Thoughts on The Rover & how it impacted me...(SPOILER ALERT)

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(This is long and filled with spoilers...proceed at your own risk! ;)

Yesterday I went to see The Rover with two friends who are fellow Rob fans and even bigger film buffs. We had to travel 70 miles to the theater, so we planned to see the film a second time while we were there.

We couldn’t do it.

That’s not to say we won’t see The Rover again, as I’m sure we will. But the film was far too disturbing to sit through twice in a row, even for my film-buff friends.

That said, we were deeply affected by the movie and found ourselves discussing it in depth afterward. The Rover says so much with so little dialogue that universal themes quickly emerge in this very personal story of one man’s journey to complete a questionable mission.

I won’t elaborate on the plot, but will assume anyone reading this has seen the movie, and skip straight to the two turning points in the film that make the puzzle pieces fall into place. The first is the revelation that Guy Pierce’s character, Eric, committed his first pair of murders ten years ago at the onset of “the collapse,” when he found his wife in bed with another man. The remarkable part of his confession is not any lack of remorse or guilt he had for his crime, but the devastation he felt when he was never prosecuted for it. The shock of literally getting away with murder hit him harder than the committing the crime itself. The realization that post-collapse society had sunk to such a level of lawless immorality shook him to the core far more than his own acts of brutality.

It’s no wonder, then, that we watch him carelessly take life after life in his quest to retrieve his stolen vehicle. We suddenly have a context for his lack of respect for human life— humanity no longer deserves it. In the ten years that civilization has devolved into a second coming of “the wild west,” he has lost faith in the human race and treats very few individuals with dignity. Dignity is gone in this era; humans are no longer worthy of it.

Enter Rey.

Robert Pattinson’s Rey, with his simple-minded innocence, disarms Eric in ways he never could have foreseen. He is nothing short of astonished when Rey rescues him from the army outpost where he’s been taken and held captive. He’s been self-reliant for so long, so distrusting of everyone he meets, that it never dawned on him he might gain the allegiance of a man he kidnapped and forced to lead him to the brother who’s in possession of Eric’s car.

But Rey sees things quite differently. His mind may not work as quickly as the minds of those around him, but several truths sink in and take hold. One, Eric points out that Rey’s brother, Henry, abandoned him and left him to die in the harsh Australian outback. Two, Eric takes him to a doctor to have his bullet wound dressed. This proves, in Rey’s mind, that Eric now cares for him more than his own brother does. Whether or not Rey can fathom that Eric has done this purely for selfish reasons is a moot point. The simple reality that Eric has come to Rey’s aid is enough of a reason to instill loyalty in Rey, prompting him to rescue Eric in return.

The idea that human loyalty could still be engendered in anyone—could still exist at all—is a revelation that hits Eric far too late. The last scene of the film is a stunner, but makes perfect sense in light of what we’ve learned about his character. We finally learn that the goal of Eric’s blood-soaked quest to retrieve his car is simply to bury the body of his dead dog, which was wrapped in a blanket in the trunk. I instantly recalled an earlier scene in which Eric is visibly moved by the doctor’s kennel of dogs, forced to stay indoors so that they don’t end up being stolen for food. In light of that, we now come to the perverse understanding that honoring the life of one loyal animal meant more to Eric than the dozen or so human lives he took in order to achieve that goal.

I say “meant” in past tense for a reason. I believe Eric feels the first pang of remorse for his actions when Rey is killed by his own brother, the man he trusted for his entire life until his tenuous switch of allegiance to Eric. The parallels between Rey and the lifeless dog in Eric’s car are impossible to miss. The innocence, the blind loyalty, yet the surprisingly protective ferocity when called upon—these are traits that the slow-witted Rey no doubt shared with Eric’s deceased pet. In Rey, Eric finally found someone who could restore his faith in humanity, only to have it snuffed out by the self-protective, and selfish, act of Rey’s own flesh and blood. When Eric shoots Henry point blank, it is a pure act of revenge. But when he hesitates to kill the last criminal, staring back at him in dull, weary acceptance, it is the last shred of humanity that Rey helped Eric reclaim that gives him pause before ending another life.

Eric’s respect for Rey over the others is shown when, instead of callously dragging his body across the dirt floor to a funeral pyre outside, he lifts the corpse up as best he can, affording Rey one last bit of the human dignity that Eric had long ago eschewed. Though he can’t give him the proper burial he has planned for his dog, he stands vigil until Rey’s cremation is complete.

As for Rey’s journey in this movie, it is far more heart-wrenching. A true innocent, he continually places his faith in the wrong people, but only because there are simply no right people in this world gone awry. There is no room for the weak, and in this day and age, human morality is a weakness. His struggle to do the right thing when there is no such choice to be made is heart-breaking, as shown in his last seen with Scoot McNairy’s Henry. As the brothers face off, guns brandished, Rey’s repeated tearful demands for an explanation as to how Henry could leave him alone to die are met only by the latter’s lame excuses. Rey’s shifting loyalty results in his demise. Even then, Henry takes no responsibility for shooting him, instead blaming Eric for turning Rey against him. Henry is exactly the type of coward who has soured Eric on the human race, and he pays the price for it as the others did before him.

These were the thoughts and themes that stayed with me after the film was over. And I wouldn’t have pondered them so long if the performances of Guy and Robert weren’t so compelling. Guy showed just enough glimmer of buried humanity that I wanted to figure out his story. And Rob showed so much humanity that I was nearly brought to tears several times. I was brought to laughter, too, when his Rey gleefully exclaimed, after killing three soldiers in order to rescue Eric, “Was that all there was? Three of ‘em? That was a lot easier than I thought it was gonna be.” A rather sick and twisted bit of humor, that. But ultimately more of a sad commentary on the state of the post-collapse world, and Rey’s experiences in dealing with it. In one moment he struggles to put his thoughts into coherent words, while in the next he is perfectly at ease buying fuel for the car and bullets for their guns. The lessons he has learned in this world are grim ones. When Henry demands of Eric at the end, “What did you do to my brother?”, one could argue that he taught Rey to question the motives of those around him, and choose his loyalties accordingly.

Rey taught Eric that not everyone is as self-serving and unfeeling as he himself had become…a lesson he learned too late.

I could go on and on about both Rob and Guy’s performances in the movie, but many great critics have already done a fantastic job of praising their skill and heartfelt interpretations. While I was enthralled by Rob’s performance, I wasn’t at all surprised. He only proved what so many of us Rob fans have known since the beginning: he has an amazing depth of talent that is only now being plumbed. I maintain that every film he’s done had moments of brilliance that foretold the amazing ability he exhibited in The Rover. I am beyond thrilled that the rest of the world is now realizing that his stardom is not a fluke, but well-deserved. And Rob finally acknowledging it himself is my fondest wish for him—to really believe in himself and continue to rise to the challenges he seeks out. I have no doubt that that he will do it. I couldn’t be happier for him, or for us as Rob fans. We are the lucky ones who get to enjoy the fruits of his labor. They may be tough to swallow, as is the case with The Rover, but are deeply satisfying and enriching once digested.

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