User reviews

Although this is a sound film, and the characters talk to one another, this film could have been made just as well in the 1920s. It does not really need sound.

The film is about nature, and man's relationship with it. If a civilised person were left out in the desert, then they would soon die. But, as this film shows, there are people and creatures living out there quite happily.

The film has been criticised for having a weak beginning and a weak end. But where does the story of this film start? And where and when would you end it? Yes you can end it when the two children get back to civilisation. But does the story end there? No. Because of their experiences, things are never going to be the same again. And for them, the story has not finished, it is only just beginning.

I have seen this film several times and I notice something different every time I see it.

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.

As far as comments about Roeg's going overboard with his message of "nature/aborigine good, industrialisation/white men bad," this is a simplistic way of reading it. First of all, every director has his or her own style, and Roeg started as a cinematographer--his movies tend to contain long, meditative (or, boring, depending on one's view) visual passages. Roeg floods the screen with cascades of images, by turns repetitive and contrasting, much as a poet uses the sounds and rhythms of words, as well as their semantic content, to create "meaning" in the context of the poem.

To expect Roeg not to dwell on images is to expect Tolstoy not to go off on 20-page rants about how the lack of Napoleon would necessitate another to fill his historical role. One overlooks idiosyncracies in one's friends.

I found the movie much more powerful than I expected. My only disappointment with the Criterion DVD release is with the commentaries. I would love to have heard more about the story, and it would have been nice to have heard from David Gulpilil, whose role as the aborigine was a watershed in Australian cinema, as noted in the IMDb article on his career.

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!!

"In Australia, when an Aborigine man-child reaches sixteen, he is sent out into the land. For months he must live from it. Sleep on it. Eat of its fruit and flesh. Stay alive. Even if it means killing his fellow creatures. The Aborigines call it the WALKABOUT. This is the story of a 'WALKABOUT'." Thus begins Nicolas Roeg's 1971 debut feature, "Walkabout", one of the most beautiful, mystical, and magical film I've had the privilege of seeing as a filmgoer. Seeing it again recently on the beautiful Criterion edition DVD, I was once more captivated by this film as it slowly worked its magic on me. The "plot" of "Walkabout" is simplicity itself: a teenage girl (Jenny Agutter) and her little brother (the director's son in real life, Lucien John Roeg--billed "Lucien John" on the credits) are stranded on an Australian outback as their father, who took them out for a picnic, suddenly and inexplicably commits suicide. The two of them are thus left wandering by themselves and it looks as if they will die in the vast wilderness--until they encounter an Aborigine boy who is on his "walkabout," an Aborigine rite of passage into manhood. For a time these kids travel together as a trio and the Aborigine's skills in hunting and finding water allow them to survive. And although the girl and her brother will eventually find their way back to civilization, for a brief unspecified length of time the exotic Australian outback becomes a wondrous and mystical place where their story of survival unfolds. If you've seen this film, you know that the brief synopsis above doesn't really touch what is so special about "Walkabout." And that is because "Walkabout" isn't really about plot, like more conventional films. It is one of those rare films like Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock," Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," and Wim Wender's "Wings of Desire" which are all about evoking a kind of sad and bittersweet emotional response from us. I think that is what "Walkabout" is mostly about. The overall impact of this film "hits you in the heart" and very impressionable viewers might be stirred in their emotions to the point of swooning in the scene at the end where the girl, now a married woman, remembers her idyllic days happily swimming in one of the outback's water holes Nicolas Roeg was not only the director of "Walkabout" but also its cinematographer. And his photography in this film is unbearably beautiful and sumptuous. "Walkabout" is without a doubt one of the most gorgeous color films ever made. Shot on location in the Australian outback--perhaps one of the most exotic places on earth--"Walkabout" has a visual grandeur that is reminiscent of passages from David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" and John Ford's "The Searchers." Never has the "voodoo of location shooting" (as Werner Herzog likes to call it) been more manifest than in this film. In fact, the exotic and unique location in which it was shot, coupled with Roeg's masterful cinematography, feels like one of the main characters in "Walkabout." The film's location adds a mystical (almost spiritual) and meditative dimension to it which lingers in the viewer's mind--haunting it long after the film is over. If Roeg's photography is one of the film's main characters, so is John Barry's legendary and justly famous score. Maybe it's the harp used in the score, or the subtle billowing quality of its composition (i.e. the way its beautiful melody gently builds and builds), but the music in this film simply soars. It moves me like no other score I've ever heard. It feels completely transcendent, as if it exists outside time and space altogether--but gently swooping down from time to time, "kissing" this film's images with aching sweetness. All of the above elements work together to form a film-viewing experience that inspires both beauty and awe in us. The film's message is not necessarily that life in the outback is better than life in a modern civilization, but that no matter where you happen to find yourself (even if that happens to be a wilderness like the Australian outback), if you have resources that meet your basic needs, it can become your "home" for a time. And that afterwards there is bitter-sweetness in reminiscing about those "good times" you were fortunate enough to have--to which you can never return again.

Before specifically talking about the film, I just have to ponder the following question: Why do all films that take place in the 70s feel so 70s? Considering the fact that this movie was made in 1971, one must conclude that Roeg was a trend-setter. For my personal tastes, he went a little overboard with the freeze frames, jump cutting, radical though hardly subtle politics, and juxtaposition of jarring images. Aboriginal tearing into meat, Australian white butcher cutting meat in a sanitized setting, back to the Aboriginal, back to the butcher, and back again to the Aboriginal. And what's with all the scenes involving decomposing bodies? Yes, savage innocence, evil imperialists, death, nature vs. industrialization, corruption of a purer way of life, we see all these themes, but it would have been preferable to see it without being visually and aurally clubbed over the head like the poor animals in the outback are.

Disregarding that aspect, I quite liked the story of two white children, one very young, the other pubescent (and lingeringly shot), who get stuck in the Outback after their patriarchal and borderline psycho father is blown up. They then struggle to make it in the wild, and come upon an Aboriginal boy who is on a "walkabout", or a rite of passage journey that boys that age traditionally undertake in order to prove their worthiness as a man. This of course, becomes their walkabout, and they too become "wild" and free. Eventually, they make it back to "civilization", the first sign of this being a beautiful shot of the girl (whose name we never know- thus making it even more symbolic), coming into a clearing and gliding her hand over a man-made fence while walking backwards. What could be more symbolic of the Western values of property and ownership than a fence? She is ecstatic to be near an environment she holds dear, but her younger and more adaptable brother is less so, and the Aboriginal boy is even less so, which leads to tragic consequences.

The movie feels dated, not only in terms of camera-work but also thematically. It's no longer the job of white people to romanticize "savage" peoples, but rather to allow peoples to define themselves. Perhaps Roeg, in some small way, recognized this, thus choosing to have the Aboriginal boy speak his language and not provide us with subtitles. We could never understand totally, though we can sympathize.

cococravescinema.blogspot.com

Superb cinematography, the Australian outback comes alive in this film of self discovery and regret. Agutter plays the English girl brilliantly, incapable of comprehending anybody or anything that doesn't conform to her middle-class values and upbringing. Roeg is also excellent as her brother, adapting to each and every change in circumstance as only children can. I have watched this movie many times, and always get something new from it. Highly recommended to anyone, although parents might want to watch it before letting their kids see it.

It is at first sight an uncharacteristic story. A privileged British family--mother, geologist father, adolescent daughter, small son--live in Sydney, Australia. While on a picnic one day, the posh siblings get stranded in the Outback by themselves, not knowing exactly where they are. The children, the teen (Jenny Agutter) and the kid (John, Roeg's six-year-old son) wander with little chance of survival, until young aborigine (David Gumpilil) find them. He interrups his own 'Walkabout', a rite of passage, to teach them to survive, leading to unexpected consequences. A boy and girl face the challenge of the world's last frontier !. Dangers they had never known before...! A people they had never seen before...A boy and a girl lost in the desert, nothing between them but death and an aborigine !. The Aborgine and the girl 30,000 years apart ...together !. Just about the most different film you'll ever see !.

Based on a novel by James Vance Marshall, this is a wonderfully told and shot story by Nicolas Roeg, dealing with a pair of brothers who are abandoned in the Australian outback when their father kills himself. There's a marvelous depicting about a rite of passage, 'the walkout', but resulting in betrayal and tragedy. Filmed in its entirety in the Australian wilderness. In fact, the shimmering light and colour, the conflict of cultures and the emergence of semi-mystical sexual forces on the desert outdoors make this 'Walkout' film as ¨The man who fell to Earth' or 'Bad Timing'. A good movie only detracted by some implausibly romantic moments.

It packs gorgeous cinematography by director Nicolas Roeg himself, showing splendidly the Outaback landscapes, helped by cameraman Anthony Richmond. As well as sensitive and enjoyable musical score by classic composer John Barry. This nice motion picture was competently directed by Nicolas Roeg, but being slow-moving and contains some inescrutable scenes. Roeg's second movie, made after the massively delayed ¨Performance¨. Roeg was a prestigious cameraman who made a few good movies, such as "Castaway" , "Eureka", "Performance" , "Insignificance" and his most known films: "Man who fell to Earth" , along with "Don't Look Now". Walkabout (1971) rating : 7.5/10 , attractive film , being stunning to watch. However , if you let its fantastic and enthralling magic seduce you, you'll understand why it has been deemed a Cult Movie. Well worth seeing .

A sometimes puzzling, sometimes enigmatic, but always interesting movie, although it is a bit easier to understand if you've read the novel on which it's based. Jenny Agutter is particularly good as the English girl who suddenly finds herself stranded in the desert with her younger brother, and was at just the right age--about 16--to play the part. David Gulpilil as the aborigine youth "gone walkabout" who rescues them is also excellent. The uncomfortable contrasts between European and aboriginal cultures are undeniably accurate, and the use of A. E. Housman's poem, "Into my heart an air that kills" adds additional poignancy to the already bittersweet ending.

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.

Cinematographer Nicolas Roeg turned first-time director here with a highly visceral and thought-provoking film about two Australian city children stranded in the hot, dusty Outback. They meet a young Aborigine and hope he will lead them back to civilization. Lots of artistic shots of insects and extreme closeups of fascinating reptiles have convinced people this must be a masterpiece (funny, Randal Kleiser's "The Blue Lagoon" had similar shots, and no one praises that!). The story exposition is rather muffled, and the finale is pretentious, but Jenny Agutter certainly gives the film a boost (her beauty is astonishing, especially in a memorable nude swimming scene). Overall, Roeg's position on these characters and their plight feels somewhat indifferent; he's as aloof from them as he is from the audience, and the viewer may walk away feeling they were abandoned as well. **1/2 from ****

Walkabout (1971)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

A girl (Jenny Agutter) and her young brother (Luc Roeg) find themselves in the Australian outback trying to survive after being left out there. Soon they run across a hunter (David Gulpilil) who is out there on a "walkabout."

Nicolas Roeg's WALKABOUT is without question one of the greatest looking films that you're ever going to see. I've often said that this film did for the outback what Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODDYSEY did for space. I mean, whenever you think of a dessert setting your mind can't help but go to the images on display throughout this poetic look at struggle.

For my money the greatest thing done by Roeg is just the atmosphere and setting that he creates. There's not too much dialogue but what really moves the film is the beautiful music score and cinematography. The images that we view are breathtaking from the opening scenes to the closing ones. The stuff in the outback is beautifully captured and there's no doubt that the setting comes to life. The music score also perfectly captures the innocence and beauty of everything going on.

The performance by the three leads are another major plus. Agutter rightfully became a name after this picture and it's easy to see why. The role here certainly isn't flashy but the actress is able to do so much with such little dialogue. Her eyes certainly tell you everything you need to know and there's a very intelligent performance. You can see her intelligence without her saying a word. Both Roeg and Gulpili are equally as great in their supporting roles.

WALKABOUT is certainly a very poetic film that has some of the greatest images that you're ever going to see. It's really a film full of life and the way it plays out holds your attention from start to finish.

Blistering and hypnotic. About juxtaposition, communication, and 'noise'. As if viewed from the impassive non-judgemental view of a passing creature. Roeg is a master storyteller and artist and this film effortlessly tells its story with a mixture of obvious and subtle clues, and while immersing you in this walkabout, it manages to not sacrifice a single beautiful image, it's stunning. Even in a coming of age story, it manages to craft images together to allow the producing of a non-gratuitously sexualised, strong, young, female lead. It's not a film for everyone but it is absolutely one of the best films ever made.

The title of "Walkabout" is about a "rite de passage" of Aboriginals. To become a man an Aboriginal boy had to survive on his own in the wilderness for some time.

In "Walkabout" such a boy meets a teenage girl and her little brother, who has got lost in the Australian wilderness. They move on together.

The teenage girl and her brother depend on the Aboriginal boy for their survival. The Aboriginal boy depends on the girl with respect to his sexual desires, so the film could develop into an arthouse form of "The blue lagoon" (1980, Randal Kleiser).

This is however not the case. In the first place because the girl has no romantic interest in the boy. In the second place because the emphasis of the fllm is much more on cultural differences and surviving in a beautiful but als brutal nature than on romance. A comparison with "Dersu Uzala" (1975, Akira Kurosawa) is much more obvious.

Nicolas Roeg began his career as cinematographer. "Walkabout" was his debut film as a director. Also his next film "Don't look now" (1973) was of a high quality. Thereafter his oeuvre became more uneven, with sometimes a pleasant outlier, such as "The witches" (1990).

WALKABOUT is quite simply a stunning cinematic experience. Directed and photographed by Nicolas Roeg, it tells of an English schoolgirl (Jenny Agutter) and her brother (Lucien John) getting lost in the Australian outback, and encountering an Aborigine (David Gulpilil), who looks after them and ensures their survival. In an opening title-card Roeg tells us that a "walkabout" is an aboriginal ritual whereby young men leave their families and set out on their own to discover themselves as well as prove their masculinity. In this film all three adolescents are in a sense on "walkabout": while the Aborigine learns to hunt for himself as well as provide nourishment for the other two, the schoolgirl learns to divest herself of her Englishness, as well as her inhibitions, as she swims naked in a rock-pool. Her brother sets aside his worldly toys and learns how to gather leaves, as well as pick up some phrases in Aborigine language so as to be able to communicate successfully.

Roeg sets this coming-of-age story within the larger theme of the destruction of the natural landscape by humankind. The film opens on the streets of Sydney, choked with cars and box-like apartments; this contrasts starkly with the wide open expanses of the outback where the sun shines pitilessly all day, and both human beings and animals have to learn how to eke out an existence as best they can. This they achieve partly by cunning and partly by making use of natural resources; by civilized standards, they might seem primitive (for example, the Aborigine's wooden spear) but they are stunningly effective. Brought up in the genteel tradition of public (in American, private) schools, the girl and her brother find the Aborigine's behavior rather distasteful at times, but gradually they learn how to adopt his mores.

Yet the Aboriginal way of life, just like the life of the animals that people the outback, is under threat. This is emphasized through a series of violent juxtapositions and stop-frames, as white hunters come in their Land-Rovers armed with shotguns and kill anything that moves indiscriminately. They gut and skin the corpses, leaving the skeletons to rot in the burning sun, infested with maggots. Roeg makes a powerful point by juxtaposing such sequences with more mundane images of a butcher in a city shop cutting meat for customers, as if to remind us of where our weekly meat actually comes from. The film ends with a similar image as the schoolgirl, now unhappily married to a respectable white Australian, is shown cutting meat on a chopping-board while her husband prattles on about his latest promotion at work.

The film contains some stunning visual images: the sight of the Aborigine shadowed against the setting sun reminds us of his intimate connection to the land. An aerial pan of the rock-pools, showing the schoolgirl swimming naked (not without a certain amount of scopophilic desire on the director's part) shows how she has happily cast off the trappings of civilization and returned to nature. A long shot of the girl and her brother trying to climb a mountain reminds us of human insignificance in this vast and deserted landscape. And finally, at the end of the film, the three youngsters are shown happily bathing once again the rock pool, all of them naked, all enjoying themselves without a shred of racial or sexual prejudice. This image offers us a glimpse of what could be, if only we were to set aside our perception of (culturally constructed) differences.

Even after forty years, WALKABOUT communicates a powerful message to audiences about the importance of communal living as the source of social and moral harmony. A true classic.

Oblique and tiring to watch, a director preferring directionlessness and a cast clearly requiring a lot of actorly input to keep barely scripted scenes afloat 'Walkabout' has it's viewing limitations. It does have its points of credit: the visual style sometimes produces a sense of awkwardness in the characters and sometimes builds a sense of beauty in the surroundings. The juvenile actors are actually mainly a credit, but they have to be because they were clearly operating with a minimalist script which appears to have left noticeable relics in the finished film in the form of some reshoots and re editing of sequences in a very ad-hoc and reactive manner.

The cinematography is nice: use of lighting and focus ,and depth of view, are contrasted with well studied closeups of humans and animals.

The sound is well mixed and designed with a worthy film score helping to give the impression that this film has a narrative journey, a narrative pace and a narrative purpose. It is just a trick of the scoring because this film has none of those things but if u listen more than you watch you would be forgiven for thinking that it did.

I find that the best moments of 'Walkabout' are in the well caught awkwardness of characters: all adult and juvenile characters have several moments, singularly, and in group contexts, of visually recognisable human awkwardness and sometimes a self awareness of this.

Sex and nudity are obvious drivers of this. Dirtiness and disorientation, malnutrition and exposure are others. They are the drivers of the main interest of this film. It's a teenage, adolescent, juvenile, youths film. It's a film that could about modernities invention of the teenager and how useless teenagers are once they exist. Interestingly only the primary school aged young boy comes through the film with a growth of character and understanding. The adults and adolescents do not.

The direction and acting are well done for the most part but clearly the script and limitations in preproduction leave actors and director struggling to hold scenes together, or, sometimes the entity of a scene fails to be staged well.

Some viewers may prefer to interpret this as tonal and thematic complexity and layered meanings. Or possibly the delivery of deliberate vagueness and mystery: open questions; juice for the inquisitive mind to elaborate. The occasional uses of Christian and Old Testament allegorical imagery might reinforce a yearning to see this sort of interpretation across the entire piece. Particularly as these occur mainly in the earlier running time of the film whilst visual styles more suggestive of the aboriginal culture predominate in the latter half.

I think that this is evidence of film making unevenness and sticky tape interventions and bodged up compromises on the fly. This film has a scattergun feeling to it. The creative team have added in a lot of stuff that they wanted and hoped that it would be brought to coherence eventually.

I rate at 6.5/10 and I hesitate to recommend this too readily to film fans; I would say, take heed of the fact that this is only the directors second feature, be aware of its vintage as a film of the early 70's and late 60's; and if the synopsis, tempered by a reading of my thoughts still leaves you intrigued then you will probably LIKE 'Walkabout'. I'm not sure that a lot of other film watchers will.

Two young children are stranded in the Australian outback and are forced to cope on their own. They meet an Aborigine on "walkabout": a ritualistic separation from his tribe.

Louis Nowra wrote, "I was stunned. The images of the Outback were of an almost hallucinogenic intensity. Instead of the desert and bush being infused with a dull monotony, everything seemed acute, shrill, and incandescent. The Outback was beautiful and haunting." I could not agree more -- National Geographic cannot make a film more rich and vibrant than this.

Roger Ebert asked rhetorically, "Is it a parable about noble savages and the crushed spirits of city dwellers? That's what the film's surface suggests, but I think it's about something deeper and more elusive: the mystery of communication." Is he on to something? I do not know... there is definitely a communication element -- its importance is debatable.

An uncompromising film full of so many social messages & metaphors its difficult to know where to begin.

Firstly, we shouldn't confuse the title "Walkabout" with the principle story of two middle-class children wandering around the inhospitable Australian Outback. This isn't a walkabout at all!

Although never fully mentioned the walkabout refers to a rite-of-passage for young Aborigines who must survive on their own in the Outback for a number of months, hunting for food, finding water and generally being able to survive the harsh & extreme conditions before they are truly marked as an Aboriginal Adult.

Secondly, although the main visible theme of the film is one of survival for all three teenagers it hides various secret agendas that you don't initially think about unless you see the film again.

The opening scenes for example show us that for all the great progress civilization & technology has provided the "cultured" western world with, we are now no more than human termites, living in high rise buildings, living our humdrum clockwise lives; where everything is done for us by other human "termites" at our behest. We have become processed into a clockwork world where our daily lives follow on repeatedly the same boring existence.

The film concentrates on one particular Nuclear family, where the father is far from happy with his lot, although its never clearly explained why he is in such a depressed state. Unexpectedly he takes his two young children (15 year old Agutter and 6 year old Roeg) on a picnic in the Outback. As the children prepare the table their father takes out a rifle and begins to shoot at them before taking his own life.

After the initial shock the children realize they have no transport, no telephone, no compass, no map, hardly any food & water, or any idea as to how to get back home.

So inside a few minutes director Roeg shows us in quite explicit detail of our dependence on others to make our mundane lives safe yet routine. And yet once we are taking out of that environmental context, along with even the most basic forms of modern technology ( a car or even a map & compass, we are lost in what may as well be a completely different hostile world.

But the story doesn't just use that rather obvious juxtapositional cliche, Roeg investigates other diverse cultures & rites that are not all that apparent to our eyes. In spite of the arid conditions the two children are so indoctrinated in their previous middle-class existence they retain their school uniforms, with collars done up and jackets worn because perhaps to their brainwashed minds it would be socially unacceptable to be seen untidy.

Eventually their saviour is found in the form of a young Aborigine boy (David Gulpilil) doing his "Walkabout" to earn his manhood. Even though they cannot communicate with each other he provides food & water for them eventually becoming nothing more than their servant even though the two English children show very little appreciation of the fact he has saved their lives.

So again Roeg hints at racial, culture & class stereotypes. That in spite of being dependent on this "native" the children are arrogant & ignorant of his human empathy, and instead use him like a slave based purely on the fact he is so "alien" to their rather blinkered culture & upbringing!

Another juxtaposition, and perhaps a rather more visually obvious one, is that of sexuality, puberty & adolecence. It's no coincidence that Roeg opted for a teenage boy as the Aboriginal saviour of about the same age as Agutter. Both sexually naive but becoming more & more aware of the opposite sex.

The subtle hints are few & far between because Roeg doesn't want to turn the film into some kind of mucky peepshow. However, he does let the camera roam over Agutter's young body,( uniform or not). He then lets us examine Gulpilil's more basic attire yet more aethetically pleasing form before we both see all three children skinny dipping in a pool. The sexual chemistry is so heavy you just feel as if its only a matter of time before the two investigate each other further resulting in a consummated sex scene.

But again Roeg refuses to take this rather hackneyed route, so typical of most Hollywood rites-of-passage movies. Instead, he keeps the abstract sexual awakening at a safe distance not wanting us to lose sight of the main story.

The ending is perhaps its weakest side because it all becomes painfully predictable & cliched far too conveniently. The contrasts between a man-made brick wall and that of 1 million year old rockface, for example, is clumsy & cheap. After sending out so many subtle metaphors throughout the movie, Roeg throws it all away in a couple of minutes dumbing-down at the end.

However, the film generally is a true masterpiece of different cultures, worlds, customs & human needs. Agutter & Gulpilil are both excellent in their parts, while Roeg's cinematography and John Barry's haunting music lives in the mind's eye long after we have forgotten the film's message.

Civilization needs Nature more than Nature needs civilization. The more & more we take away from Nature the more dependent we become and we lose our sense of being human & independent. Roeg's message is clear but we have still yet to do anything about it.

****/*****

This is one of those "art for art's sake" films that were so popular in the 70's (Roeg's "Don't Look Now" is another). Tedious pacing (meant to be "deliberate"), obscure editing tricks (meant to be "inventive"), TERRIBLE, confusing storytelling (meant to be "elliptical"), poorly defined characters (meant to be "symbolic"), in an allegory that probably only Roeg himself understands fully, yet it has people writing (quite eloquent) essays on it. At least the images are beautiful - but then again, how difficult is it really to make a tree or a lake or a sunset look beautiful? (*)