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114 reviews in total

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86 out of 94 people found the following review useful:
Landmark near masterpiece of the cultural clash between nature and civilisation, 25 April 2002

Author: Filmtribute from United Kingdom

Director Nicolas Roeg's (`Don't Look Now') cinematographic skills and admiration pay especial tribute to Walkabout's powerful combination of Australia's awesome scenic diversity and the sensual Jenny Agutter, and the whole effect is embellished by John Barry's sublimely magical score. I would hasten to add that as well as being very pleasing to watch, enhanced by Roeg's voyeuristic use of the camera, Agutter provides a skilful performance as a prejudiced unworldly teenager, who is naively unaware of the sexuality she exudes whether naked or wearing her high cut school skirt. Although it was a somewhat amusing shock to recently discover that a body double was employed for Agutter in the shower scenes for `An American Werewolf in London', no such deceit was used in this film. Immediately after filming `Walkabout', Agutter reprised her BBC serialisation role of two years earlier as Bobbie for Lionel Jeffries' sumptuous version of Edith Nesbit's `The Railway Children', ensuring her immortalization as an iconographic beauty. She graduated thirty years on into the role of the mother for a Carlton TV production and is currently involved in producing a film script about the life of the author.

On a deadly picnic into the desert a father (John Meillon; `Crocodile Dundee') inexplicably snaps, shooting at his two children before torching his car and turning the gun on himself. Now the children, absurdly kitted out in their formal school uniforms, are lost and carelessly lose their provisions, except for the transistor radio with its inane babble being another illustration of how hopeless our technology is against nature. Fortuitously they stumble upon an oasis and find their only saviour in the form of an Aborigine (David Gulpilil; `Rabbit Proof Fence') on a rites-of-passage walkabout. The seven year old boy (Lucien John, the director's son) happily has a child's ability to communicate with the Aborigine despite the language barrier, something his older sister never grasps, deftly demonstrated on their first encounter when she is increasingly frustrated by the lack of comprehension of her demands for water. Roeg crosscuts stunning kaleidoscopic images of the physical landscape and its critters, with the killing of animals and the domestic butchering of joints of meat to give a stark contrast between nature and civilisation. However, given this was his first solo effort, his overworked montages can be a little irritating and confusing, and show off the cinematographer rather than the director in Roeg.

The director emphasises the unrealised sexual tension by explicitly marrying shots of both the teenagers with suggestive trees in the form of intertwined human limbs, as well as providing us with a diverting interlude involving a group of meteorologists. The deeply sad misunderstanding of the two cultures gives poignancy to the film that is its strength, especially delineated by the Aborigine's tribal courtship dance for Agutter, which only serves to terrify her and increase her distrust. Her lack of emotion for their former helpmate is staggering. When faced with a dangling corpse the girl asks trivial questions of her brother about his breakfast whilst pointlessly picking ants off the body. The tragic outcome is also indicative of the current state of Aboriginal life expectancy with a higher proportion dying through accident, assault and self-harm than any other Australian demographic group.

The failure of her parents to prepare her for the change from childhood may have contributed to the tragedy, and it is only on reflection years later, living the same life as her parents and similarly caged in an apartment block, that Agutter's character senses that maybe she missed her chance. It is interesting to note that the children are deliberately English to highlight the cultural clash between the European settlers and the original inhabitants of this ancient land, and I wonder if similarly white Australians would have had any more understanding of the indigenous customs of the Aborigine boy. `Walkabout' is a far more visual depiction of sexual awakening colliding with alien cultures than that other famous picnic that goes horribly wrong in Peter Weir's `Picnic at Hanging Rock' (which this predates by four years), with its metaphorically implied unease centred on a sacred Aboriginal site that eventually destroys the established order of a Ladies College.

`Walkabout' is as relevant today as when it was released in the era of ‘70's industrialisation with the Kakadu National Park once again under threat from a new uranium mine on its boundary. The Northern Territory's tribe Mirrar is currently involved in this dispute over land rights and excavations, although mining was temporarily ceased on Aboriginal land in the mid 1990's. This is a sensitive issue as Australia's economy relies on the export of uranium in the production of nuclear power, and Aborigines oppose the exploitation of the Earth's resources for profit. The company at the centre of this discord also operates the Ranger mine which is depicted along with the rock band Midnight Oil (well known for their campaigning land rights missive `Beds Are Burning') in eX de Medici's `Nothing's As Precious As A Hole In The Ground', a recent acquisition by Australia's National Portrait Gallery.

Despite last year's rush by some of Hollywood's well-known directors returning home to make Aboriginal films, including Phillip Noyce's `Rabbit Proof Fence' (released 21 February) about the ‘Stolen Generation', and `Yolngu Boy' which did well at a film festival in Colorado, I sadly suspect very few of us in the UK are likely to see them. Apparently there has not been a commercial success for a black-themed movie since 1955's `Jedda', the first Australian feature to star Aboriginal actors. If the hope of a ‘70's New Wave style revival is to be realised for Australian cinema, surely it is time for the industry worldwide to wake up to the fact that a wealth of film exists outside of Hollywood, and that the viewing public may actually welcome some variety.

With the release of the director's full cut in 1998 both the DVD and the video are unusually available for the UK as well as the US from Amazon.

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55 out of 60 people found the following review useful:
INNOCENCE, 14 April 2004
Author: sunsix from glendale, CO

Goodness gracious it's amazing how many reviewers missed the most obvious aspect of the film. This tale is about innocence and it approaches that from many different angles. As for Roeg practicing camera tricks-maybe today these are tricks but at the time the style was a pioneering method of telling and showing psychological elements, wasted on todays audiences. Roeg presents innocence in juxtaposition with the hardness and neuroses of society, not as WHITEMAN BAD but as society, modern society makes us very neurotic by taking away our innocence. Roeg makes an brilliant point and stylizes a mostly nonverbal experience by letting us journey with children all on the cusp of some new stage of growth. This movie is a small masterpiece!!

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34 out of 37 people found the following review useful:
The Australian outback comes alive., 28 February 1999

Author: Tophee from Morrisville, PA

Superb cinematography, the Australian outback comes alive in this film of self discovery and regret. Agutter plays the English girl brilliantly, incapable of comprehending anybody or anything that doesn't conform to her middle-class values and upbringing. Roeg is also excellent as her brother, adapting to each and every change in circumstance as only children can. I have watched this movie many times, and always get something new from it. Highly recommended to anyone, although parents might want to watch it before letting their kids see it.

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29 out of 34 people found the following review useful:
Another opinion, 11 July 2005

Author: Joe Williams (jdwilliams-2) from United States

As far as comments about Roeg's going overboard with his message of "nature/aborigine good, industrialisation/white men bad," this is a simplistic way of reading it. First of all, every director has his or her own style, and Roeg started as a cinematographer--his movies tend to contain long, meditative (or, boring, depending on one's view) visual passages. Roeg floods the screen with cascades of images, by turns repetitive and contrasting, much as a poet uses the sounds and rhythms of words, as well as their semantic content, to create "meaning" in the context of the poem.

To expect Roeg not to dwell on images is to expect Tolstoy not to go off on 20-page rants about how the lack of Napoleon would necessitate another to fill his historical role. One overlooks idiosyncracies in one's friends.

I found the movie much more powerful than I expected. My only disappointment with the Criterion DVD release is with the commentaries. I would love to have heard more about the story, and it would have been nice to have heard from David Gulpilil, whose role as the aborigine was a watershed in Australian cinema, as noted in the IMDb article on his career.

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26 out of 30 people found the following review useful:
Who Says Silent Cinema Is Dead?, 8 June 2005

Author: loza-1

Although this is a sound film, and the characters talk to one another, this film could have been made just as well in the 1920s. It does not really need sound.

The film is about nature, and man's relationship with it. If a civilised person were left out in the desert, then they would soon die. But, as this film shows, there are people and creatures living out there quite happily.

The film has been criticised for having a weak beginning and a weak end. But where does the story of this film start? And where and when would you end it? Yes you can end it when the two children get back to civilisation. But does the story end there? No. Because of their experiences, things are never going to be the same again. And for them, the story has not finished, it is only just beginning.

I have seen this film several times and I notice something different every time I see it.

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28 out of 34 people found the following review useful:
A very beautiful and mysterious film., 23 March 2002

Author: Sean Choi from CA, USA

"In Australia, when an Aborigine man-child reaches sixteen, he is sent out into the land. For months he must live from it. Sleep on it. Eat of its fruit and flesh. Stay alive. Even if it means killing his fellow creatures. The Aborigines call it the WALKABOUT. This is the story of a 'WALKABOUT'." Thus begins Nicolas Roeg's 1971 debut feature, "Walkabout", one of the most beautiful, mystical, and magical film I've had the privilege of seeing as a filmgoer. Seeing it again recently on the beautiful Criterion edition DVD, I was once more captivated by this film as it slowly worked its magic on me. The "plot" of "Walkabout" is simplicity itself: a teenage girl (Jenny Agutter) and her little brother (the director's son in real life, Lucien John Roeg--billed "Lucien John" on the credits) are stranded on an Australian outback as their father, who took them out for a picnic, suddenly and inexplicably commits suicide. The two of them are thus left wandering by themselves and it looks as if they will die in the vast wilderness--until they encounter an Aborigine boy who is on his "walkabout," an Aborigine rite of passage into manhood. For a time these kids travel together as a trio and the Aborigine's skills in hunting and finding water allow them to survive. And although the girl and her brother will eventually find their way back to civilization, for a brief unspecified length of time the exotic Australian outback becomes a wondrous and mystical place where their story of survival unfolds. If you've seen this film, you know that the brief synopsis above doesn't really touch what is so special about "Walkabout." And that is because "Walkabout" isn't really about plot, like more conventional films. It is one of those rare films like Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock," Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," and Wim Wender's "Wings of Desire" which are all about evoking a kind of sad and bittersweet emotional response from us. I think that is what "Walkabout" is mostly about. The overall impact of this film "hits you in the heart" and very impressionable viewers might be stirred in their emotions to the point of swooning in the scene at the end where the girl, now a married woman, remembers her idyllic days happily swimming in one of the outback's water holes Nicolas Roeg was not only the director of "Walkabout" but also its cinematographer. And his photography in this film is unbearably beautiful and sumptuous. "Walkabout" is without a doubt one of the most gorgeous color films ever made. Shot on location in the Australian outback--perhaps one of the most exotic places on earth--"Walkabout" has a visual grandeur that is reminiscent of passages from David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" and John Ford's "The Searchers." Never has the "voodoo of location shooting" (as Werner Herzog likes to call it) been more manifest than in this film. In fact, the exotic and unique location in which it was shot, coupled with Roeg's masterful cinematography, feels like one of the main characters in "Walkabout." The film's location adds a mystical (almost spiritual) and meditative dimension to it which lingers in the viewer's mind--haunting it long after the film is over. If Roeg's photography is one of the film's main characters, so is John Barry's legendary and justly famous score. Maybe it's the harp used in the score, or the subtle billowing quality of its composition (i.e. the way its beautiful melody gently builds and builds), but the music in this film simply soars. It moves me like no other score I've ever heard. It feels completely transcendent, as if it exists outside time and space altogether--but gently swooping down from time to time, "kissing" this film's images with aching sweetness. All of the above elements work together to form a film-viewing experience that inspires both beauty and awe in us. The film's message is not necessarily that life in the outback is better than life in a modern civilization, but that no matter where you happen to find yourself (even if that happens to be a wilderness like the Australian outback), if you have resources that meet your basic needs, it can become your "home" for a time. And that afterwards there is bitter-sweetness in reminiscing about those "good times" you were fortunate enough to have--to which you can never return again.

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28 out of 35 people found the following review useful:
Outstanding commentary on cultural clashes, though a bit puzzling at times., 1 May 1999

Author: Aldanoli from Ukiah, California

A sometimes puzzling, sometimes enigmatic, but always interesting movie, although it is a bit easier to understand if you've read the novel on which it's based. Jenny Agutter is particularly good as the English girl who suddenly finds herself stranded in the desert with her younger brother, and was at just the right age--about 16--to play the part. David Gulpilil as the aborigine youth "gone walkabout" who rescues them is also excellent. The uncomfortable contrasts between European and aboriginal cultures are undeniably accurate, and the use of A. E. Housman's poem, "Into my heart an air that kills" adds additional poignancy to the already bittersweet ending.

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17 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
Beautiful lead character and a film with a subtle message, 17 April 2004

Author: Andy Ethell from Ireland

I first remember seeing this film as a late teenager in about 1979. Therefore what most vividly stuck in my mind was the lead character played by a beautiful blonde English girl, Jenny Agutter, Specifically the nude scenes of her swimming and washing.

On a less superficial level it is a film with a point-something along the lines of the graciousness of Aborigines and their ability to live in harsh surrounds, and the destructive nature of suburban life in a flat in a major city.

I think it would be a film, like Jedda, that will always be on reference for the Australian Outback, Aboriginals and the modern society which brought a European civilisation to their land.

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28 out of 45 people found the following review useful:
Oh the 70s..., 4 April 2006

Author: bowlofsoul23 from Turkey

Before specifically talking about the film, I just have to ponder the following question: Why do all films that take place in the 70s feel so 70s? Considering the fact that this movie was made in 1971, one must conclude that Roeg was a trend-setter. For my personal tastes, he went a little overboard with the freeze frames, jump cutting, radical though hardly subtle politics, and juxtaposition of jarring images. Aboriginal tearing into meat, Australian white butcher cutting meat in a sanitized setting, back to the Aboriginal, back to the butcher, and back again to the Aboriginal. And what's with all the scenes involving decomposing bodies? Yes, savage innocence, evil imperialists, death, nature vs. industrialization, corruption of a purer way of life, we see all these themes, but it would have been preferable to see it without being visually and aurally clubbed over the head like the poor animals in the outback are.

Disregarding that aspect, I quite liked the story of two white children, one very young, the other pubescent (and lingeringly shot), who get stuck in the Outback after their patriarchal and borderline psycho father is blown up. They then struggle to make it in the wild, and come upon an Aboriginal boy who is on a "walkabout", or a rite of passage journey that boys that age traditionally undertake in order to prove their worthiness as a man. This of course, becomes their walkabout, and they too become "wild" and free. Eventually, they make it back to "civilization", the first sign of this being a beautiful shot of the girl (whose name we never know- thus making it even more symbolic), coming into a clearing and gliding her hand over a man-made fence while walking backwards. What could be more symbolic of the Western values of property and ownership than a fence? She is ecstatic to be near an environment she holds dear, but her younger and more adaptable brother is less so, and the Aboriginal boy is even less so, which leads to tragic consequences.

The movie feels dated, not only in terms of camera-work but also thematically. It's no longer the job of white people to romanticize "savage" peoples, but rather to allow peoples to define themselves. Perhaps Roeg, in some small way, recognized this, thus choosing to have the Aboriginal boy speak his language and not provide us with subtitles. We could never understand totally, though we can sympathize.

cococravescinema.blogspot.com

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18 out of 28 people found the following review useful:
What's this talk about "Walkabout", 30 July 2000

Author: rlcsljo from Hollywood, ca

In the late sixties and early seventies there was an unusual kind of excitement when you went to the movies. It probably had not happened since movies were first invented and has not happened since in commercial theatrical releases. This was the feeling of "I don't know what is going to happen next"! What happened one day was completely unexpected when I first saw the opening of "Walkabout". The introduction gave almost no clue as to what was to come next, but it was visually and aurally fascinating. The rapidity in which the plot shifted gears made you more sympathetic to the plight of our main characters. The sudden appearance of the Aborigine boy in the nick of time and his taking them under his wing. Then surprises of all surprises--our heroine does many nude scenes. Then her final look of yearning at the end suddenly explains it all. All the while Roeg is doing a travelogue of the Australian outback. This movie is pure genius from beginning to end. A must for any movie collection.

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