Walkabout is an important modern film, a poetic, almost dreamy survival film that looks at the role of nature and of man's loss of connection with it. There's a beauty in the cinematography of the Australian outback and the dilapidation and corruption of the modern world. A teenage girl (Jenny Agutter - in her first film) and her younger brother (Lucien John) are taken on a picnic into the outback by their geologist father. He abandons them there and they are left wandering, lost and without food and water. Nearly dying they are found by a young Aboriginal boy (David Gulpilil) who is on his ritual 'walkabout', a separation from his tribe in preparation for adulthood. They tag along with him and find the world around them has more to offer than just death. There's a magical element to this story and there's a theme of sexual awakening in the girl and her saviour, but the clash of culture leads to tragedy. British director, Nicolas Roeg, here making his first solo directorial film, adds that unique style he often displayed that subverts the images so you aren't sure what is real and what maybe imagined. But this isn't a confusing film, far from it, this is a impressive story of modern day survival, against the odds, and a rediscovery of our place in the world. Highly recommended if you've never seen it.
Arthouse parable on the interface between colonialism and indigenous culture. This is a brilliant blend of atmospheric strains, including the ambient silences, John Barry's spiritual orchestral score, the otherness of the South Australian outback locations and Roeg's own woozy, narcotic images. The whole film is carried by a seventeen year old Jenny Agutter, Aboriginal debutant David Gulpilil and the director's eight year old son, Luc Roeg and hardly anyone else is on screen. Roeg's work was philosophical and idiosyncratic and usually incorporated improvisation, broken time structures and unusual casting. They make for a strong deep vibration of eeriness. The whole is then balanced by two contrasting conclusions, both disquieting in their different ways.
A strange, dreamy film, floating between innocence and something darker. Framed by two suicides, it feels like a hazy, sun-drenched nightmare—beautiful but unsettling. The outback is both a paradise and a trap, and the characters drift through it like ghosts. Hypnotic and bizarre, but emotionally distant.