Where Do They Keep the Water?

Movie Review: Walkabout

James: "Yeah, Pam? Australia has the cutest animals in the world."
Pamela: "Australia has the most poisonous animals in the world."

My familiarity with director Nicholas Roeg is limited to The Witches and The Man Who Fell to Earth, and while I guess these are both weird movies, Walkabout is weird on a whole other level. It sets its tone early with a disjointed prologue that climaxes with a man taking his two children - a teenage girl and a very young (I'm thinking seven or eight) boy - out for a picnic in the middle of nowhere, and then tries to kill them. Upon failing, he blows up the car and kills himself. His children flee into the outback.

Walkabout is very clearly trying to tell us something but exactly what that is is up for discussion. The white children are woefully unequipped for the journey ahead of them. The older sister attempts to take charge but it's clear she has no idea what she's doing - she at one point feeds her brother salt to stave off his thirst. So at first you'd think it's a statement on how the advances of modern society produces incapable people, or that while we might call the aborigines primitive, they at least know what they need to teach their children. Something like that. But later, when an aboriginal boy stumbles upon them while on his walkabout and takes them under his wing, scenes of him killing a kangaroo are juxtaposed with quick shots of a butcher preparing a loin, which I thought was to suggest that the advances of modern society have not advanced us far beyond our neighbours at all. That's reinforced, to a degree, by a couple of scenes comparing the courting rituals of the aborigines and white people. Then the final scene hints that the movie was about something else altogether, not a comparison of the two civilizations but rather just the story of the children's walkabout itself.

That's my only real criticism of the movie - it at times seems to want to be heady, and whenever it does it's just confusing. Maybe I should get stoned and revisit it. But Walkabout has an interesting story, surprisingly compelling characters despite having relatively little dialogue, and it's gorgeous. The film lingers frequently to consider the beauty of the outback, and pauses to focuses on its many adorable inhabitants. So frequently, in fact, that the few creepy scenes seem very stark and quietly disturbing. It's a good movie that merits a second watch.