With a montage of abandoned buffalo corpses, Roeg positions the white man’s hunting as cruel and excessive, in contrast to the Aboriginal’s purposeful communion with nature. This is explicated as the film progresses a scene involving weather balloonists stationed in the outback is overtly farcical, while footage of white hunters shooting buffalo for sport earns tears from Gulpilil’s silent observer. The purpose seems to be to preclude potential audience horror at Gulpilil’s character’s actions by reminding them of their own society’s complicity in butchery.īut the film doesn’t present these two cultures as equals, instead according the Aboriginal traditions with a sense of purity absent from ‘civilised’ culture. For example, when we see Gulpilil hunt and dismember a wild kangaroo for food, his efforts are intercut with a white-clad butcher hacking at chops and wrapping up hearts for his customers. Roeg regularly intercuts narratively-significant scenes with footage designed to emphasise this thematic thrust. While Walkabout is a story of its three children, it’s also unmistakably a story about the differences and similarities between their two cultures. This kind of juxtaposition is judiciously throughout Walkabout both to create an emotional affect and to contrast the perceptions of Western modernity and Aboriginal traditions. What’s It Really About? Tradition vs CivilisationĪfter an opening intertitle explaining the meaning of the term walkabout – “In Australia, when an Aborigine man-child reaches sixteen, he is sent out into the land… he Aborigines call it the WALKABOUT” – added by the studio in post-production, Roeg’s film commences a montage that juxtaposes images of the outback – red rocks, dusty plains, Sidney Nolan paintings come to life – with footage of Sydney – red brick walls, rows of schoolchildren, hordes of pedestrians – overlaid with traditional didgeridoo music. Watch The Movie Show's original ★★★★ ½ review Roeg’s filmography features some 1970s arthouse classics – from Venice horror Don’t Look Now to The Man Who Fell to Earth (starring David Bowie in his most enigmatically resonant role) – but Roeg’s resolutely anti-commercial, non-linear approach to cinema has seen his star wane in the decades since, give or take a Roald Dahl adaptation. Walkabout is Roeg’s second credit as director but his first solo feature film, having co-directed Performance with Donald Cammell. Walkabout was also the first film to be solely directed by Nicolas Roeg, who’d established himself as a cinematographer on the likes of John Schlesinger’s Far From the Madding Crowd and François Truffaut’s Farenheit 451. Gulpilil – erroneously credited as “Gumpilil” here – would go on to become one of Australia’s finest working actors, while Agutter continues to maintain a thriving career in the likes of Call the Midwife and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film launched the careers of actors Jenny Agutter and David Gulpilil, each only in their late teens during filming. This experimental adaptation of James Vance Marshall’s book The Children (since retitled Walkabout) uses its simplistic story – a young boy and teenage girl stranded in the outback befriend an Aboriginal boy on walkabout – to frame a coming of age story complicated by questions of race, civilisation and sexuality. Met with mixed reviews and dismal box office returns in Australia, Walkabout has since established itself as a significant film in the cinematic canon it boasts a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was classified as a “Great Movie” by Roger Ebert in 1997. Along with Wake in Fright – which also premiered at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival – Walkabout solidified an international perception of Australia’s outback as harsh, barren and exotic an iconography reinforced by the likes of Men at Work and Crocodile Dundee in the years to come. Made with American money by an English director and English screenwriter, it’s nonetheless one of the most important films about the Australian outback. Walkabout is one of those Australian films that… isn’t.
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