One can't help but be a bit chuffed by the prospect of something like Track 29. It was directed by one of England's most celebrated experimentalists (along with Ken Russell), Nicolas Roeg. It stars his then hot A-list wife Theresa Russell and a fresh from Sid & Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears era Gary Oldman. The script is even by noted British scribe Dennis Potter, who two years previous wowed the world with his amazing The Singing Detective. Well, all is not quite right in the psycho-Oedipal universe crafted by the auteur and his band of baffled collaborators. While initially about a loveless marriage and the possibility of forbidden love, Roeg and Potter clearly have bigger, interpersonal insanity fish to fry. The result is satisfying, if still a bit arcane in its unanswered questions conceit.
Linda (Russell) exists in a dry, sundrenched South. She hates her model train obsessed surgeon husband (Christopher Lloyd) and the stifling life he provides. While he fiddles with his toys and explores his twisted fetishes with his willing nurse, Ms. Stein (Sandra Bernhard), she drinks too much and hangs out at the local diner. One day, literally out of thin air, a man named Martin (Oldman) walks into town. He reminds Linda of the rogue who raped her when she was 16, and slowly she comes to believe that the stranger is actually the son (a result of the crime) that she gave up for adoption. Soon Martin has moved into couple's home and begins manipulating them both. After a while, things appear to be taking a turn toward the tragic.
Like a puzzle missing many of its pieces, Track 29 is one of those films that frustrates the novice movie buff. It requires the viewer to bring as much to the process as the production, and never once allows the audience off easy. As an example of the art of falling part, Roeg delivers on the dementia. We discover early on that Martin is more or less a projection of Linda's fractured psyche and begin to make connections between the horror of her past and the humorless nature of her present. Lloyd's medico is a mess - denying his wife affection while receiving kinky beatings from his strident assistant - and it's clear that he cares more about HO scale and track layout than keeping his marriage alive. This makes Linda a prime case for a breakdown. Track 29 is therefore the jaundiced journey toward the end - of sanity, or of the relationship...or of life.
No one does literary doom better than Potter. Even in the most enlightened scenarios, he is a pro at casting a pall. Roeg tries to circumvent his artistic destiny by flashing between the past and present, created dreamscapes and common place locales that seem lifted directly out of a madwoman's memoirs. While compatriot Ken Russell runs more toward a heavier anti-establishment, anti-religious bent, the maverick responsible for Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth just wants to explore the fringes. Linda is unlikable in her whiny ways, while both of the men in her life seem senselessly mean. Misogyny is often associated with Roeg's work, and it seems like a bum rap. Is it wrong to hate a woman who hates herself so much...and hates the world around her with equal ire?
These are the kind of intriguing questions that something like Track 29 inspire. Had Roeg not been in charge, the narrative would have settled into a standard "is she or isn't she" groove. As it stands, the filmmaker's freakshow approach serves the equally eccentric premise quite well.
Like a puzzle missing many of its pieces, Track 29 is one of those films that frustrates the novice movie buff. It requires the viewer to bring as much to the process as the production, and never once allows the audience off easy. As an example of the art of falling part, Roeg delivers on the dementia. We discover early on that Martin is more or less a projection of Linda's fractured psyche and begin to make connections between the horror of her past and the humorless nature of her present. Lloyd's medico is a mess - denying his wife affection while receiving kinky beatings from his strident assistant - and it's clear that he cares more about HO scale and track layout than keeping his marriage alive. This makes Linda a prime case for a breakdown. Track 29 is therefore the jaundiced journey toward the end - of sanity, or of the relationship...or of life.
No one does literary doom better than Potter. Even in the most enlightened scenarios, he is a pro at casting a pall. Roeg tries to circumvent his artistic destiny by flashing between the past and present, created dreamscapes and common place locales that seem lifted directly out of a madwoman's memoirs. While compatriot Ken Russell runs more toward a heavier anti-establishment, anti-religious bent, the maverick responsible for Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth just wants to explore the fringes. Linda is unlikable in her whiny ways, while both of the men in her life seem senselessly mean. Misogyny is often associated with Roeg's work, and it seems like a bum rap. Is it wrong to hate a woman who hates herself so much...and hates the world around her with equal ire?
These are the kind of intriguing questions that something like Track 29 inspire. Had Roeg not been in charge, the narrative would have settled into a standard "is she or isn't she" groove. As it stands, the filmmaker's freakshow approach serves the equally eccentric premise quite well.
