Walkabout [DVD] [1971]

Nicholas Roeg's second film as director, Walkabout, is truly the most beautiful and incredible film I have ever seen (although I say this at the tender age of fourteen)! It tells the story of a father taking his two children, nineteen-year-old Jenny Agutter and six-year-old brother Lucien Roeg (the director's real-life son), on a picnic deep in the Australian outback, where he suddenly commits suicide and leaves them to fend for themselves. They make their way, bewildered and lost, through the hot, dry desert, having no contact with the outside world and fast running out of food and water, before encountering a teenage Aboriginal boy out on his test of endurance, a 'walkabout'. This walkabout, where a boy leaves the tribe and survives on his own for months, is part of his passage into manhood, and is a part of every Aboriginal boy's life. Having befriended the boy, the white children learn more of how to survive in the outback, while there is growing sexual chemistry in the relationship between the girl and the Aborigine. I won't spoil the rest of the film!

Nicholas Roeg's direction and camerawork are simply beautiful. He films wildlife in close-up, sometimes grainy images, and inserts surreal flashback sequences and comparisons between the Aboriginal and Western worlds. The film shows how prim, English Jenny Agutter becomes gradually more dishevelled and natural as she adapts, and the crucial turning point is when she swims naked in a pool. Her relationship with the Aborigine, which has to overcome poignant difficulties such as the language barrier and culture clash, is touchingly shown.

The acting is superb, making the story believable and moving. I was captivated from start to finish. The score, by John Barry, is perfect and atmospheric. The scenery, and Roeg's intense use of it and the animals found there, is spellbinding. All in all, the film is just so incredibly beautiful and moving that I felt I had to write a review. It is a genuine must-see.

This is one of the most beautiful, original and intriguing films of the last 50 years, and has for a very long time been among my favourites. Nic Roeg is the equal of any director (even David Lean) when it comes to sumptuous camera work (he was a cinematographer before he became a director), and when combined with his imaginative direction and storytelling, as here, the product is unique and breathtaking. Perfectly acted by the young Jenny Agutter accompanied by Roeg's own son Luc (billed as Lucien John) and David Gumpilil, I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone who enjoys cinema as art.
It is therefore a matter of great regret that when reissuing the DVD last year, UCA did not see fit to provide us with anything better than a copy of the original release: the DVD is apparently still not anamorphic, only letterbox, the quality of the transfer is merely adequate (hardly better than the old VHS tape) and the extras are laughably basic. When there exists a German anamorphic PAL version, and the Criterion Collection edition released in the US (also non-anamorphic, sadly) has a Roeg+Agutter commentary, it is sad that the country of the film's origin cannot boast a DVD release worthy of such a classic film. Owning, as I do, the original DVD in its jewel-box case (remember those?), I shall not be buying this reissue, but will wait and hope for a future release that does justice to this beautiful film.

It's unsettling to find that something you've treasured, now seen or met again, leaves you feeling a little flat. Did you change for the worse...have you become jaded...less open about feeling emotion? Or perhaps what you liked so much then simply isn't the wonder you thought it was. Note that elements of the plot are discussed.

A young girl (Jenny Agutter), 14, and her brother (billed as Lucien John, who actually was Nicolas Roeg's son, Luc) about 7, are driven far into the Australian outback by their father for a picnic. We've seen the family...the children at school, the mother preparing food while she smokes and looks distracted, the daughter swimming in the pool of their expensive apartment building, the father a businessman who stares out the window at her. For the picnic, the mother has stayed at home. The father is preoccupied in the car. He stops and the daughter lays out the food while her brother runs about among rocks. A shot rings out and the bullet hits the rocks by the boy. The father is firing. The daughter runs to her brother and scoops him up to hide. He shoots at them several more times, then demands that they come back so that they can return home. After a pause the father pours gasoline on the car, ignites it and shoots himself. The children are stranded in the middle of scrub desert with only what little food they can carry. They start walking. They eventually find some muddy water and fruit, but in the morning the water has disappeared and the fruit has all been eaten by birds. And they meet a 16-year-old Aboriginal boy (David Gulpilil) who is doing walkabout, the months' long initiation to manhood where he must survive, or not survive, by himself.

The heart of the story is how he helps them survive, how he looks after them, how sexual feelings arise, how the girl is shaped by her conventional attitudes and is unaware of the boy except as someone who will take them back to civilization, how the boy is shaped by his tribal rituals and has no other way to express himself. The climax of the boy's feelings and his attempt to express them is poignant and sad.

The film, however, is punctuated at the beginning and end and occasionally throughout with shots of civilized life which appear to make civilization less appealing than the primitive and direct life the boy brings to the girl and her brother. Is butchering to bring meat to the supermarket really any different than butchering a kangaroo or a lizard? Doesn't the treatment of Aborigines as children compare unfavorably with the resourcefulness and cheerfulness of the boy? Isn't killing for food better than using high-powered rifles to kill animals for sport? The movie is oblique enough so that these "civilized" moments don't overpower the basic story, but they are still there. Viewing the film now, they seemed unnecessary intrusions into what remains a very strong and affecting story of two young people utterly unable to communicate because of their own conventions.

The movie is beautifully photographed. Two sequences stand out for me. In one, after days in the desert and scrub, the three find themselves walking on through a forest of eucalyptus trees, palms and green scrub. The little brother is trotting along with the young man telling him a long and involved story about a boy on a ladder. Not a word is understood but they both enjoy the experience. The other sequence is in an abandoned, ruined farm house. The young man has painted himself and is dancing what appears to be a ritual of declaration to the girl. He can't express himself any other way and she can only show that she is frightened. He dances until he is exhausted. In the morning she and her brother find him in a resolution that is quite sad.

This is on balance a wonderful movie that, for me, hasn't aged as well as I thought it would. In particular, John Barry's film score seems now to be far too lush and intrusive. Concentrate on the story of the two young people, however, and you won't be disappointed. It's a film well worth having.