WALKABOUT (1971)
Year: 1971
Country: Australia
Director: Nicholas Roeg
Criterion Spine Number: 10
Reviewed: March 2014
Country: Australia
Director: Nicholas Roeg
Criterion Spine Number: 10
Reviewed: March 2014
Walkabout is one of the most mysterious and challenging films I’ve ever seen. Like Picnic At Hanging Rock, its set in Australia and provides many mysteries and answers few. It’s all about the mysterious atmosphere and the wonderful cinematography, revealing things about the theme and the characters within the story. There are only really three main characters (the Aborigine, the girl and the young boy) but it becomes so that the landscape itself becomes a character, as all three characters are transformed by the time they spend together in Australia’s harsh wilderness. Many of the stories most interesting scenes are those that place a contrast between the natural world and civilisation, all done through editing. For example, in one scene the Aborigine kills a kangaroo and the film suddenly cuts to a butcher brutally attacking a piece of meat with a knife. There’s an even more interesting one where the Aborigine helps the children up a tree (and exploring it) which cuts between a group of Aboriginal people discovering the burnt out car where the two children have just come from. It’s almost like the two different peoples are discovering each other’s cultures and how this changes them as people. It’s not the only one of these films strange sidesteps. There’s an elusive scene with a weather-balloon (the meaning of which I really don’t get) and a famous scene of the girl swimming naked. In fact, elusive is a fairly good way to describe this film. It doesn’t give you any answers and we are forced to struggle towards our own conclusions and understanding of the film’s meaning. Watching this film with my parents proved to be both a fascinating and a frustrating experience. My mother soon grew bored and annoyed with the film, while my father just reflected on the amount of animal violence (as well as saying it was beautifully shot). Other people would have a different experience of the film. It’s so enigmatic and mysterious that if you showed it to 50 people, all of them would have a vastly different understanding of what the movie actually is. I find this totally fascinating and it’s one of the things I best like about the medium of cinema, that it’s sometimes so strange, so filled with conflicting but beautiful images, that not everyone sees the same thing. And while Walkabout may not be as mysterious as Picnic At Hanging Rock (because nothing can be, it is mystery personified), it’s almost a more interesting film because of the depth and density of its themes (man’s connection with nature, nature vs. civilisation, the way we still try to maintain society even when there is nothing left). This is a film I’ll end up returning to at key moments in my life because I’ll have a different understanding of what the film means to me. And that’s the sign of true greatness. When after you watch a film, and you want to see it just to get a better understanding of what it is saying. A challenging but ultimately fascinating work of cinema.
Best Scene: Blue remembered hills
Overall Verdict: 10
Overall Verdict: 10