L'inizio del cammino

I first remember seeing this film as a late teenager in about 1979. Therefore what most vividly stuck in my mind was the lead character played by a beautiful blonde English girl, Jenny Agutter, Specifically the nude scenes of her swimming and washing.

On a less superficial level it is a film with a point-something along the lines of the graciousness of Aborigines and their ability to live in harsh surrounds, and the destructive nature of suburban life in a flat in a major city.

I think it would be a film, like Jedda, that will always be on reference for the Australian Outback, Aboriginals and the modern society which brought a European civilisation to their land.

Goodness gracious it's amazing how many reviewers missed the most obvious aspect of the film. This tale is about innocence and it approaches that from many different angles. As for Roeg practicing camera tricks-maybe today these are tricks but at the time the style was a pioneering method of telling and showing psychological elements, wasted on todays audiences. Roeg presents innocence in juxtaposition with the hardness and neuroses of society, not as WHITEMAN BAD but as society, modern society makes us very neurotic by taking away our innocence. Roeg makes an brilliant point and stylizes a mostly nonverbal experience by letting us journey with children all on the cusp of some new stage of growth. This movie is a small masterpiece!!

A teenaged girl (ever-lovely Jenny Agutter) and her young brother (Lucien John, a.k.a. Luc Roeg, the directors' son) are stranded in the desolate Australian outback. They really have no clear idea of where to go or what to do, but they meet a stranger who saves their lives. He is an aborigine (Aussie icon David Gulpilil) who is partaking in the ritual known as "Walkabout", wherein he temporarily leaves his tribe to go off on his own and live off the land.

The experiences between these three young people form the balance of this excellent film. The culture clash is immediate, as the two urbanized white kids struggle to make themselves understood by the aborigine. But they ultimately become rather inseparable.

Along the way, they encounter all sorts of flora and fauna. "Walkabout" is highly noteworthy for its respect for Nature, and is filled with many visual wonders. Given that director Nicolas Roeg had been a camera operator and cinematographer, it's no surprise that the film *looks* beautiful, and it's set to a haunting and lovely John Barry score.

Three highly engaging performances anchor the film. Agutter has a naturally sexy presence, and Roeg doesn't miss opportunities to let the camera take in every aspect of her body. His son does a nice job as the brother, avoiding being overly cutesy and always relaxed on screen. Gulpilil proved to be a real find in his film debut. Another Aussie favourite, John Meillon, appears briefly as the white kids' father.

"Walkabout" was largely improvised. The Edward Bond script, based on a novel by Donald G. Payne, was actually only 14 pages or so. Knowing this, it makes the acting that much more impressive, as the cast react instinctively to the scenes & settings.

Overall, this is one of *the* iconic Australian films, and is a must-see for movie lovers interested in cinema from this part of the world.

Eight out of 10.

In the late sixties and early seventies there was an unusual kind of excitement when you went to the movies. It probably had not happened since movies were first invented and has not happened since in commercial theatrical releases. This was the feeling of "I don't know what is going to happen next"! What happened one day was completely unexpected when I first saw the opening of "Walkabout". The introduction gave almost no clue as to what was to come next, but it was visually and aurally fascinating. The rapidity in which the plot shifted gears made you more sympathetic to the plight of our main characters. The sudden appearance of the Aborigine boy in the nick of time and his taking them under his wing. Then surprises of all surprises--our heroine does many nude scenes. Then her final look of yearning at the end suddenly explains it all. All the while Roeg is doing a travelogue of the Australian outback. This movie is pure genius from beginning to end. A must for any movie collection.

A remarkably potent little film about a couple of very proper English kids who get lost in the Australian outback and hitch up with an aborigine boy on his initiation quest (or "walkabout"). My mom took me to see it when I was ten, and I've been haunted by it ever since. With some understated yet disturbing themes of alienation and violence, as well as the first scenes of full nudity I had ever witnessed on screen, I've sometimes wondered whether mom knew what she was getting into when she took me along. According to the trailer in the letterbox edition, Parents' Magazine recommended the film "without reservation" for young and old alike, because it depicts "facts of life." While that may be true, times have changed, and I can't imagine anyone today describing this subtle and unsettling story as "family fare." Incredibly tame, on its face, by today's standards of sensory overload, its essential world-weariness and maturity is no longer a didactic priority in our age of overconfidence. Watching it recently, I was on guard for signs of the myth of the "noble savage"--the hackneyed, simplistic, and generally hypocritical pretension that pre-industrial and non-Western peoples are morally superior to decadent moderns, which is demeaning to both modern and "savage" alike. There are instances of it here--most notably when a couple of rifle-toting, four-wheeling hunters decimate the landscape--but the overall emphasis is on the parallels between aborigine and Western life. Even scenes of the transience and decay of modern civilization are mirrored by the life-and-death cycles of the wilderness. With so many underlying similarities, the real question is why the teenaged English girl cannot embrace, figuratively and literally, the young black man who has saved her life and provided so selflessly for her, even while her younger brother, in all his innocence, has never doubted that they are a family. Is it race? Culture? Or does it reach to more fundamental questions of boy and girl, man and woman, human and human? This film has held up remarkably well over the past 30 years, and is well worth a look.