WALKABOUT
Director ~ Nicolas Roeg
Writers ~ Edward Bond, Donald G. Payne, Nicolas Roeg
1971, United Kingdom-Australia-United States
Stars ~ Jenny Agutter, David Gulpilil, Luc Roeg
Nicolas Roeg’s first film ‘Performance’ was directed with Donald Cammell, but he was an established cinematographer beforehand (‘Fahrenheit 451’ and, notably, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’). Both Roeg and Cammel went on to exhibit exemplary powers and skill with editing, although only the former crossed over. Roeg carried this on with a succession of classics from ‘Walkabout’, his debut as a solo director, ‘Don’t Look Now’, ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ and ‘Bad Timing’: a stunning run. Even later, lesser films such as ‘Eureka’, ‘Insignificance’, ‘Track 29’ and ‘The Witches’ had a lot to offer with his oddball sensibility.
The novel ‘Walkabout’ by James Vance Marshall, published in 1959 originally as ‘The Children’, is a slender affair with a slim story and a travelogue sensibility, showcasing indigenous tricks of survival, the outback scenery and wildlife. James Vance Marshll was a pseudonym for Donald G. Payne, the former being a man who lived in the outback that Payne knew. The plot: two American children – a young American boy and his adolescent sister – are the sole survivors of a plane crash in the outback and only survive by stumbling upon an Aboriginal youth on “walkabout”, the indigenous rite-of-passage ritual of survival in Australia’s unforgiving wild. The culture clash is both sweet and ultimately tragic and Marshall leaves much unspoken.
Roeg’s ‘Walkabout’ announces his fierce translation of a young adult novel with shock tactics, unpredictable yet fluid cross-cutting editing that moves across time, memory, space and place, held together with the drift of John Barry’s luscious score and reaching a replication of experience rarely achieved in film. Certainly, it does not feel like a children’s benign odyssey anymore, however much the book has been marketed as such. It does this by marooning the children not with a plane crash, but their father’s breakdown (presumably caused by the modern world), murder attempt and suicide. This is a smart narrative change, saving budget but also announces a world of danger and unanswered questions. Your class privilege won’t save you, is not even a safe place ~ and in this adaptation, it is a particular English class privilege.
Like the prose, Roeg’s vision never loses sight of the wildlife simply carrying on while these two alien interlopers of civilisation try to survive. There are many startling shots of scenery and wildlife throughout the film: with a tiny crew of six people, Roeg created a phantasmagoria of improvised beauty and brutality. Always, his editing conveys layers that never lose sight of a bigger picture: they sleep and the dissolves convey their dreaming; as they wrestle with what to do next, the radio talks of mankind’s evolution to a “perpetual succession of comfortable shopkeepers”; or the sun and moon sounding like radio transmitters, or collecting memories on the airwaves. The adage goes that if you don’t notice the editing then the editor is doing their job, but with Roeg the editing is a character, acting like an omnipotent observer, like the universe or fate or Greek Gods playing around with the protagonists. Always a wider and comparative view is communicated: when the white kids are playing in a tree, it is juxtaposed with Aboriginals playing with the burn-out husk of the car; carving up a wallaby is intercut with a butcher’s shop. James Barry’s lush score and the sound design are integral to this, even lapsing into diegetic pop at moments (there is almost always the radio as a symbol of society broadcasting both its inanities, white culture and music).
Roeg had apparently planned to adapt this book for years, for so long that he had co-directed ‘Performance’, his eldest son had grown too old for the part that his youngest took and Agutter had grown a few years into the much more suitable sixteen-seventeen. Agutter’s cut-glass Englishness and professionalism is perfect for a girl that can’t quite adapt from her bubble of civilisation, berating her younger brother for not caring for his uniform in perilous conditions, who thinks that the indigenous boy should know what English if she just talks more forcefully. Hers is a cultural superiority that cannot see or break out of its narrow-mindedness and her persistence in keeping a stiff upper lip are alternately heroic and annoying. She is almost the antagonist in her stubborn resolve not to integrate. Young Luc’s young performance is all young roughness, and it cannot be understated how effective his natural disarming nature is. Gulpilil’s natural grace and openness is warm and fascinating. These make for contrasting yet complimentary performances.
Agutter speaks fondly of David Gulpilil, who obviously made a strong impression on her, and warmly of Roeg. Gulpilil – whose name is misspelt as Gumpilil in the credits – went on to have an acting career for the rest of his life. Lucian Roeg (credited as Lucien John for the film) also speaks of the filming as a fondly remembered time with his whole family. He went on to be a producer ofmany noteworthy indie films (including for the Tom Waits live film ‘Big Time’) but has no further acting credits.
In the book, the white foreigners bring germs and a lack of understanding that brings about the death of the Aboriginal boy; it is his nakedness that the girl can’t get over; indeed, nudity itself proves almost insurmountable for her. In the film it is more sexual awakening mixed with this lack and fear of understanding. The film conveys sexual tension through suggestive close-ups and glances. She becomes increasingly frustrating in her boneheaded adherence to civilisation, although this surely stems also from fear.
At one point, the girl assumes that they are the first white people the youth has seen, but Roeg also shows how busy things are as the children roam oblivious. There are also weather balloons, hunting and what appears to be the exploitation of the locals. There is a great sadness when the youth becomes serious with his advances rejected by the girl who doesn’t understand, and a realisation that this civilisation that is portrayed as unfriendly and crude will reject and destroy his culture. But this is not to say the film is sentimental about the opposing Aborigine culture, making killing as much an ancestral artform, hanging corpses in trees, surrounded by flies. He also does not possess the imagination to think beyond his culture to communicate more than survival tips. The girl realises too late the Eden she experienced. These are the tragedy.
‘Walkabout’ may possess a simple and slender premise, but it is thematically rich: coming-of-age, culture-clash, class, survival, existence and nature, as Roger Ebert says, “the mystery of communication”. Its use of editing, imagery and symbolism are unmatched in unlocking these wider contemplations on culture, memory and experience, and ultimately it is enchanting and very, very moving.
