Pros: Gorgeous cinematography, effective use of jump-cuts, a fascinating story, and three excellent lead performances.
Cons: Certainly not mainstream, so don't expect nonstop action or neat, easy answers.
The Bottom Line: WALKABOUT is one of the great films of the 70s, not just as a stylistic achievement, but as a parable of the growing gulf between civilization and nature.
Note: the following review was originally written in June 2000 for my now-defunct AOL site.
Ever since the rise of human civilization, there has been an increasing rift between the “natural” world and the “civilized” world. Cities have become densely populated centers of technologically-bound living, with tall buildings and loud automobiles and geometrically precise constructions, while nature carries on its chaotic manner, almost as an act of defiance. In many Western nations, the transition between the cities and nature is gradual, with suburbs serving as buffers, so that the cities might keep the civilized in and the primal out. But in other nations, including Australia, there is little transition between these two spheres. They stare each other in the face, each trying its damnedest not to blink.
Of all the films I’ve seen about the relationship between nature and civilization, Nicolas Roeg’s WALKABOUT is the most elemental, and also the most poetic. The film begins by showing life in an Australian city (later revealed to be Adelaide), a young boy (Lucien John, son of the director) going to school, and a teenage girl (Jenny Agutter) taking singing lessons. We find out that the boy and girl are siblings soon afterwards, when we see them at their waterfront apartment complex, swimming in the pool (the first of many paradoxes Roeg presents in his attempt to rectify nature and civilization). We then see the boy and girl on a picnic in the outback with their father, who seems to be disturbed, harshly castigating his son and gazing at his daughter in a somewhat unhealthy way. He fires shots at them, they run away, and then he sets the car afire and kills himself, stranding them in the outback.
After spending days alone with very little food and water, they happen upon a young Aborigine (David Gumpilil), who is currently on a “walkabout”. The film explains this term with a title card at the beginning stating that at the age of 16, every Aboriginal male has to go off by himself into the outback and fend for himself, as a rite of passage to manhood. The boy and girl have difficulty communicating with the Aborigine, as he speaks no English and they don’t speak his language, but he decides to help them find their way through the desert.
Despite the problems they have in communicating, both the brother and the sister begin to relate to the Aborigine. The boy views his new friend as a playmate, someone with whom he can have adventures, and we see the young boy following the Aborigine as he gathers wood and hunts for food. The girl, however, relates to him differently. Up to the point where the Aborigine enters the picture, the only males the girl relates to are her younger brother and her father. As both the girl and the Aborigine are teenagers, they naturally view each other sexually, and we see her looking at him with... not desire, exactly, but curiosity.
The film cuts away from their journey across the desert on several occasions, but not for narrative reasons. There are no scenes where we see the mother worrying where her children have gone, or police investigating the death of the father, or schoolmates discussing their absences. There is a scene where we see a group of Aborigines climbing on the charred debris of the father’s car, a strange juxtaposition of nature and culture, and this is alternated with shots of the boy and girl climbing a tree with the Aborigine.
The second scene to which the film cuts away takes place at the home of an artist which the children pass by but do not see. In this scene, the artist and his family employ dozens of Aborigines (all dressed in T-shirts and shorts rather than tribal costume) to craft statues of natives and kangaroos to sell to tourists. The third scene involves a group of meteorologists who work with weather balloons (an attempt to use technology to figure out what nature has planned), and in this scene a group of men gaze with desire at the one woman in their group, but we sense that it isn’t the woman that matters so much as the fact that she is a woman. Since we see them holding playing cards with picture of naked women on them, this is abundantly clear.
The fourth and final scene involves a couple of hunters who are riding through the outback in a pickup truck. In the beginning of this scene, the Aborigine is out hunting for food for himself and the brother and sister. He comes upon an animal and grabs it by the horns in an attempt to wrestle it to the ground. Before he can do this, however, the hunters’ truck speeds past him, and we see the animal, dead, in the bed of the truck. We then follow the hunters into a field where many animals are feeding, and one hunter begins to shoot animal after animal. Why does he have to shoot more than one, Roeg seems to be saying. Whereas the Aborigine, who represents nature, kills to eat and thus to survive, these men are clearly hunting for sport.
A more jarring example of the difference between nature and civilization comes not long after we meet the Aborigine. As he hunts for food, he comes upon a kangaroo. He takes his spear and plunges it into the kangaroo. As he does this, Roeg cuts to a butcher cutting up kangaroo meat to sell. As the film cuts back and forth, the difference between the two situations becomes abundantly clear: whereas the customers of the butcher shop will now have another choice when buying meat, the Aborigine kills the kangaroo because it’s a case of the kangaroo’s death or the Aborigine’s.
Roeg seems to see view the dichotomy between nature and civilization as a matter of innocence versus experience. Civilization, which has presumably “evolved” beyond the concerns of the natural world, often exploits “less developed” cultures, and the idea of “leisure time” which developed as Western culture became industrialized, results in the need to fill our spare hours with activity, and can result in activities such as hunting, which bastardize an activity that was once necessary.
Worst of all, Roeg seems to be saying, civilization takes the natural idea of sexuality and attaches moral stigmas to it. Why do the men have naked-lady playing cards? Why do they wait for the woman to uncross her legs? Why does the father cast longing glances at his own daughter? Because it’s immoral, “naughty,” and as such, exciting. When we feel the need to cover our bodies for moral reasons (instead of reasons such as keeping out the chilly night air), we are moving away from the natural idea of innocence. This is most evident in the scene where the girl completely un-self-consciously swims nude (as opposed to “skinny-dipping”) in a lake while her brother and the Aborigine are closeby. She does not do this at home, mind you, but here in the natural setting, it feels perfectly natural to her. I admit, the first time I saw this film, this scene excited me sexually. But of course it does, since the girl is quite desirable in this film and excitement is a natural reaction to this. However, upon viewing it again, I saw it in the context of the girl’s lack of self-consciousness, and I almost felt like I was intruding.
Near the end of the film, the brother and sister and the Aborigine come upon an abandoned home and stay there for a few days. The Aborigine talks to the girl for a rather long period of time, and he seems to be genuinely pouring his heart out to her. But she can’t understand anything he says, and neither can we (the film has no subtitles). The day after this, he puts on body makeup and dances outside the house in a way that would suggest that he’s trying to excite her sexually, but she is confused and frightened by this, so she goes about her business and ignores him. The next morning, the girl and her little brother find the Aborigine hanging from a tree outside the home. In spite of all the time they have spent together and all they have been through, all connection has been lost, both between the siblings and the Aborigine, and between nature and civilization.
WALKABOUT was Nicolas Roeg’s first solo effort as a director (following PERFORMANCE, which was co-directed by Donald Cammell), and although he employs a number of techniques from the French New Wave (freeze-frames, location shooting, superimposition of images, intercutting based on theme rather than plot), he does so in a way that suits the film, rather than simply showing off. Likewise, the images in the film are sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying, often both (he also served as director of photography). As is fitting for a film wherein the main characters can’t communicate with words, Roeg tells his story primarily visually, and it works magnificently. He is aided by John Barry’s wonderful score.
Lucien John, as the young boy, comes off at times as an over-rehearsed child actor, but this befits his character, who as a young child of civilization should seem self-possessed. David Gumpilil gives a solid, naturalistic performance as the Aborigine, completely un-self-conscious up until his final scene, where he manifests himself as a sexual creature. Most impressive of all as Jenny Agutter as the girl, who is both innocent and experienced. Her brother looks up to her, always asking her questions, to which she often replies, “I don’t know.” She is experienced enough for him to ask, but not experienced enough to answer. And she is always completely convincing in her relationship with the Aborigine, especially in the scene where her younger brother asks if the older boy can borrow his shirt. She surveys his body, clearly “sizing him up” sexually, and then says “I don’t think it’s big enough for him” in a way that suggests, at least to the audience, that she’s not just talking about a shirt.
WALKABOUT was quite celebrated upon its original release in 1971, and then for years it was almost impossible to find, until it was finally restored and rereleased in 1996. This restoration includes a new ending of the film where the girl, now back in the city several years after her experience in the outback, dreams of herself, her brother, and the Aborigine swimming nude in the pond. Is this a memory, or a dream, or a fantasy, or some sort of secular Eden? Roeg deliberately allows us to come to our own conclusion, but I think what’s more important is how this scene portrays an innocence that has been lost and can never again be found. This scene alone says more than anything Mike Figgis could in THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE. Nature and civilization (and everything each of those terms implies) have fragmented the world, and while they once went hand in hand, they now barely recognize each other.
Nicolas Roeg's mystical masterpiece chronicles the physical, spiritual, and emotional journey of a sister and brother abandoned in the harsh Australia...More at HotMovieSale.com
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