The National Identity of Remote, Lethal Lands: the Australian Road Movie

“In the road movie, the travel undertaken by the protagonists serves as a metaphor for life itself, with freedom and social mobility being analogous to physical mobility.” says Jonathan Rayner in Contemporary Australian Cinema: An Introduction.

Although a cultural product of America’s preoccupation with the mythology of freedom, escapist adventure and metaphoric redemption, the road movie is a subgenre culturally compatible enough to have been embraced interestingly by other countries around the globe to express their own concerns with ideology and national identity.

With reoccurring themes of entrapment and stasis, (as appose to traditional themes of liberation through movement) Australian cinema has utilised the road movie as a means to express geographical concerns regarding isolation, suffocation and disillusionment with contemporary Australian life. The relationship between landscape and the characters that interact with them is very much at the heart of the Australian road movie; where the Australian Gothic threatens to intrude at any moment and where there is little comfort in the activity of escape.

The typography of the outback terrain has also proved an ideal canvas for many Aussie auteurs to cut their creative teeth; including directors Peter Weir, Richard Franklin, George Miller, Phillip Noyce and Stephan Elliott. While stars such as Mel Gibson, Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce and character actors Bruce Spence and John Jarratt have also shined provocatively on the open road.

Fuel Injected Suicide Machines

The romantic allure of leisurely losing yourself in a remote and exotic land has its consequences in the Australian Outback road movie; where the terrain often turns hostile and a trip through scenic backcountry can turn into a fierce game of survival.

Appearing from the mid-‘70s onwards, Australian Outback road movies were noticeably set within or amongst remote disintegrating communities, usually featured anachronistic residents who posed a threat to masculine integrity and contained Grand Guignol horror moments often with a grainy cinéma vérité style aesthetic quality. They were also somewhat desirable for the stylish way they shot their vehicles or as Quentin Tarantino eloquently put it: “Nobody shoots a car the way the Aussies do. They manage to shoot cars with this fetishistic lens that just makes you wanna jerk off.”

Hostility toward the passing traveller is central to the plot of Peter Weir’s debut feature production The Cars That Ate Paris (1974); a significant example of the pervasive Australian Gothic with its sinister cut-off rural community of deranged inhabitants. Sofia in New South Wales steps in for the fictional outback hamlet of Paris: a deceptively sleepy little town surrounded by hills but layered with dangerously unstable country roads. Profiting from unwary tourists, the residents engineer road traffic accidents for the means of their own survival, trading in salvageable car parts for clothing and food.

Weir’s film suggests a loss of personality and identity through the integration of community. The diminutive protagonist Arthur (Terry Camilleri) is portrayed as an incompetent simpleton who can easily be manipulated and, following the trauma of his brother’s death in a car accident, is rendered incapable of driving. Other car wreck survivors are often brain-dead and used for medical experimentation – in effect ‘recycled’ as much as the car parts.

As Rayner has observed in the cinematic trends of the ‘Australia’ Gothic rural community “the insane are recruited to secure the objectives of the malevolent establishment.” As a consequence, deranged locals emphasise the otherness of the Australian community; a character called Charlie, (played by Bruce Spence) is a sadistic weirdo with a penchant for collecting Jaguar car crests. Significantly, Charlie also helps to administer the contrived car crashes under the patriarchal rule of the town’s mayor (played by John Meillon). However, the town’s fate is sealed by the obsession with the car when a procession of spike-encrusted vehicles, driven by the town’s rebellious youths, enact a terrifying revenge against the residents during the film’s climax.

As Rayner has noted this empathises the Australian ethos that “we would die without our cars, and to prove the point we daily risk dying in them.” The influential power The Cars That Ate Paris had on the emerging Australian road movie cannot be overemphasised. This is perhaps most evident in the Mad Max trilogy (1979-1985); where the suspicion of establishment, social breakdown, resident animosity and a loss of authority — all within an overpowering car culture environment — became reoccurring themes.

Mad Max marked the debut of George Miller, another notable Aussie director who would go on to helm the entire series and direct such notable films as The Witches of Eastwick and the animated hits Babe and Happy Feet. Set ‘a few years from now’ in a collapsed society the film opens precariously with a warning sign stating the high fatality rate on the aptly named ‘Anarchie Road’. In Mad Max, roads are long and lethal and the camera rarely veers away from the hazardous two-lane-blacktop. This time the hostile locals are a band of crude Hell’s Angel type bikers, whose main occupation is to terrorise the roads. In his lead debut role Mel Gibson plays the young titular law enforcer who attempts to police the roads.

Max and his family become ‘the travellers under threat’ when they go on vacation and enter hostile territory. The outback momentarily turns idyllic but danger always appears to be lurking on the outskirts in the form of the vengeful bikers who proceed to terrorise Max’s family. As a result Max turns rogue and enacts a personal revenge ploy. This loss of emotional control, which is linked to lose of life, poses a challenge to masculine integrity turning Max into an emotionless avenger.

In the great Australian cinematic tradition, cars are seen as an extension of power, individuality and masculine identity and as something to be both fetishised and feared. Once again salvageable parts feature prominently; this time used to soup-up vehicles: Max’s signature motor, ‘The Interceptor’, has a modified front with a supercharger sticking out of the bonnet, while his adversary ‘The Toecutter’ has a vehicle that is propelled by a fuel rocket, which, as the character self-proclaims makes him “…a fuel injected suicide machine!”

The dry barren landscape and rocky background canyons of Broken Hill, (a mining city in the far west outback of New South Wales) is the setting for a destitute post-apocalyptic future in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. It is also an appropriate locale for our returning titular protagonist; a man who has wandered into the wasteland after the death of his family and the bloody revenge he enacted. Jonathan Rayner has emphasised: “At a superficial level Max’s actions always serve a greater good, but in each film the Gothic sensibility intrudes to deny them their dignity.”

As a consequence, Max’s heroic status is questioned throughout the series particularly as his character takes on the persona of the lone avenger attempting to make his own way through a beleaguered community. In Mad Max 2, he helps a white tribe – but it is a society that has little respect for him, and the revelation that the petrol truck he offered to drive them was in fact filled with sand undermines Max’s heroism and makes a mockery of his heroic status. Again, this erosion of humanity is a reoccurring theme throughout the Australian car-orientated/outback road movie.

By the third Mad Max film, Beyond Thunderdome, the deserted highways are no longer visible and sand dunes (filmed in the Kurnell sand dunes in southern Sydney; the site of Australia’s initial conception) are a constant fixture. In the film Max attempts to liberate the Gothic rural community of ‘Bartertown’ from tyranny by taking on the seemingly monstrous ruler Master Blaster in the titular gladiator arena. However, after he succeeds he ends up ultimately deceived by its new ruler, Aunty Entity (played by Tina Turner) due to his sudden compassion for the ultimately child-like Blaster. This further demonstrates the flawed ambiguity of the Australian protagonist in the road movie.

The Australian car-orientated film also included such revenge thrillers as Midnite Spares (1983) (directed by Quentin Masters) and Dead End Drive-In (1986) (directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith), both of which embraced exploitative levels of extreme violence, which confirmed their place in the newly coined ‘Ozploitation’ movement, as exemplified in Mark Hartley’s 2008 documentary Not Quite Hollywood.

Terror on the Open Road

With its vast open landscapes and expansive freeways the Australian road movie can also be about taking a journey that fuels fantasy and enlightens the imagination: the perfect setting in fact for a Hitchcockian thriller. Richard Franklin, (who would go on to direct a competent sequel to Psycho), conceived Road Games (1980) as a nostalgic nod to Hitchcock’s Rear Window continuing the theme of threat on the Australian roads. The film concerns the sleepless intrigue of world weary pig-trucker Pat Quid (Stacy Keach) who stumbles upon a possible hitchhiker killer during a long ride from Melbourne to Perth via the idyllic remote expanses of the Nullabor Plain.

Events are largely confined to the cab of Quid’s moving truck and shot in Panavision so that (in a similar vein to Rear Window) the shape of the truck’s windscreen corresponds with the shape of the frame and thus a canvas on which the protagonist can take a flight of fantasy in a mythical landscape. Road Games also uses the Aussie geographic aesthetic qualities to evoke a chilling sense of doom and isolation as our character becomes embroiled into the mystery: cliffs, stretches of red barren landscape and the close-net quarters of a climatic urban showdown are used effectively to evoke suspense and fear.

Stopping off at a roadside diner, Quid experiences the hostility of backwater locals first-hand when his dingo companion is physically abused. Later Quid has to constantly dodge erratic drivers on the open roads, who act more of a hindrance than a help in his cat and mouse pursuit of the suspected murderer. Usually the road movie is a distinctly male terrain; however to his advantage Quid picks up ‘Hitch’ (Jamie Leigh Curtis) a female runaway who helps him unravel the mystery. The open expanses surrounding the road are considered an ideal hiding place for a crime as they predict that the murderer probably scattered the bodily remains across the country.

Director Franklin also makes flamboyant use of cinematic shots to thrill and manipulate the audience. His camera prowls to provoke intrigue but at times is not to be trusted. None more so than when the protagonist is driving late at night and suddenly appears to hit a fierce kangaroo – seen in close up in the headlights – only for a harmless marsupial to hop away.

Although Australian in both geographical outlook and director, Road Games noticeably casts US actors in the leads as if in acknowledgement of its American road movie heritage. In more recent times Australian has demonstrated a more confident national identity approach to the horror film.

Evoking the spectre of backpacker killers Ivan Milat and Bradley Murdoch Wolf Creek (2005) is a film about the terrors of venturing beyond the remote stretches of Australia’s outback. The landscape is beautiful and deceptively alluring – the endless stretching roads offering freedom for three young travellers who are embarking on an Australian adventure. However there are hints at the threat that lurks on the surface. When the trio stop off at a diner for refreshment they are verbally humiliated by gruff disobedient locals. This isn’t the end of their plight. Later they come into trouble when their car breaks down at a meteor site near the titular creek. A seemingly accommodating local bushman offers to help fix their vehicle but later turns hostile and ends up torturing the group.

In this alternative approach director Greg McLean shoots in high-definition DV Dogma style to lend a raw, menacing almost documentary tangibility to proceedings. He also takes his time to unveil the initial threat, placing the audience under false pretences.

Popular American genre tropes are still present in Wolf Creek’s narrative structure. With its relentless device of escape and recapture the film is a contemporary throwback to off-the-road ‘70s US chillers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills have Eyes, however it uses its ingenious Australian setting as a playground to taunt characters in a fierce game of cat and mouse.

A Space Odyssey

Stephan Elliott’s The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994) was a liberating commentary on contemporary Australian, using the format of the road movie genre and its geographical trappings to chart the excursions of three drag queens on a bus trip from a gay enclave in Sydney to a gig within the golden desert slopes of Alice Springs. Here the motif of individual character growth is allied to travel: Weather beaten and world-weary transsexual Bernadette (Terence Stamp) wants to escape the loneliness of a recent bereavement, young recruit Ticki (Hugo Weaving) undertakes a personal journey of self-discovery, while Adam (Guy Pearce) wants to let go of all inhibitions and indulge in the opportunity to scandalise locals en route.

The Australian Gothic once again rears its ugly head in the form of a culture clash with the homophobic inhabitants of the unfriendly towns they pass through. The flamboyant clothes, make-up and language of the urban based trio contrast dramatically with the prejudice backward rural communities – once again signifying a threat to masculine integrity and, as Jonathan Rayner has noted “a redefinition of the image of Australian masculinity, and national identity.” The haphazard odyssey across the land explores the problematic notions of contemporary Australian in terms of outdated rural communities (as opposed to urban ones) struggling to overcome their bisexual and transsexual social intolerance.

Debuting director Glendyn Lvin’s Last Ride (2009) was about a young boy (Tom Russell) who travels across Australia with his outlaw father (Hugo Weaving) to seek refuge in the anonymity of the open road. The land is harsh and hostile, with the pair resorting to scavenging for food and stealing vehicles while progressing further into the imposing emptiness of the Outback; an environment that continually threatens death at every turn but also achieves a certain poetic potency in its blank open-endedness.

The inhospitable nature of the land gives nuance to the complexity of the father and son relationship and the paternal responsibilities this entails, while dissecting the essence of masculine Australian integrity. In this sense the wilderness has turned allegorical; reflecting the insecurities and ambiguities of the characters, which is apt given that the road movie is primarily about the experiences entailed en route as appose to any desired final destination.

Whether Australian road movies have used established American generic ideals to make them more internationally compatible is open for debate. There is however something naturally instinctive about the way Aussie filmmakers merge their geographical landscape with the narrative elements of the cinema to reinforce cultural identity and to bring their own distinctive force to the road movie genre.