Walkabout (1971)
Ever since I started writing these TCM Underground reviews, I’ve seen a lot of movies I never would have ordinarily seen on my own. Walkabout, Nicolas Roeg’s Australian Outback survival movie is like the quintessential movie I never would have seen–but I’m glad I did. It’s a deceptively deep movie, disguising itself as a harsh, cynical adventure movie with little hope for survival in the beginning, opening itself up to more optimism, and then crushing that optimism with a blow that explores the absurdity of life (all life) as we know it.
A girl (Jenny Agutter) and her brother (Luc Roeg, the director’s son) are taken to the middle of the desert by their father, who fails to kill them in a murder-suicide. When his children escape from his gunfire, he turns the gun on himself–but not before setting fire to car, ensuring they have no way out of the harsh, unforgiving terrain.
The nameless girl and boy wander the outback in search of food and water after diminishing their own resources after only a few days. The rest at an area with edible berries and a muddy hole that provides them with hydration. That muddy hole, a pathetic, brown and dingy source of water, is one of the movie’s purest moments of delight–we feel joy at knowing they survive for at least another day. When the water dries up, they find themselves back to square one.
It is then that they meet a young Aboriginal boy who uses a piece of bamboo as a straw to show them how to penetrate the earth and drink more water than is visible to the eye. He takes them along and shows them how to survive off the seemingly unlivable land. The Aboriginal boy shows them how to kill food food, where to find water and even how to enjoy themselves and take pleasure in moments of rest.
“Walkabout” is a term for a rite of passage in Australian Aboriginal society, a period in which they survive on their own for 6 months, marking the transition from childhood and into adulthood.
Jenny Agutter as the girl and David Gulpilil as the Aboriginal boy are amazing in their roles. They’re both incredible actors. The young boy played by Luc Roeg equips himself finely, but the picture belongs squarely to the older kids who are dealing with their own budding, confusing sexuality amidst a confusing situation, where a simple mistake my end up in death.
Walkabout is one of those brilliant movies I’ll probably only have the strength to watch once. While I don’t find the film to be exploitative, there are many, many scenes featuring real, unsimulated animal death. Like I said, I don’t feel like Walkabout uses this exploitatively like I’ve seen in numerous other “cannibal” pictures throughout the 70s, whereas here it’s more of an educational insight into another culture, almost clinical in how it’s viewed, I still have a sensitivity to seeing it. It’s a brutal film, contrasting the hunting of animals to butcher shops within the city, showing how similar life is among these two cultures, while also exploring the differences throughout the film.
Walkabout isn’t perfect, but it’s something I strongly suggest seeing, just because there isn’t really anything else like it out there. It’s wholly unique and Nicolas Roeg is a director who puts himself entirely into any picture that he directs. He never half-asses it. Everything he does is personal in some way and is a deeper, larger statement about the crazy world in which we live.
In the end, when the girl ponders a moment in time, the pure visual storytelling tells us so much about the absurdity of life. It’s a wonderful moment that’s not at all heavy-handed. It’s a sincere moment and one that has been earned. It’s a contrast without relying on a character spelling it out for the audience, sort of like a predecessor to Koyaanisqatsi.
Next Week: Night of the Strangler (1975) and The Strangler (1964), so the theme is pretty obvious.