WALKABOUT a film essay by Sean Lee
Directed and photographed by Nicolas Roeg. Written by Edward Bond. Girl: Jenny Agutter Boy: Lucien John Aborigine: David Gumpilil
Evaluation: **** (out of ****)
When Walkabout was released nearly thirty years ago, it was widely regarded as a cinematic pièce de rèsistance. Roeg's lush photography combined with a deceptively elemental story yielded a film of both intoxicating beauty and relevance. Unabashedly advertised in the film's theatrical trailer as `the most different movie you'll ever see,' Walkabout lives up to the appellation by being Kubrickesque in its vivid imagery and openness to interpretation. Roeg's film is primarily about existence at the margin and the nature of communication. What surrounds the walls that we erect and can we exist beyond them? Walkabout suggests that cultural coexistence may be a myth; our lives are intrinsically inclined towards an indigenous domicile and its native tongue binds us.
The theme of home emanates from Walkabout's lyric. The comforts that lie at one's hearth are oftentimes immeasurable. One of my fondest memories of growing up were days at camp, but there were always the first few days that were spent terrified of my new habitat and much time was spent longing for home. Eventually, one gets makes friends and adapts to the new environment, and when the two or three weeks are over, we would give anything for another week. Oftentimes Walkabout is interpreted as a `back to nature ' movie, but the opposite is true. The children cannot accept the outback as a place where people call home. There are times when the Girl and her brother seem to adapt to their surroundings, but the acceptance of the Australian Outback is tenuous at best. The Girl meticulously keeps her school outfit clean and makes sure she looks presentable even in the desolate desert. She even wears her bra throughout the journey, as if clinging to the icons of her civilization would serve as a token of her existence. Once the Girl finds the abandoned farm, the sight of her irrepressible relief reminds us that she still longs for familiarity . For the Girl, there is never harmony between her home and the outback; her travels with the Aborigine were necessary means to an end. Though the film concludes with a sense of regret, the Girl chooses to recollect her experiences as an image of happiness, but not as an inspiration to break the cyclical monotony of her life.
Why is the acceptance of the outback so difficult for the Girl? Nicolas Roeg sets up the answer to the question by presenting the idea of boundaries. Man strives for convenience and packs everything that could be desired into dense, over-populated cities. When the cities run out of space, skyscrapers are erected to increase capacity. The conflict between nature and civilized man is established in shots early in the film. While the family members are coming home, we see shots of buildings amongst trees . The mise-en-scène of these shots suggest a relationship between the organic and inorganic, and we sense that their coexistence is unnatural. Roeg comments: `All architecture has [an artificiality]. No matter how much it is spoken about ‘it goes with the trees…' It's artificial - whatever way you look at it. ' Another example of this is also one of the more startling images in the film. The Father, coming home after work, stands on the deck of their apartment and looks at his children playing in the pool. The POV shot is amusingly perverse; we see the children playing in a pool by the ocean . Revenge by Mother Nature, it seems, is exacted later in the film when the children reach an Edenic oasis only to see the water dry up shortly after their arrival. The scene, in a didactic way, seems to scold the children for their wasteful ways. Juxtaposing organic elements with inorganic elements elucidate modern man's vain efforts to exist in both a natural and synthetic world. Civilized man, represented by the Father and the Girl, seem driven by solely by economies of scale. And the cities become traps – walking home through a botanical garden is no substitute for a forest just as swimming in a pool is no substitute for the sea. At some point the Father realizes this. Trapped from real experience, real transcendence, the Father takes his life and attempts to spare his children of civilization's prison as well.
The opening sequence to Walkabout shows shots of brick walls which pan to either the hubbub of Sydney or the bareness of the outback . Through these shots, Roeg presents the viewer with the concept of boundaries. The wall becomes a metaphor for the division between the resident and the aboriginal – the civilized White and the primitive Black. The walls of the modern man effectively keep the unwanted out, but to what extent are these boundaries actually the self-imposed trappings of the civilized? Modern man raves of technological progress, but the Father, the Girl, the Boy, and even their automobile cannot survive in the an environment where the natives thrive.
Walkabout explores what happens when the products of industrial civilization are displaced to the margins of their familiar world. It is important to note that the Girl is not dropped in the heart of the aboriginal land, but in a border zone where two cultures meet. Roeg makes this clear not only through the shots of the brick wall which infer a line of demarcation between two cultures, but also the frequent emissions of the radio, which offers the impression that the children have not strayed far from the city. On the flip side, though the land the children are in are certainly more foreign to them than the Aborigine, he too, cast away from his home to undertake the walkabout, is placed at the margins of his own society. This subtlety should be recognized in that it relieves from the Aborigine the burden of being a host; that is, he is on a journey of survival just as the Girl and her brother are and he is under no obligation to play the role as a guide for the children. In fact, in the end it is the Aborigine that does not survive the walkabout. Their meeting takes place at a border zone where the cultures of the city and the outback connect. By removing the schemata of their familiar lives, Roeg presents cross-cultural communication in the most fundamental context. Thus, what happens to the characters, which aptly remain nameless throughout the film, becomes an allegorical tale of cultural coexistence.
When the children first meet the Aborigine, the Girl unsuccessfully tries to communicate with the Aborigine. `Water!' she cries repeatedly, `You must understand. Anyone can understand that… I can't make it any simpler!' The Aborigine looks in confusion. Finally, the Girl's' younger brother makes the gesture to drink, and the Aborigine immediately understands, and shows them how to draw water from the ground through a reed . Herein lies the pessimistic undertone of the film. Roger Ebert wrote: `[Walkabout] suggests that we all develop specific skills and talents in response to our environment, but cannot easily function across a broader range. It is not that the Girl cannot appreciate nature or that the [Aborigine] cannot function outside of his training. It is that all of us are the captives of environment and programming ' Continuing further along the lines of Ebert's hypothesis, I would suggest that the fact that the Girl, who is fourteen, cannot effectively communicate in comparison to her younger brother further provides a subtle point. As all children look at the world with wonder and curiosity, the little boy in Walkabout is a reminder of the plasticity of a child's mind. Roeg feels that the boy's age of six is crucial because it is the point where `one begins to form proper memories. Then at eight you start worrying about school, then at nine, ten, eleven, [you worry about] exams .' The boy's age, according to Roeg, is at a point where one still feels secure and trusting, but the little boy is just at the cusp of loosing that security . For the 14 year-old Girl, even necessity for water cannot impel creativity. She has taken for granted the power of language, and is too jaded to feel the need to communicate in any way other than English. Her 6 year-old brother, on the other hand, is able to communicate effectively not because he is more intelligent, but because he has had less of the environmental programming suggested by Ebert. Like some studies which show a critical period in which a child can effectively learn language, in this scene, Roeg presents the idea of a critical period of communication. Sometime between the ages of the Girl and her brother, Roeg suggests our programming is complete - even the common tongue of gesticulation then eludes us, and our communicative abilities become hard-wired instead of remaining dynamic.
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Caliban, the beast-human slave of Prospero cries: `You taught me language, and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse. ' The power of communication is an important theme in literature. Prospero taught Caliban language so that he could know when to chop wood or pick berries, not so that he could engage in philosophical debate. Because of the inherent power in bestowing language onto another, frequently lessons in language become a source of domination over the pupil. Certainly, Friday was quite enamored with Crusoe for enlightening him on the White Man's ways. Subtly, this theme is explored in Walkabout. While the little boy is willing to talk to the Aborigine in the Aboriginal tongue, the Girl, even near the end of the film, still insists, `Water! Water!' However, her cries are no longer the cries for help, but akin to orders for a slave . She commands the Aborigine to fill a bucket from the fountain at the abandoned house while she is just as capable of filling the bucket herself. The Aborigine takes the bucket and softly replies, `Water.' The disappointment in the Aborigine' s face is evident as he finds his sexual advances are met with the Girl's callous indifference. Just like Prospero and Caliban, the language shared between the Girl and the Aborigine are words of governance, not compassion. Under the rubric of communication, we find that Roeg again suggests that after a certain critical period, we no longer become receptive to subtleties of communication. The POV shots of the Girl looking at the Aborigine's buttocks and groin early on were the first indication of a sexual interest between the two. There is also an erotically suggestive shot of the tree limbs and later a POV shot of the Aborigine juxtaposing the Girl's leg next to a tree limb in his mind's eye . Yet tragically, because neither party can articulate their attraction for one another, the relationship turns into one that is more effortless for both of them but detrimental to their coexistence; the Aborigine becomes the waterboy while the Girl retreats to dreams of the city.
If there is an instance when Roeg lets us ponder the image of coexistence, it is in the beautifully evocative swimming scene . We see the Girl and the Aborigine existing, if just for a moment, in a temporary Eden. The cross-cutting between shots of the Girl swimming and the Aborigine hunting carry a domestic proposition – the Girl is at home with nature while the Aborigine, under the role of her husband, works to provide for the family. The little boy follows the Aborigine to learn the ways of hunting. For this moment, the Girl, the Aborigine, and the boy represent Everyman; stripped of all pretext, they exist simply as God's children, and cultural barriers cease to be. Jenny Agutter, who plays the Girl, recalls: `[Nicolas Roeg] wanted it to be the most innocent and beautiful sequence of the film, which [depicts] just their living. Because if they don't have that at this point, then there is no regret at the end .'
It is regret at the end of Walkabout that is our indication that this is not a ‘Back to Nature' story. Had it been such, the Girl would have stayed in the outback, or would have at least altered her lifestyle when she returned to the city. Roeg, however, shows us that the Girl gets married and lives in the exact same apartment she did as a child. There are a couple jump cuts to the brick wall, signaling her existence back within the boundaries of her society. The situation is perverse because not only does she return from her walkabout uninspired, she clings to the tokens of familiarity with increased fervor. Living in the same block flat looking over the same pool - she even marries a man who works in the same building as her father. The lessons learned in the outback are lost and she has come full circle. It is understood that one day the Girl, now a woman, will look over the deck at her own kids playing in the pool by the ocean and realize like her father before her, the sterility of their existence. Unlike her father, however, she will be burdened by the memory of her moment of transcendence and how she failed to grasp it.
Walkabout is not an indictment of industrialization or technology. The barriers to communication were built with bricks from both sides of the wall. The civilized trap themselves in a synthesized existence and the primitive stodgily adhere to ways of the old. While the Girl could not find solace outside her programmed environment, the Aborigine was equally ineffective in coexisting with the Girl. The message in Walkabout, however, is not entirely pessimistic. Though the final scene may be colored with regret, we also notice the little boy, who must now be a young man, missing from the scene. Perhaps there is a period in one's life where one can still be enlightened. Roeg leaves the possibility that somewhere out there the boy exists, and carrying the lessons learned on the happy highways of his youth, he continues to wonder, communicate, and coexist with all people. We hold within ourselves the similar hope that we shall never lose such ability to be inspired.
Copyright 1999 Sean Lee
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews