#10: Walkabout
1971, 100 minutes, Color, 1.78:1
Language: English
Directed by Nicolas Roeg
[A note on spoilers: I tried not to, but as this tome seemed to write itself, I ended up throwing in any and every conceivable spoiler possible. My bad.]
Oh, those bastards at Criterion Collection!
It’s always a bittersweet feeling when they re-issue a movie I already own. I do think it’s great when Criterion re-releases an existing title with enhanced visual quality and additional features, especially if it’s a title I don’t yet own but plan to eventually, such as was the case with Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro. I am very glad I never shelled out a wad of c-notes for an original version of Salò before it was re-released (though I did let loose of a couple Hamiltons for a boot-leg copy). It is a little tougher to take when it’s one I already own, but I will bite the bullet if I can, and that’s why I have two copies of Amarcord and Brazil. I bought my copy of Walkabout two years ago and fell in love with it. I knew it was ripe for an upgrade and had heard the whispers on the wind that one was on the way. Now it’s here. But, as with The Seventh Seal, it will be a long while before I’m able to make the upgrade myself.
After The Ice Storm, I wasn’t quite sure what was next. When I saw Criterion’s announcement of their upcoming May releases, with the new and improved Walkabout listed amongst them, I figured that was good reason to watch it now. Regardless, I need to watch it before May, otherwise I will be hard-pressed to watch my old version knowing an improved one exists, and must watch it before it is obsolete. Also, after the way I got myself a little too enmeshed in my write-up for The Ice Storm, I thought it wise to not delve into a DVD with two discs full of content.
It was January 2008 when I was first exposed to Nicolas Roeg. I watched Bad Timing and was so impressed with it that I wanted to experience more of Roeg’s work. If that hadn’t have been the case, I probably never would have even considered Walkabout. Whatever the reason for it, I’m very glad to have found this little gem.
None of the characters in the movie have names. For the sake of simplicity, I will use the actors’ names when referring to the three main characters. “Girl” is played by Jenny Agutter. I recall the first time I ever saw her was in An American Werewolf in London and was enamored with her immediately. “Boy” is played by Nicolas Roeg’s son, Lucien (Luc) John, and “Aborigine” by David Gulpilil. Their performances are remarkable. Jenny is charming, Luc is a quintessential young boy, and David is endearing.
Even watching it again, two years after the first time, it is still an entrancing film, a visual wonder. As beautiful as it is on the original Criterion issue, I can only imagine how gorgeous it will be with the new release or, even more so, Blu-ray, but that curiosity will have to wait to be satisfied. In the meantime, I am still quite impressed with the beauty portrayed as it is.
Poetry. That’s what comes to mind when I think of Walkabout. Roeg’s skills as a cinematographer and photographer are on marvelous display in this film and, coupled with interesting editing, creates a visual poem, a montage of dazzling images. He shows majestic, sweeping panoramic vistas and cityscapes, and delves into super close-ups of bugs and creatures and people eating in documentarian fashion. He even displays extraterrestrial views of the moon and the sun. Electric and electronic sounds in some shots almost mimic birdcalls in others. Cross-cuts juxtapose interesting contrasts and comparisons. There are also frozen images and images played backward that all enhance the visual spectacle that makes the film more than just a story. There is one scene I especially like where the three walk along a beautiful path through rivers and greenery. Luc is telling a story and a page from a book being turned is used as the wipe that transitions between scenes.
The film opens with an intertitle briefly explaining what a walkabout is, ending with the simple phrase, “This is the story of a ‘WALKABOUT’.” At first I thought that was inappropriate because it almost leaves only the idea that it is something like a documentary about the coming of age rite for a young Aboriginal man. I thought that it is so much more than that with the plight of the two young white children taken into account too. I thought about it, and it is quite a life journey for all three of them, even if it was unintentional for the white children to be in this situation and setting that will undoubtedly be defining moments in their lives. It is a walkabout, but on a more profound level.
The opening scenes use close-ups of manmade walls of brick and natural walls of rock to cut back and forth between images of the city and the Australian Outback. An Aboriginal didgeridoo (what a cool word, didgeridoo!) and city sounds are musical accompaniment for both settings.
Instinct might be to see the juxtaposed images as contrasting two vastly different worlds, but starting here, and as the movie progresses, I see more similarities than differences. Buildings and mountains bear a resemblance. Urban expanses of concrete and glass are as infertile as desert expanses of rock and sand. Parks and oases offer verdant respite from the harshness and glare of the city and desert. Both settings teem with life and their inhabitants struggle for survival, a survival of the fittest. I think probably most conspicuous is a future scene where David is hunting, killing, and butchering wild game, intercut with a city butcher performing similar motions. The difference is the tools used and the setting it is in, primitive versus modern, but the function and purpose is the same. Both settings can be seen as wildernesses, yet both also have their own rites and rituals, which may be seen as barbaric or civilized depending on the point of view.
Even though there are many things that bear, or even bare, similarities, there are differences, but they are mostly cultural. The most striking image of the cultural differences is that of the children swimming in a manmade pool beside the ocean. Jenny steadfastly holds to her cultural ways, wanting to keep up appearances even though in the desert (“we don’t want to look like tramps”), and almost determined effort to not use any form of communication other than her language. When asking David for water, she makes no effort to gesture or sign in any way, which to me would seem almost instinctive to do. Luc, as young as he is, has yet to become so conditioned and is quickly able to bridge cultural and language differences.
But the cultural differences also aren’t all that great, either. When the white children are playing in a tree, a group of Aboriginal people plays on the burnt-out wreckage of the car; each culture is curious about things foreign to them and plays in similar fashion, with similar delight.
It is the scene where the Aboriginal families are playing on the car that has one of the most gruesome elements in the film; that of the dead father splayed out in the branches of the tree. It appears as if it is some savage indifference to the dead, but, as with so many things in this movie, it is not what it appears to be. In the audio commentary, near the end of the film when David dies, Agutter tells of an Aboriginal custom of putting the dead up off the ground so that, to my understanding, the spirit can be allowed freedom in death that would be prohibited if the body were kept on the ground. So, if I do take the meaning properly, the Aborigines found the man’s body and performed the same action as they would for one of their own culture in order to allow its spirit freedom. So, in that context, it is not such a gruesome scene.
But, I get ahead of myself by getting lost in seeing similarities where it might be expected to see difference. This is a story of a walkabout.
Jenny and Luc embark on their unexpected walkabout as the result of the bizarre actions of their father. He takes the two children, drives them into the Outback under the false pretense of having a picnic, does some work, pulls out a gun, takes a few potshots at the children, sets the car on fire, and then offs himself with the gun. It’s not explicitly clear as to what led him to this conclusion, but his discontent with life was dire enough that he apparently needed to escape it.
I don’t know why he wanted to take the children with him though, or why he went where he did. When it comes to suicide, I guess logic and reason are not things that run in parallel with the strong emotions that lead one to it. Maybe he thought that since the world was such a horrible place he must save his children from suffering in it by taking their lives too.
As for going to the Outback to kill himself and his children, maybe that was his way of getting “back to nature” and saw it as remote enough from the city that killed his spirit that it was the perfect place to kill his body. Even if he didn’t have a specific destination, going as far as the gas in the car would take him was close enough. I’m sure I’m reading way too much into it and it’s quite irrelevant as to “why” they were there. What matters most is it was a pretext for the children to be in that situation. What was most bizarre to me, however, was that the switch seemed to flip as quickly as it did. It looked like he was trying to get some work done. I mean, reading a preface makes it appear as if he has lots to do yet, and there was no indication what was to come, but I suppose that was the point. Regardless, it’s a good thing for the kids that Dad is such a shitty shot.
What gets me in the scene is the way the father talks when he is calling for the children to return to him while he is plugging away at them. “Come on. And bring him with you.” He speaks with an almost derisive emphasis when he refers to the boy. Then he says, “We have got to now. I… have got to go now. Can’t waste time.” I know it’s kind of morbid, but I find some humor in the way he says that. Yeah, he’s thinking, we have to go now, go to meet our maker. Well, at least I have to go, and now is the time. That’s when he gives up on the kids. I guess he supposes he is low on bullets, so he’ll just torch the car to leave them to die of exposure, and will use the last bullet on himself. He really is a shitty and selfish dad. I suppose that’s why Jenny was never really all that remorseful afterwards–even without considering some of the sexual tension and innuendo some people sense between her and her father. I agree there is something valid to that notion, but with all there is to consider in this film, it is one that flies beneath my radar, at least on this viewing.
So, Dad’s conniption is over and Jenny takes charge, doing the best she can to protect Luc from the reality of what just happened and lead them to safety. As they make their way through the desert, there are many spectacular images of the creatures that inhabit that space. Though they share the terrain with lizards, reptiles, arachnids, and mammals, some of which surely are life threatening, the children always seem safe.
There is a scene where snakes glide through the tree branches above the sleeping children. They first appear to the sounds of some haunting and foreboding music, but the camera pulls out to show the children sleeping peacefully and the snakes’ indifference to them, the music stops, and the children don’t seem to be threatened in any way. In the morning a wombat (also such cool word!) sniffs the boy’s head and wanders away. I don’t know how parallels with the Garden of Eden can’t be drawn here. It does seem to be a type of genesis for the children, starting afresh in a new world. In the morning their sources of food and water have dried up and disappeared. It is like Adam and Even being cast from the Garden. I see the Old Testament analogy, but it is not absolute, for I don’t see any reason for their fall from grace, unless it is for the sins of their father…
Ah, hell! I must have been over-exposed to religious symbolism in art in literature during my formal education, because I’ve started and just can’t stop. My instinct now is to mention David (David!) appearing as their savior and leading them from the desert (first Genesis, now Exodus). After that there is the infamous scene of Jenny swimming in the natural pool, which will surely evoke the word “baptism.” Then, when I get to the scene with David hanging in the tree, surely some derivation of the word “crucify” will emerge. Really, I think it must just be me because I’ve seen little mention of Biblical allusions in this movie in any of the sources I’ve been exposed to so far. I’m sure there is some sort of religious analysis of the film out there, if I were to look for it, but there’s nothing in the content on the disc or in the essays or reviews I’ve read so far. Anyway…
David comes to their rescue, providing them with sources of water, bountiful food, and eventually leads them to civilization, of which he seems to have a keen sense of what is really civilized, in spite of appearances. At one point a woman mysteriously enters the picture and speaks with David. He ignores her and takes the children in another direction. Jenny and Luc never know that there was a homestead just over the ridge. It turns out to be a horrible place, led by a greedy white man working Aborigines in slave fashion to make racist and stereotypical artifacts that demean the very people who are producing them. Though the children may have found help there by getting a ride or making a phone call, it was a corrupt place and David knew to steer the children away from it. It was a dangerous place, and not only was David protecting them from the elements and dangers of the desert, he was also protecting them from the evils produced by their own culture.
At the end of the long version of the movie trailer there is a quote shown on the screen by Judith Ripp of Parents’ Magazine: “A rare magical experience as meaningful to adults as to their youngsters, we are recommending it without reservation, despite the short scenes of violence and nudity treated as they should be; as facts of life.”
Whoever Judith Ripp may be, she is absolutely correct. This film sadly was censored because of the nudity and the violence. The scene of greatest contention is one of Jenny swimming nude in a clear pool in a rocky niche. Agutter herself, in the commentary says, “it’s not about exploitation, but with expressing a certain kind of freedom.” She also says Roeg intended it to be the most innocent and beautiful sequence of the film. “It’s about their living, and if they don’t have that, then there’s no regret.” She mentions a painter, who I take to be Sir Sidney Nolan, and compares this scene to some of his paintings. The scene is an artistic expression. I read somewhere, and I can’t recall it exactly or locate it right now, but it was someone who said that the film simply wouldn’t work without this sequence. I agree. This scene is almost essential to the film. There is a sense of the evolving sexuality of Jenny and David, this scene exhibits and touches on it, but without eroticism.
Much of the violence referred to is also in this same sequence, cross-cutting scenes of David hunting and butchering beasts for their sustenance. It is violent, yes, but not in a disturbing way, for it is a necessity. The nudity and violence at this point in the film are not done to shock or excite. They are, as stated in the quote, merely facts of life.
Roeg does show suggestive images of tree limbs and crotches. These are probably the most erotic scenes in the movie, and the parallels to humans are made even clearer with an image of Jenny’s white-stockinged leg stretching over a similarly white tree limb. Yet, there is not much sexual tension in the movie even though there are two teenagers, developing into adults while in close proximity to each other. It is evident that David does grow fond of Jenny, certainly, thought it seems to be in more of a loving and protecting way, and not overtly sexual. He really doesn’t try to express his love for her, however, until he sees a heartbreaking scene where white hunters wantonly kill buffalo. It is after that incident when he shows his love for Jenny by “giving” her his dance. It’s as if he further sees the evils of her culture and wishes to protect her from it. The sexual suggestiveness and violence here, though more overtly demonstrated, are also facts of life.
David performs his dance for Jenny, but is rejected by her. The first time I watched the film I was left wondering if David had indeed died. After this viewing, I am certain of it, if only because it is made clear that he is dead in the audio commentary. The chapter is titled “Suicide,” and David is dead, but I don’t think it was suicide in the traditional sense. He was rejected by Jenny and willed himself to death as a result. Or, if he didn’t will himself to death, life just fled his body because there was no reason to live. What I’m saying is that he died, but not by his own hand, not by a gun or a knife or hanging or any thing like that. He simply died by ceasing to live.
Before David dies, he had taken Jenny and Luc to an abandoned homestead near a road. He shows Luc the road, but neither of them mention it right away to Jenny. I don’t know if they are consciously keeping the information from her, but they aren’t in any hurry to show it to her. I think maybe David is unsure he wants Jenny and Luc to leave him. Maybe he thinks that the homestead would be the best of both worlds, reminiscent of the world she comes from and close to the world he is from. Here, in this environment straddling both worlds, maybe they can live together. His dance for her is his only attempt to demonstrate his feelings to her. Either it will show his true feelings and win her to him, or it won’t and it will be his swan song.
Jenny rejects David, if mainly out of ignorance rather than indifference and, finally, Jenny and Luc do return to civilization. Throughout the entire saga, Jenny has held on to her cultural traditions, never giving them up, practicing her voice lessons, listening to cooking and educational programs on the radio, and keeping up the civilized appearances of her own and her brother by ensuring they were properly dressed. Yet, when they come to the road she pauses before stepping onto the pavement, as if she is stepping through a portal from one world to another and is unsure if that’s what she really wants to do.
Ultimately, her return to her society has her following in the exact same footsteps of her parents; living in the same house, listening to the same radio programs, cooking the same meals, and married to a man very much like her father. Yet, her experience in the desert made an indelible impression on her. When she is cutting the meat, she appears to think of the meals David cooked in the wild. When her husband talks to her, she envisions a scene where she, Luc, and David swim and play together in an idyllic setting as an idyllic family. Maybe that is the Eden she left behind by choosing to return to the society she was born into and she regrets it after having experienced both.
I do, still, wonder about the ending. Roger Ebert says, in the essay included with the DVD, that Aboriginal culture has a less linear sense of time, and questions if things in the movie happened in the sequence shown, or even happen at all. Maybe the whole event was something Jenny imagined or dreamed. Maybe there are two alternate time-lines and it’s up to me as the viewer to make the choice whether the true ending is of her in living in the seaside flat with her husband or her living in the Outback with David and her brother. If I can make the choice, I know which one it would be.
There is a point in the film where a voice comes through a clutter of sound, as if from a radio broadcast (as well as repeated on the DVD title screen), that says, “nothing can ever be created or destroyed.” That really may be the case. Neither love nor life nor society was created or destroyed in the journey, but just took on different forms.
The Trailers:
The long version runs about four minutes. I don’t know if I particularly like it because it does seem to present civilization and wilderness at odds with each other and implies that it is a love story, a melodramatic voice over saying, “The Aborigine and the girl. Thirty thousand years apart. Together,” ending with, “Just about the most different film you will ever see.” The last part of the trailer is dedicated to scrolling quotations that are flattering—and deservedly so—of the film, using phrases such as “inexpressibly beautiful,” “richest and most provocative,” and “the sights are rare and so is the film.”
The short version of the trailer is just the last thirty seconds of the long one, before the quotes appear, but it shows probably the loveliest and most poetic images in the movie; that of Jenny swimming in the natural pool superimposed over the beautiful image of David standing on one leg, silhouetted in front of the sunset.
The Audio Commentary:
Nicolas Roeg and Jenny Agutter provide the audio commentary to Walkabout. It was a little bit difficult to endure. It did provide quite a few insights to the movie that I really appreciated, but it left me wanting in many cases.
Roeg and Agutter didn’t do the commentary together. The track alternates between them. Agutter’s was the pleasanter of the two. She spoke clearly and well and offered enlightening facts about the movie, the book, the production, the acting, the conditions, etc. Her portions were nice. Roeg’s contribution, on the other hand, is what made the commentary a bit of a chore to get through. He did offer some enlightening points, but his delivery reminded me a bit of Ozzy Osbourne. His speech pattern was broken and slow and often hard to follow, and he seemed to be lost on some digression when there was something happening on the screen that I would rather he be addressing directly.
Overall, I suppose the commentary is worthwhile, but not something I would toil through again. Unfortunately, from what I can gather from the Criterion website, the audio commentary on the re-issue will be the same as this one.
Essay:
The booklet includes an essay by Roger Ebert. It is the one he wrote in 1997 for his “Great Movies” collection. It is wonderfully written, insightful, and well worth the read.
Ebert also reviewed the movie in 1971 and, though it’s not included with the DVD, I found it to be a worthwhile read. There is definitely a difference between the two, and the evolution of his thoughts on the movie are interesting to see.
For the re-issue, the Criterion website says there is a booklet featuring an essay by Paul Ryan. I don’t know if this will be in addition to Ebert’s or replacing it. Ryan’s essay isn’t up on the site yet, but I do look forward to reading it once it does appear, which I assume it will do some time in the near future.
That does it for the special features on this DVD issue of Criterion’s Walkabout. The new re-issue will include video interviews with Agutter and Roeg, and a documentary about David Gulpilil. I do hope I am able to see these additions some time shortly after they are released. As wonderful as the current issue is, the new one will be just that much better, I do believe.
A Digression on Edward Abbey and Coincidences:
Seeing those juxtaposed images of wilderness and civilization in the movie made me think of one of my favorite authors, Edward Abbey. I first discovered him during my college days, browsing through the bookstore one chilly but sunny afternoon. I was struck by the title of a book I had happened across, The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel. I don’t often go by title alone, but this one was too intriguing. I read a few sentences and was captivated. I bought it immediately and consumed it in just two days. I was in love. Though I had first discovered him just weeks after his death, Abbey became one of the most influential authors during my college years and I snapped up any published work of his I could get my hands on and read it over and over.
The Fool’s Progress was one of his works of fiction, but Abbey is arguably more notable for his non-fiction work, the most defining of the man and the myth being Desert Solitaire. Abbey is a man of paradoxes and contradictions that somehow make sense. A lover and defender of the wilderness, he could justify tossing empty beer cans out of his truck window as he sped down the highway. There is much below the surface of saying something like, “Ah, wilderness.” “Where’s the TV?” While in the employ of the U.S. Forest Service he would pull up surveying stakes to undermine the paving of roads through the park, but would also have no qualms about rolling an old tire into the Grand Canyon.
Those images of Roeg’s portrayed on the screen of urban and wild settings playing off of each other made me think of a specific quote of Abbey’s regarding the co-existence of wilderness and civilization. I wasn’t exactly sure where to find it and figured I would start close at hand. That’s when I noticed some amusing coincidences.
Though I hadn’t opened it in a year or more, my paperback copy of Desert Solitaire was on my nightstand. I knew it was a long shot, but thought I would try my luck at discovering the quote with a quick browse. As chance would have it, the very page containing the quote was already marked, also coincidentally, with a postcard announcing an “Anti-Valentine Party” I had picked up a couple of years ago; today is Valentine’s Day.
Easy though it may be to note the contrast between city and wilderness, there are also compelling similarities that can be noted. The Abbey quote I was looking for is, “Mountains complement desert as desert complements cities, as wilderness complements and completes civilization.” I see in that as one is the extension of the other, that there can’t be one without the other, that there is a symbiotic coexistence between the two extremes, which really aren’t all that extremely different. With Roeg’s Walkabout I really don’t get the sense that there is a statement being made about the differences between the two, nor that one may be superior to the other, but that they are quite similar, complementary, and necessary.
A thought on why I write so much about the movies:
So far, in this quixotic quest, I have taken in some great movies. There are many wonderful movies in the Collection, so it is a certainty that I will gush as much in future entries as I have thus far. What I tend to do is have the movie play while I’m writing about it. Doing so reminds me of things I may have glossed over otherwise, and I write more and more. I don’t really think that is such a bad thing, especially if the movie is a great one and worthwhile to absorb as fully as possible.
Walkabout is a mesmerizing film. I’m glad to have been able to get so much pleasure out of it. While I was writing this, it must have played an additional four or five times. Though my focus was on the writing, I did get a little more out of it with each playing. I did, of course, jump around to scenes I was writing about so I could get my thoughts on that particular part of the movie more well-formed, but still let it go from beginning to end several times.
It is a movie truly worthy of viewing more than once. As I said in the beginning, I am very glad to have ever been exposed to it, and I certainly hope to enjoy it again many times.
Though the movie is based on a book, I don’t have any compulsion to read the book. This movie is such a marvelous visual wonder that I don’t know if the book can do it justice. So often it is the other way around, but this is an instance I believe a likely an exception to the rule. That is only speculation, of course, as I have not read the book. I am not averse to reading the book, but do not have an overwhelming desire to read it now. If I ever have the opportunity, however, I won’t dismiss it. For now, I will be satisfied with the images I have seen. I am pleased that this movie has re-introduced me to Edward Abbey and, if there is reading I will do as a result of watching the movie, it will be to refresh myself with Abbey’s Desert Solitaire.
As far as where I will go next in the Criterion Collection, that remains to be seen. There are so many great choices, but after being so thoroughly satiated with Walkabout, I’m not quite sure what I’m ready to jump to next, or if I’m even ready yet. This movie is one that does linger, in a satisfying and peaceful way.
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