Walkabout
Walkabout
Walkabout (Second Sight Films BluRay 2NDBR4160)
Available now in a stunning standard edition transfer to Blu Ray, Nic Roeg's love letter to the Australian landscape, based on James Vance Marshall's novel of the same name.
Taking as its starting point, a stiflingly hot day in an Australian city, the already famous Jenny Agutter (The Railway Children) plays an anonymous schoolgirl, learning enunciation in class, parrot fashion. Returning home to her family's comfortable flat, she picks up her little brother (Luc Roeg) and they get in their family's VW Beetle for a picnic in the outback. Father is a middle-aged serious, taciturn man, unable to bear the sound of her transistor radio. The air of anticipation in the little car can be cut with a knife.
They stop in a desolate part of the outback, and the girl lays out the picnic cloth and food. It is then that we are faced with the single most shocking scene in the film; Uncle begins shooting at the children, eventually killing himself after torching the car. Happening so quickly, the viewer barely has time to understand what is happening. The girl's maturity is such that she immediately takes on the role of parent and gets her brother to flee the scene before he sees the carnage.
The siblings wander the desert, slowly running out of water and energy, in their totally unsuitable school clothes, until they encounter an aboriginal boy (David Gulpilil). The boy is, unknown to them, taking part in the rite of 'Walkabout', where he must go out into the wasteland alone, and survive however he can. In stark contrast to the prim and proper clothes of the siblings, the aborigine is virtually naked, and carrying a future meal of dead lizards around his waist. It would be a problem to find anything these young people have in common, the siblings totally unprepared for life in the desert, and he, an expert hunter, fire raiser and master of his harsh environment. He speaks no English and they speak no aboriginal, yet they are able to make him understand that they are desperately in need of water, after the oasis they fortunately ran across runs dry overnight. He gamely shows them how to suck up water from the ground through a reed.
The film takes us through many such survival trials, even dipping a naked big toe into the dubious realm of the 'mondo movie' with its hunting and killing scenes, but the film is underpinned by a genuine sense of the beauty in nature and wildlife, and the happily dependent relationship between the siblings and their new friend. Taking the aboriginal boy as his model, little brother begins to act like him, even speaking in the same rhythms, to the visible discomfort of his sister. They wander from desert to scrubland to lush grassland to deserted farm and road, signalling a new phase in the film. Out hunting one day, stalking a water buffalo, a hunter in his off-road vehicle shoots at the creature with his rifle. The aboriginal boy's reaction is pivotal; his mingled disgust and sense of the world he is losing to so-called civilisation.
As the girl and her brother try to sleep in the deserted house, the aboriginal boy, his body painted in rich designs and patterns, dances around the house in what can only be a courtship ritual which ultimately fails to impress the girl. The next morning, the siblings return to the road, leaving the body of their friend hanging in the tree he chose to end his life in. This is undoubtedly the saddest moment in our story, but the longing look on the older girl's face, as, years later and held by her husband in his arms, she remembers her adolescent friend, is one you will not forget.
‘Walkabout' is available in this new 4K Scan on BluRay disc, including interviews with stars Jenny Agutter and Luc Roeg, producer Si Litvinoff, Danny Boyle, and more. The film is now rightly regarded as a classic of the new wave of Australian cinema but received mixed reviews on its release. See it and make up your own mind.
Scenester
5/8/22
Trailer;
Buy Here:
https://secondsightfilms.co.uk/products/walkabout-standard-edition
