Film: Walkabout
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Country: UK / Australia
Released: May 1971
Runtime: 100 minutes
Genre: Adventure
Studio: Max L. Raab-Si Litvinoff Films
Influenced: Peter Weir, Werner Herzog, Baz Luhrmann, Rolf de Heer, Phillip Noyce
After co-directing Performance (1970) with Donald Cammell, British director Nicolas Roeg made his solo directorial debut with Walkabout, a UK-Australian film with a screenplay penned by English playwright Edward Bond, adapted from the 1959 novel Walkabout by James Vance Marshall. Although the film got a lukewarm reception in Australia, it helped to bring international attention to Australian cinema and played a significant role in the revival of the film industry there during the 1970s.
Walkabout is a survival story set in the Australian Outback. The narrative follows a teenage girl and her younger brother, portrayed by Jenny Agutter and Luc Roeg, who find themselves stranded in the Outback following a family tragedy when their father drives them out to the wilderness, attempts to kill them and then commits suicide. A chance encounter with an Aboriginal boy, played by David Gulpilil, on his "walkabout" – a traditional rite of passage into manhood that requires a journey through the wilderness – leads to an unlikely alliance.
Walkabout explores the same primitive theme seen in many Herzog and Pasolini movies, a paradise where people are not ruled by their conscious thoughts and moral assumptions, and later Australian New Wave movies like Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975) would continue this thread. Roeg broke from traditional storytelling formats by employing fragmented editing and this, combined with the poetic cinematography, lends the film a dreamlike quality. His use of cross-cutting between the natural world and scenes of modern life adds an extra layer of commentary on the cultural dichotomy at the heart of the film. Roeg also took an innovative approach to sound, mixing naturalistic sounds of the Outback with a contemporary score by John Barry.
The Aboriginal boy helps the siblings to find food and water and teaches them to adapt to their harsh new environment, and the film explores the cultural gap between the Aboriginal tradition and Western values. As the journey progresses, and the Aboriginal boy develops feelings for the girl, the cultural divide between them proves insurmountable. The film ends on a tragic note, while the siblings are rescued and returned to the modern world, forever changed by their experiences. David Gulpilil's performance is noteworthy in its breaking down of racial stereotypes on screen, and the film's depiction of Aboriginal culture and the importance of the "walkabout" ritual brought increased attention to Indigenous issues, both in Australia and internationally.
In later films, Roeg would continue to explore some similar themes to those in Walkabout, including cultural clash – most notably between humans and aliens in The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976) – and feelings of loss and alienation, most memorably in Don't Look Now (1973), a gruelling thriller about parental grief. Another notable psychological thriller from Roeg was Bad Timing (1980), which like Walkabout uses flashbacks and fragmented editing to reveal its narrative, but in this case the film is a much darker examination of a destructive and obsessive relationship.
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