finally make sense of it all. I then watched it a second time, as I am aware it is easy to misunderstand a complex film in one screening. But Alas even after my third viewing i was left as lost and unconnected to the film as I had been previously.

I think this film offers us a promise, one we are surprised not to have fulfilled. But ultimately it lets us down.