Walkabout (film)

Walkabout
Directed by Nicolas Roeg
Produced by Si Litvinoff
Screenplay by Edward Bond
Based on Walkabout
by James Vance Marshall
Starring Jenny Agutter
Luc Roeg
David Gumpilil
Music by John Barry
Cinematography Nicolas Roeg
Edited by Antony Gibbs
Alan Pattillo
Production
company
Max L. Raab Productions
Si Litvinoff Film Production
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date
 May 1971 (1971-05) (Cannes)
October 1971 (UK/Australia)
Running time
 100 minutes[1]
Country United Kingdom
Australia
Language English
Budget A$1 million[2]

Walkabout is a 1971 British-Australian survival film set in the Australian outback, directed by Nicolas Roeg, and starring Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg, and David Gulpilil. Edward Bond wrote the screenplay, which is loosely based on the 1959 novel Walkabout by James Vance Marshall. It centres on two white schoolchildren who are left to fend for themselves in the Australian outback and who come across a teenage Aboriginal boy who helps them to survive.

One of the first films in the Australian New Wave cinema movement, it received positive reviews despite being a commercial failure. Alongside Wake in Fright, it was one of two Australian films entered in competition for the Grand Prix du Festival at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.[3] It is also held to be one of Roeg's masterpieces, along with Performance (1970), Don't Look Now (1973), and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). In 2005, the British Film Institute included it in their list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

Plot

In November,[4] a white, city-bred teenage schoolgirl and her much younger brother become stranded in the wilderness after their father goes berserk. After driving them far into the Australian outback, ostensibly for a picnic, the father suddenly begins shooting at the children. They run behind rocks for cover, whereupon he sets the car on fire and shoots himself in the head. The girl conceals what has happened from her brother and, after grabbing some food and supplies, the pair head out into the desert.

By the middle of the next day, they are weak and the boy can barely walk. Discovering a small water hole with a fruiting tree, they spend the day playing, bathing, and resting. By the next morning, the water has dried up. They are then discovered by an Aboriginal boy. Although the girl cannot communicate with him, due to the language barrier, her brother mimes their need for water and the newcomer cheerfully shows them how to draw it from the drying bed of the oasis. The three travel together, with the Aboriginal boy sharing food he has caught hunting. The boys learn to communicate slightly using words and sign language.

While in the vicinity of a plantation, a white woman walks past the Aboriginal, who simply ignores her when she speaks to him. She appears to see the other children, but they do not see her, and they continue on their journey. The children also discover a weather balloon belonging to a nearby research team working in the desert. After drawing markings of a modern-style house, the Aboriginal boy eventually leads them to an abandoned farm, and takes the other boy to a nearby road. The Aboriginal boy hunts down a water buffalo and is wrestling it to the ground when two white hunters appear in a truck and nearly run him over. He watches in shock as they shoot several buffalo with a rifle. The boy then returns to the farm, but passes by without speaking.

Later, the Aborigine boy lies in a trance among a slew of buffalo bones, having painted himself in ceremonial markings. He returns to the farmhouse catching the undressing girl by surprise, and initiates a mating ritual by performing a courtship dance in front of her.[5] Although he dances outside all day and into the night until he becomes exhausted, she is frightened and hides from him, and tells her brother they will leave him the next day. In the morning, after they dress in their school uniforms, the brother takes her to the Aboriginal boy's body, hanging in a tree. Before leaving, the girl wipes ants from the dead boy's chest. Hiking up the road, the siblings find a nearly deserted mining town where a surly employee directs them towards nearby accommodation.

Much later, a businessman arrives home as the now grown-up girl prepares dinner; while he embraces her and relates office gossip, she imagines a scene in which she, her brother, and the Aboriginal boy are playing and swimming naked in a deep pool in the outback.

Cast

  • Jenny Agutter as Girl
  • Luc Roeg (credited as Lucien John) as White Boy
  • David Gulpilil (miscredited as David Gumpilil) as Black Boy
  • John Meillon as Father
  • Robert McDarra as Man
  • Pete Carver as No Hoper
  • John Illingsworth as Husband
  • Hilary Bamberger as Woman
  • Barry Donnelly as Australian Scientist
  • Noeline Brown as German Scientist
  • Carlo Manchini as Italian Scientist

Production

The movie was the second feature directed by Nicolas Roeg, a British filmmaker. He had long planned to make a film of the novel Walkabout, in which the children are Americans stranded by a plane crash. After the indigenous boy finds and leads them to safety, he dies of influenza contracted from them, as he has not been immunised. Roeg had not been able to find a script he was happy with, until the English playwright Edward Bond did a minimal 14-page screenplay. Roeg then obtained backing from two American businessmen, Max Raab and Si Litvinoff, who incorporated a company in Australia but raised the budget entirely in the US and sold world rights to 20th Century Fox.

Filming began in Sydney in August 1969 and later moved to Alice Springs,[2] and Roeg's son, Luc, played the younger boy in the film. Roeg brought an outsider's eye and interpretation to the Australian setting, and improvised greatly during filming. He has commented, "We didn’t really plan anything—we just came across things by chance…filming whatever we found."[6] The film is an example of Roeg's well-defined directorial style, characterised by strong visual composition from his experience as a cinematographer, combined with extensive cross-cutting and the juxtaposition of events, location, or environments to build his themes.[7] The music was composed and conducted by John Barry, and produced by Phil Ramone, and the poem read at the end of the film is Poem 40 from A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad.

Reception

Walkabout fared poorly at the box office in Australia. Critics debated whether it could be considered an Australian film, and whether it was an embrace of or a reaction to the country's cultural and natural context.[6] In the US, the film was originally rated R by the MPAA due to nudity, but was reduced to a GP-rating (PG) on appeal.

Critic Roger Ebert called it "one of the great films".[8] He writes that it contains little moral or emotional judgement of its characters, and ultimately is a portrait of isolation in proximity. At the time, he stated: "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."[8] Film critic Edward Guthmann also notes the strong use of exotic natural images, calling them a "chorus of lizards".[9] In Walkabout, an analysis of the film, author 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."[10]

Controversy

Walkabout features several scenes of animal hunting and killing, most notably a kangaroo being speared and bludgeoned to death. The Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act 1937 makes it illegal in the United Kingdom to distribute or exhibit material where the production involved inflicting pain or terror on an animal. Since the animals did not appear to suffer or be in distress the film was deemed to not contravene the Act.

The film also includes scenes of nudity featuring Jenny Agutter, who the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) surmised was 17 years old at the time of filming. The scenes did not pose a problem when submitted to the BBFC in 1971 and later in 1998; since the Protection of Children Act 1978 permitted the distribution and possession of indecent images of people over the age of 16 the issue of potential indecency had not been considered on previous occasions. However, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 raised the age threshold to 18 which meant the BBFC was required to consider the scenes of nudity in the context of the new law when the film was re-submitted in 2011. The BBFC reviewed the scenes and deemed them not to be "indecent" and passed the film uncut. Had this not been the case, the film would have been refused classification and it would have effectively made it illegal to distribute copies of the film.[1]

Legacy

Commenting on the film's enduring appeal, in 1998 Roeg described the film as "a simple story about life and being alive, not covered with sophistry but addressing the most basic human themes; birth, death, mutability."[11]

More than 40 years after its release, the online review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a score of 93% based on 27 critical submissions, with an average rating of 8.2 out of 10 (showing however, as of 31 January 2013, "no consensus", on the site's Tomatometer.)[12]

References

  1. 1 2 "Walkabout". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 11 June 2014.
  2. 1 2 Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper, Australian Film 1900–1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998 p258
  3. ↑ "Official Selection 1971". Festival de Cannes. France. Archived from the original on 26 August 2010. Retrieved 26 August 2010. Official Selection 1971....WALKABOUT directed by Nicolas ROEG
  4. ↑ It is announced on the radio that it is Remembrance Day
  5. ↑ Nicolas Roeg (1998). Walkabout (DVD commentary) (1998 ed.). United States: The Criterion Collection. Event occurs at 1 hour 20 minutes. ISBN 0780020847.
  6. 1 2 Fiona Harma (2001). "Walkabout". The Oz Film Database. Murdoch University. Retrieved 18 February 2008.
  7. ↑ Chuck Kleinhans. "Nicholas Roeg—Permutations without profundity". Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media. Retrieved 17 February 2008.
  8. 1 2 Ebert, Roger. "Walkabout by Nicolas Roeg". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 17 February 2008.
  9. ↑ Edward Guthmann (3 January 1997). "Intriguing 'Walkabout' in the Past". SFGate.com. San Francisco chronicle. Retrieved 18 February 2008.
  10. ↑ Louis Nowra (2003), Walkabout, NSW: Currency Press
  11. ↑ Danielsen, Shane (27 March 1998), Walkabout: An Outsider’s Vision Endures, The Australian (newspaper)
  12. ↑ "Walkabout". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 31 January 2013.
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