WALKABOUT Movie Review

Abandoned in the Australian outback after their father commits suicide, a teenaged girl and her little brother must depend on the kindness of a young aborigine in order to survive. Overcoming some inherent racism, the children eventually realize that their notion of what constitutes “civilization” has been stood on its head. Years later, in a coda to the story we've seen, the girl, now grown and married and living in the fast-paced big city, daydreams of the idyllic time that she spent in more natural surroundings. The first film on which former cinematographer Nicolas Roeg received solo directing credit quickly became a cult favorite upon release. It's a physically stunning film that struck a responsive chord with much of the counterculture in 1971, but beneath its photographically impressive, gleaming surface beats an artificial heart. Walkabout is an uncomfortably condescending “noble savage” picture in a fancy wrapper—the kind of movie that middle-class American audiences were understandably salivating for during the Vietnam War years. France, after its own “adventure” in Indochina, had already produced King of Hearts, in which it was demonstrated that the only sane people in the world were those who'd been declared officially insane. And while Walkabout was an Australian production, its simplistic and self-flagellating news flash that “civilization” isn't all that it's cracked up to be was so welcomed by many cinéastes that they mistook this stacked deck of pretty picture postcards for philosophically profound art. (They didn't make the same mistake two years later with Ross Hunter's unintentionally hilarious musical remake of Lost Horizon, a film that contains the same message as Walkabout, but is wrapped in cheesecloth.) Ultimately, it's not the conclusion Walkabout reaches that offends (it's probably true), but the simplistic narrative it uses to present its case. To give it its due, the performances are fine, particularly Jenny Agutter as the lost teenager and David Gulpilil as the young man who takes the kids under his wing. And yes, the movie looks great. Still, to paraphrase film historian David Thomson, would any novice find it difficult to make the Australian desert unspectacular?

NEXT STOP … The Last Wave, The Piano, The Man Who Fell to Earth

1971 (PG) 100m/C AU Jenny Agutter, Lucien John, David Gumpilil, John Meillon; D: Nicolas Roeg; W: Edward Bond; C: Nicolas Roeg; M: John Barry. VHS HMV