Neither before nor since have so many great images been wrung out of the Australian landscape. It's an unattractive landscape and there is not, I would have thought, a lot that a cameraman can do with it; but each image is not only striking, but striking in a unique way.
Not that the photography is faultless. Every so often Roeg seems to get carried away by his own craft, so we get pointless freeze-frames, distracting hand-held camera shake, and the like. And the SELECTION of images is often heavy-handed beyond belief. The shot of the aboriginal boy killing and dismembering the kangaroo is interleaved with shots of a Sydney butcher likewise cutting a kangaroo into bits - as if to indicate that blacks and whites share the common bond of cutting up animal carcasses. Well, duh. And this is far from being Roeg's most embarrassing conceit. The low point is probably the very end, where a narrator appears out of nowhere to tell us what a character is feeling when it could hardly have been more obvious - by reciting poetry.
Still, if you can shoulder Roeg's artiness there's a lovely story about an English teenaged girl and an aboriginal teenaged boy. The English girl's brother tags along for the ride. He acts a source of dialogue in what would otherwise be an almost wordless film - in other words, he's a complete waste of space. Somehow the film loses momentum during the second half, and it's clear that SOMETHING is draining away energy fast. My theory is it's the boy. Roeg must also be blamed from straying from the point but he wouldn't have done so had the boy not been there. It's a pity, because all along I had a retinal image of a knock-down brilliant movie. The actual film comes so very close to matching the retinal image. Unfortunately the few differences prove fatal: `Walkabout' is simply a beautiful piece of cinema with a good premise, an arresting beginning, and a conclusion that WOULD have been moving had it not been preceded by so much tedium.
Not that the photography is faultless. Every so often Roeg seems to get carried away by his own craft, so we get pointless freeze-frames, distracting hand-held camera shake, and the like. And the SELECTION of images is often heavy-handed beyond belief. The shot of the aboriginal boy killing and dismembering the kangaroo is interleaved with shots of a Sydney butcher likewise cutting a kangaroo into bits - as if to indicate that blacks and whites share the common bond of cutting up animal carcasses. Well, duh. And this is far from being Roeg's most embarrassing conceit. The low point is probably the very end, where a narrator appears out of nowhere to tell us what a character is feeling when it could hardly have been more obvious - by reciting poetry.
Still, if you can shoulder Roeg's artiness there's a lovely story about an English teenaged girl and an aboriginal teenaged boy. The English girl's brother tags along for the ride. He acts a source of dialogue in what would otherwise be an almost wordless film - in other words, he's a complete waste of space. Somehow the film loses momentum during the second half, and it's clear that SOMETHING is draining away energy fast. My theory is it's the boy. Roeg must also be blamed from straying from the point but he wouldn't have done so had the boy not been there. It's a pity, because all along I had a retinal image of a knock-down brilliant movie. The actual film comes so very close to matching the retinal image. Unfortunately the few differences prove fatal: `Walkabout' is simply a beautiful piece of cinema with a good premise, an arresting beginning, and a conclusion that WOULD have been moving had it not been preceded by so much tedium.