Walkabout (1971)

Walkabout: Directed by Nicolas Roeg. With Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg, David Gulpilil, John Meillon. Two city-bred siblings are stranded in the Australian Outback, where they learn to survive with the aid of an Aboriginal boy on his “walkabout”: a ritual separation from his tribe.

“As far as comments about Roegu0026#39;s going overboard with his message of u0026quot;nature/aborigine good, industrialisation/white men bad,u0026quot; this is a simplistic way of reading it. First of all, every director has his or her own style, and Roeg started as a cinematographer–his movies tend to contain long, meditative (or, boring, depending on oneu0026#39;s view) visual passages. Roeg floods the screen with cascades of images, by turns repetitive and contrasting, much as a poet uses the sounds and rhythms of words, as well as their semantic content, to create u0026quot;meaningu0026quot; in the context of the poem.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eTo expect Roeg not to dwell on images is to expect Tolstoy not to go off on 20-page rants about how the lack of Napoleon would necessitate another to fill his historical role. One overlooks idiosyncracies in oneu0026#39;s friends.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI found the movie much more powerful than I expected. My only disappointment with the Criterion DVD release is with the commentaries. I would love to have heard more about the story, and it would have been nice to have heard from David Gulpilil, whose role as the aborigine was a watershed in Australian cinema, as noted in the IMDb article on his career.”