Track 29

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source: Track 29

A young man is going around provincial USA searching for his mother that he never saw. As soon as he was born his young and careless parents sent him to mental hospital. Now Gary Oldman is free to go so he decides to find his mother, the one he was missing all those mental hospital days. His mother Linda (Theresa Russell) lives in American dream but doesn't seem to be happy. Her husband is fond of collecting railways for children. Sure, he has one of the largest railway-toy system in the whole state. He is proud of his railway model and pays more attention to his railway-world than to his young wife. Who used to have some nasty experiences before became a noble woman. But all that world is just smashed by the coming of that crazy son, who wants the revenge for such unhappy childhood. Finally Mummy lets her successful husband to meet her naughty son. Great, rather cynic, cold black humour film. www.myspace.com/neizvestnostlab

Nowhere else is Roeg's filmmaking as elemental and visceral as it is in Track. Black comedy is an inadequate label, for certain. "Models" and their uses and abuses are examined in the film. It is almost as gut wrenching to watch Christopher Llyod being spanked by Sandra Bernhardt as it is to watch Ricky and his mother in <Better Off Dead>. Oldman lends his untamed (yet not quite perfected) style to a film that would be richly sleek even without him.

I tried to watch this for the great Gary Oldman, but this movie is completely unwatchable. The lead actress is wooden, horrible, and has the worst southern accent you could possibly imagine. There are an incredible number of bad 80s films, and this one falls right on the same track (pun intended). Watching Gary Oldman suck a tampon and talk with a diaphragm in his mouth is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. If only Christopher Lloyd had yelled out "1.21 Gigawatts" - I might have given this movie a higher rating. Some other review talked about the scene in which Lloyd's character, Henry, gets spanked by Sarah Barnhard in red gloves. It's very difficult to remove that image from your mind once you see it. This movie was a train wreck from beginning to end.

Yet another indecipherable movie from director Roeg; it plays like a puzzle that is never solved. Definitely not uninteresting, because of the unique nature of the plot, but so muddled and inconsistent (for example, a seemingly imaginary character interacts with other people as if he really existed) that it's not likely to satisfy many viewers. One or two (intentionally) funny scenes help. Extremely offbeat performance by Gary Oldman. (**)

Nicholas Roeg's "Track 29", while confusing and frustrating, appears to accomplish what the director and writer set out to do. The film introduces and examines many aspects of Linda's life that are never very clearly answered. If Martin is a figment of her imagination, what is truly imagined? He does appear at the hamburger stand, so is he real after all? Early in the film, a television program is overheard discussing the idea that "two things may ocupy the same time and space". If this is indeed true, than maybe one thing can ocupy more than one time and space. It appears that Linda and Martin may in fact be "exploring" alternate dimensions. The film seems to explore the occurrence and outcome of many different events, and ends with the viewer unclear about what truly happened and what did not. After undergoing real or imaginary emotional torture, Linda calmly collects herself and leaves the house a new woman. To further confuse the lines between imaginary/real, her husband is heard calling to her, even though a pool of blood is forming over her head. (presumably from the stabbing death of the same husband) It is through these very strange events and ideas that the director and writer force the viewer to attempt to decide what is real and what is imagined. The most frustrating thing of all is that there is no real answer to this question.

The plot is wacky enough to promise a great film: a repressed alcoholic middle-class housewife with incestuous tendencies, married to a doctor with infantilism tendencies, encounters a young English guy who turns out to be her lost son (fruit of a teenage rape, whom she had to give for adoption). But it's not clear what's real & what's not. Freud would be proud. The bad thing is seeing how generic Hollywood-ian Nicolas Roeg's direction has become. There really is very little here that reminds of "Don't Look Now" or "Bad Timing". Not that it's not worth watching. The spanking sequence is hilariously disturbing, the film has the feel of a hysterically surreal 80's soap opera, and the interplay between past, present, reality & fantasy is sometimes inspired. In fact David Lynch ended up copying lots of stuff from here, particularly on "Twin Peaks" and "Lost Highway". Notice for example the demonic rape scene, or the merging of the truck driver and lost son characters.

It's a shame to see the talents of actors like Christopher Lloyd, Theresa Russell and Gary Oldman squandered on such a hideous flick (but then, in my humble opinion, every movie I've seen directed by Nick Roeg is rather bad). I'm a HUGE Theresa Russell fan; she's on my list of the top two most beautiful women I've ever seen, and although I could never tire of just looking at Ms. Russell this movie is so very horrible that I could never sit through it even a second time. Ditto "Aria," another of Nick Roeg's works.

In a small southern American town, housewife Linda Henry lives a unsatisfied life and wants a child to fulfil that gap, but her husband Henry seems more concerned about his model trains and receiving his * spanking from nurse Stein. One day in a diner, an odd and mysterious young English lad Martin approaches Linda and her friend. He seems to appear where she is, so when another confrontation eventuates. He admits to being her son, which he was taken from her at birth when she was a teenager, due to the reasoning of his conception. This newfound responsibility is bittersweet for Linda, but has it come at a price for her well-being. Bizarre, extremely bizarre… and sultry! Nicholas Roeg's "Track 29" is really hard to fathom, which can make it quite frustrating, due to the fact the pieces of this hysterically traumatic psychological puzzle never come to be one. Maybe that was on purpose, as the dysfunctional characters (usually lurking in small town settings) we follow seem rather disconnected, never quite sure of themselves and longing for something which could lead to an emotional breakdown. This exploration into the protagonists' wavering consciousness brings out many facets, like revelations of the past and those things that matter most for them to feel anything. The obsessive nature takes hold, where torment and frustration develops with neurotic results, which could finally lose out to fantasy, because reality and their situation is just to hard to come to grips with. Because of that, Dennis Potter's unbalanced, warped screenplay really does put you on the spot and throws around plenty of eye-boggling surreal passages. Symbolic clues feature thickly throughout and the themes that drown the moody, but complex script leave a strong imprint. While I don't think it's all-successful in conveying its ideas, it's still very interesting to watch. Building it up is the unusual kinky charge, perversely pitch-black humour and a terror-away performance by the nutty Gary Oldman. Boy, Oldman annoys with his infantile portrayal, but that peculiar intensity he generates and his edgy rapport with co-star Theresa Russell has you hypnotised. The two have some curious exchanges. Russell projects a fully realised performance, that bubbles, but you also feel her growing pain and uncertainty of her fragile character. Too bad about the southern accent though. Christopher Lloyd goes offbeat too, but more so in an understated and controlled turn. Sandra Bernhard's Nurse Stein makes an impression. Roeg's leisurely paced direction might not be as beautifully visceral, but winning out is a very gleeful and excessive approach that's high quality. Like Oldman's character, Roeg lets it play out like a kooky tantrum with a lingering mean-streak. The leering camera-work seems to hover on its shots awkwardly, or give it a smothering feeling, and the simmering music score is been kept under-wraps. Another original and provocative piece of work into the realm of surrealistic ambiguity combined with expressive allegories and a sensually twisted flavour. This one really challenges the viewer (like most of Roeg's work), then highly entertains.