A Visual Explosion | WALKABOUT (1971) first reaction & commentary
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- Опубліковано 22 кві 2021
- An outback, an oasis, a mountain, a stream, a death.
Walkabout is the debut solely directed feature length film by Nicolas Roeg. Roeg was a cinematographer who worked on Lawrence of Arabia, Fahrenheit 451, and Far From the Maddening Crowd before his debut. His works include The Witches, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Don't Look Now.
Walkabout is the story of two English children getting lost in the Australian outback. Forced to fend for their lives, they encounter an aboriginal teen on his journey to manhood (a walkabout). The youth offers them aid, and the trio go on a journey of survival, natural splendor, and bodily awakening. It features gorgeous, cerebral cinematography, a minimalist script, and a density of symbols and parable. The film was written by noted English playwright Edward Bond. It features David Gulpilil, Jenny Agutter, and the director's own son Luc Roeg.
Intro: • Encore: Waltzing Matil...
Outro: • Stay (Pink Floyd Cover...
Roeg in interview: • Nicolas Roeg 1983 GUAR...
(All views expressed are from a first, mostly blind, viewing. If you feel the need to come for me, please don't) - Фільми й анімація
Walkabout is a particularly dense film with many ideas, suggestions, and very few explanations. I sometimes ran the gamut of ideas or themes the film may or may not be presenting, so I want to gently remind that before anything else, my commentary is the result of a first-time, blind viewing.
What you're seeing is raw, no holds barred. Exquisite in its atmospheric tone. Watch it again, two times.
I found this film fascinating but for reasons the average person would be unaware of. If you lived in Australia in the 60'/70's as I did as an English white child you would understand more accurately the mindset. I went to a high school in Adelaide and never saw an aboriginal person the whole time I was there and I learned later that there was a kind of defacto apartheid together with a very church orientated way of life embedded in the population. Hence a child being exposed to a face that they had possibly never seen before and their survival being in the hands of him would have created a mental conflict that would be practically impossible to comprehend. The culture clash is what I think Rogue was focusing on with superb clarity given the contemporary mores of Australian society. This could only be discerned to it's fullest degree by those who had lived at the time and place it was shot. Jenny Aggutter gave her own documentary on the making of this film and confirmed the research and care that went into making the script and storyline.
There were many illogical twists and turns in this film that have to be reconciled but to do so is fruitless as it is more like a dream sometimes makes sense and then doesn't and somethings that are disturbing and others that are not.
It's value as a statement of social history cannot be understated. If they find this film reel in an Australian pyramid in 200 years from now, archeologists will be fighting one another over its meaning. I place it in the same level as Lindsay Anderson's trilogy if films including O Lucky man, IF, and Britannia Hospital. Their notoriety is what has kept them from being an "also ran".
I saw this as a teenager in the 70s, and have always admired the visuals. It's highly regarded here in Aus, partly as its the debut performance by David Gulpalil (the Aboriginal boy), who went on to make some outstanding films, and is regarded as a national treasure and a highly respected artist and elder of his community (recommend you checkout Ten Canoes, which he narrates). Gulpalil has said he found the suicide of his character in Walkabout on being rejected by the girl after his courtship dance to be rather silly - that just wouldn't happen in traditional Aboriginal society.
David Gulpilil is a GOAT 👍
I first saw the film around 2015. Stark images, terror, amazement, emptiness, horror, hope. I am extremely fortunate to have seen the motion picture. The theme, "Back To Nature" typifies a certain era of my life, which I wish I could again experience.
18:40 It's a mating dance. He likes her, we understood that much from the tree scene. Oddly enough I still wanted to say to her when it got dark: "Go on. Go out to him. He won't hurt you. You want to be a woman don't you?"
Apparently the book that it's loosely based on gives the boy's side of the story. (I haven't read it, just the description in Wikipedia.)
I'm interested in how different the book looks. From what I gather, Roeg and Bond very much considered it a spine on which to lay a very different, very specific vision.
21:20 “Turpitude” means “depravity, wickedness”; perhaps you were thinking of desuetude.
As we saw near the end there's no difference between his hunting and killing the kangaroo and the butcher chopping up the meat in his shop for the whole world to see.
From what I can tell though for the Indigenous people there are laws as to how many of what kind of animals, keeping the balance you see. Plus in some stories the animals used to be people before they were turned for disobeying or offending the law of the land. But don't quote me on that, I'm only going on what I heard.
No, I disagree with a majority of your observations. There was no "rape" scene, only a "courting" scene.
That's fine. Just to clarify I said there was a "rape narrative," as in how the Girl and a western audience interprets the advances of the indigenous boy. It's coded and misinterpreted by her as an aggressive act, which I think is part of why she acts dismissively upon discovering his suicide.
I get the criticisms some people have with this movie - specifically about David Gulipilil's character (or David Dalaithngu as we must now call him now at the request of his family to avoid naming the dead - in many indigenous Australian cultures (remembering there were different cultures and people and languages all over the country before Captain Cook showed up) you're not supposed to say the name of the dead as a sign of respect to them and to avoid causing more pain to their loved ones) dying because of the political implications (plus I think you're supposed to put a warning before the movie starts about depicting dead people out of respect to Indigenous viewers), but it's still a lot better than that episode of 'Lost' called Walkabout - always left me with a bad feeling, the idea of a rite of passage into manhood from a culture 40,000-60,000 years old that has been been destroyed in so many ways by English settlers turned into basically a tour guide with online tickets and insurance policies and buses and is basically turned into a 'prove myself' story for a middle aged white man. I'm not saying I wasn't sorry for him and the fact that people kept making assumptions about what he could or could not do because of his accident, but the fact that they made it about him made me feel, as a white Australian woman mind you, uncomfortable and stopped me from watching the rest of the show. I feel likewise uncomfortable in the first two pitch perfect movies when fat Amy said first 'I did fiddler on the roof once with a group of aborigines' and later 'I'm on walkabout' since that's not what a walkabout is.
Yeah it's been a conflict of disparate feelings for me. I won't deny the power of the story at its most base, as well as the startling imagery. I think that simplicity in the story played to a lot of conventions audiences in the 70s would have about otherness, indigenous people, and the wild versus modernity. It's a peerless movie, to be sure, but it would be a lie by omission saying that it isn't a product of its time.