Nicolas Roeg, a director not celebrated enough in my opinion, directed some of my favorite movies of the seventies. He directed Performance (1970), Don’t Look Now (1973) and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) but my favorite has always been Walkabout (1971), a movie that both shocked me and entranced me the first time I saw it. Multiple viewings later, my reaction hasn’t changed a bit. Be warned, spoilers abound.
When I first saw Walkabout, I had no real understanding of what I was about to watch. From what I’d heard, I had a vague idea it was a coming of age movie blended with a heartwarming tale of two cultures coming together. The truth is far different. What I was most certainly not expecting was how horrifyingly it would begin, how mystical it would become and how ultimately cynically (Roger Ebert called it “deeply pessimistic”) it would conclude.
The movie begins with this text describing to the novice what exactly is a “walkabout.”
“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.”
Well, yes, it is the story of a walkabout, but one that has little to do with a coming of age and more to do with two cultures clashing and a hostile world relentlessly moving against both. Nicolas Roeg, beginning his career as a cinematographer, does double duty here as both director and cinematographer, resulting in a movie that relates most of its character and story information visually while dialogue is relegated to Tati-esque levels of insignificance. Right from the start, we are shown images without dialogue, shots of urban Australia awash in steel, pavement and concrete with carefully planted trees for show. There is a swimming pool behind an apartment building that borders the ocean. A man is seen, sitting silently, staring in the distance, his children swimming in the pool. We cut to them in a car, headed to the outback for a day in nature. When they arrive, his daughter (Jenny Agutter) and son (Lucien John, aka Luc Roeg) exit the car with blanket and picnic basket in hand. As they begin to set up, it happens.
Gunshots ring out and we realize, to our horror, that their father has brought them here to murder them and kill himself. The girl grabs the boy and starts running. They hide behind a rock but the father keeps shooting, and approaching. She runs with her brother, headed straight into the unblemished wild of Australia’s outback (her father having already driven them so far out that walking back would be impossible) and finally, mercifully, escape. The father gives up his pursuit and shoots himself. The children never see his body again.
As they wander the outback it becomes clear to the viewer that they have little to no survival skills. They find a small, muddy gully and sleep by it, thinking it will be a source of water but, in the morning, find it has dried up. The boy complains and whines (what else would he do, he’s barely ten) and the girl marches him forward, knowing nothing else to do. An aboriginal boy (David Gulpilil) on the walkabout, comes upon them and they try, and fail for the most part, to communicate. Eventually he understands they’re thirsty, hungry and abandoned and helps them find water. But this isn’t simply a nature movie of the sort Disney did in the fifties and sixties, in which Gulpilil teaches Agutter how to survive in nature and she teaches him about love. They interact for survival and out of desperation. No real relationship ever forms and that’s not a script omission.
The two teenagers, with the ten year old in tow, certainly have their moments of affection together but the movie isn’t so much about two cultures connecting as it is about two cultures hopelessly looking past each other. When we go back to the father’s rotting corpse, we see a group of aborigines hang his body in a tree, a funeral rite that allows the body to fully decompose without being consumed by insects or ground dwelling desert vermin. It’s an important piece of information because later in the movie (MAJOR SPOILER), after Gulpilil’s character dies due to infection, he hitches himself to a tree’s limbs before he dies to follow the ritual. This has been misinterpreted by countless viewers who, looking for a heartbreaking love story, have believed that he killed himself because he was rejected by Agutter. The fact is, the connection between them was always a blocked one and, faced with his death, Agutter simply moves on. She shows almost no reaction at all. (END MAJOR SPOILER)
When the two get rescued, it is by a reluctant and uncaring man who has no idea what they went through nor does he care. Later, we see the girl as a grown woman, staring distantly like her father once did, thinking back to her journey, and reflecting on what seems to be an empty life.
I realize the movie, as I’ve described it, sounds horribly depressing and cynical but it’s not. Well, it’s not depressing, at least. It is cynical. It’s not depressing because it is about the mystical enlightenment that all three characters recognize and accept on their journey, that they also realize and accept is a journey of survival and not spiritual awakening. Yes, spiritual awakening does happen, but in the moment, not necessarily signalling permanent change. Let’s just say, it’s complicated. And that’s what makes it work so well. Had the movie been what I expected, that is, a heartwarming tale of two cultures working together on a journey of discovery, I’m sure I would have watched it and forgotten about it almost immediately after. But it’s not that. It’s something so much more, something that explores and acknowledges cultural differences without condescension or pat resolutions. In the meantime, Roeg plays to the beauty of the environment while not shying away from the brutality of life in the outback.* This movie, coming on the heels of Performance and followed by Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth, signaled a great director coming onto the scene but this one, his first completely solo directing effort, may still be his best.
*Be warned: this movie is not for the squeamish. Actual animal slaughter is shown in graphic detail and can be quite disarming and unsettling. The kills were said to be clean (shooting and throat cutting) and thus the film did not receive negative marks from animal rights organizations but it is nonetheless disturbing to watch and probably the only questionable aspect of the film. To me, this kind of thing can always be simulated (they’ve been simulating it for humans since the movies started, including the father in this very movie) and it is the one part of the movie I find unnecessary.
Greg Ferrara