7/10
Definitely an art film... A mood piece...
21 January 2009
The film deals with the stark realities of an isolated ranching family pitting itself against the forces of nature an early winter snowstorm, and the ravages of a wild panther…

Mitchum's character, Curt Bridges is on the hunt and also struggling to survive… If we meditate the way he measures it, we see how his mind begins more and more to wander and less and less able to focus… We see him more and more aware of pain and discomfort… His hope comes and diminishes and departs and then returns… So there's an unceasing sense of doom in those sequences that simply were hunting…

The brothers represent different approaches by man to nature… Curt wants to dominate nature, wishes to control it… Arthur is just the opposite… He is so gentle and understanding that he can't deal with nature… He doesn't have the hardness that Curt has… And there's Harold who was the successful one because he has enough strength to deal with harshness of nature…

The Indian is the one who believes in the cat as a myth, as a mystery and as something almost sacred… Because of the legend of the cat he has Arthur carve wooden cats out every year to avert danger…

Now this is a very sterile family… The old man only deal with life through drink and through remembering the past… The mother is a very unlikable woman… She is manipulative, and she simply wants to be heard… You don't see any love interests or connections except for the younger brother…

Fear is very much a part of "Track of the Cat." It is the foreboding, ever-present backdrop really to the drama
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