 |
| A24 |
It's nearly impossible to classify The Rover into any genre. I've been telling my friends it's a dark, morbid, Australian, dystopian, neo-Western. Or that it's a cross between The Road, Mad Max, and The Proposition with hints of Once Upon a Time in the West thrown in there with that barren, silent countryside that is the Australian Outback. I think director/writer David Michod is well aware of all these influences but he refuses to let any of them define his own bleak tale of a future, lawless humanity. After all, Michod spent the early part of his career in film as the editor of Inside Film magazine, stretching his experience beyond filmmaking and into journalistic and academic writing. I'm assuming the knowledge he gained from this has made him acutely aware of genre tropes; especially considering his first film Animal Kingdom in 2010 which tackled the Godfather-esque story of a young man introduced into his criminal family run by his grandmother. In that film as well there are hints of multiple genres and references to Coppola just as there are moments of The Rover that feel very much like Peckinpah.
