Walkabout

This is an unexpectedly sophisticated film. I shouldn’t be surprised having seen Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now a few years ago, itself a complex, multi-layered film that lends itself to multiple interpretations. (Odd that he has not done much since The Man Who Fell To Earth in 1976?) Walkabout could be enjoyed simply as a rather strange little adventure tale about two hopelessly English kids lost in the Australian outback who are rescued by a bush savvy Aborigine, but to really get the most out of it takes a little thought and analyses. At another level it could be meant to contrast the aboriginal culture against modern Western culture, but that also is an oversimplification. What it really seems to be getting at is the difficulty that we all face of communicating beyond the boundaries created by our culture and mores. All of the characters are somehow lost because of this inability to communicate, in some cases fatally so. The vastness of the desert serves as metaphor for the great chasms between us. There are a number of point blank shots of brick walls and cliff faces that reinforce this message, for those who may have missed it otherwise. The conclusion is bleak, but the move is very effective and will have you thinking for a long time after. As a Sydney resident since the 1990’s I was particularly interested in the shots of the city from the early seventies.