Five reviewers sit down to watch a film. One likes surfing, two like animals and the natural world, another is partial to a love story, and the last just wants to be entertained. All enjoy The Road To Patagonia.

Made by Matty Hannon, The Road To Patagonia is a film that spreads itself around. The catchline is ‘a love story with a hoofbeat’ but that description captures only a part of the story. It’s a brave movie in many ways: not just that Matty set off on a 50,000km motorcycle trip solo, but also that, when producing the movie, he was prepared to weave many threads into one tale. I’ve got no idea what genre it falls into.

So what does all that tell you? One, that Matty’s a curious fella, the world remains wondrous to him, its people, places, and cultures are all worthy of further enquiry, and two, he has faith that his audience feels the same way.

The film opens with flashbacks, the audience learning how a five year stint in the Mentawai - the surfer reviewers’ favourite part - gave way to a Melbourne office job and a diagnosis of clinical depression. Throwing off the bowlines, he bought a ticket to Alaska and launched into an adventure, destination known, it’s there in the title, but everything else was left to feelings and happenstance. Make it up as you go.

“The idea of a west-facing coastline of that proportion is salivating,” wrote Matty for an essay that appeared on Swellnet in 2015. At the time, he was perhaps halfway through his trip, and it was still very much a surf trip. If he harboured more expansive thoughts he didn’t share them then. Perhaps he was writing for the audience.

As the journey continues, Matty passes through other people’s lives, surfers, First Nation-folk, filming while listening, and from this side of the screen it never seems intrusive or inauthentic. Campsites are found. Ideas snowball. Big picture digressions are voiced: the role of animism in Indigenous cultures, wilderness in the modern world, the effects of colonisation.

“My Irish ancestors lost a lot through colonisation, but when they arrived in chains on the First Fleet to Australia, we soon took on the role of colonisers ourselves. So what does that make me?”

A gentle inquisitor, Matty is more charitable than, say, Christopher McCandless, the protagonist of Into The Wild. The two share similar impulses, to question perspectives and travel unbound, yet where McCandless only realised on his deathbed that “happiness is only real when shared,” Matty was more open to shared experience and communion. Tears welled up in the eyes of the romantic reviewer.

As the adventure continues south into Chile the story becomes less Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and more Don Quixote. Horses over machines, paths over highways, but still the lonely coastal campsites framed by nameless, empty lefts. The early musings about animism come to life as the “weird herd of animals”, four horses and two people, “trek together physically and emotionally” in the shadow of the southern Andes.

Answers are found on a straight section of highway outside of Ushuaia. Not the ones Matty was searching for, but insights of another kind. Hard won and profound.

An amalgam of many ‘on the road’ odysseys, The Road To Patagonia manages to feel entirely fresh; a travel adventure for the modern age, one that defies category but also makes you want to sail from safe harbour and see another way of life. Take a couple of boards, ask a lot of questions, and then be open to the answers.

Maybe learn how to saddle a horse too.

// STU NETTLE

'The Road To Patagonia' is showing nationally. Click to search for dates and times.