A boy and girl face the challenge of the world's last frontier.
Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aboriginal boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.
- Suicide or self-harm
- Harm to children
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Character
Grave, prestige, contemplative and earnest.
- gravecomic
- unpretentiousprestige
- contemplativerelentless
- earnestironic
- intimateepic
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“Is this Nicolas Roeg's best work?”
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“Is the slow pace a feature rather than a flaw?”
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“Is Jenny Agutter the best thing in Walkabout?”
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Reviews on TMDB
Written by TMDB members; each links to the original. Not part of Tastebuds's numbers.
- badelfon TMDB · Jul 20267/10
"We are all one blood. No matter where we are from, we are all one blood, the same." —David Gulpilil Summary: 7/10: Uneven direction cannot diminish the landmark debut of David Gulpilil, whose grace and intelligence anchor a film that's really about the colonial destruction of wilderness and the particular genius of what was lost. Walkabout marks the screen debut of one of the most luminous talents cinema has known. David Gulpilil was sixteen years old when British director Nicolas Roeg discovered him in Arnhem Land, a Yolngu boy who could barely speak English but was already an accomplished hunter, tracker, and ceremonial dancer. Over the next fifty years, Gulpilil would become Australia's greatest actor, leading a dance company for a decade, winning awards for his performances on stage and screen, and writing two volumes of children's stories that preserve Yolngu folklore for future generations. In this first role, he shows us everything he would become: the physical grace, the emotional intelligence, the capacity to communicate across the chasm of language through movement and presence alone. Girl and White Boy (Jenny Agutter and Luc Roeg) are equally fine in their roles, partic
Read the whole review on TMDB - Wuchakon TMDB · Oct 20217/10
_**Arty flick about survival in the Outback and coming-of-age**_ A teenage girl (Jenny Agutter) and her little brother get stuck in the Outback, but receive assistance by an aboriginal boy (David Gulpilil) on a ‘walkabout,’ a rite of passage into manhood. Directed by Nicolas Roeg, “Walkabout” (1971) is an arty cult flick that plays like a Terrence Malick film and no doubt influenced his style (since it came out two years before Malick’s feature film debut with “Badlands”). Agutter was only 16 during shooting while her character is 14, according to Roeg. The themes about the beauty of nature vs. man-made desecration and the clash of the primitive with the ‘cultured’ & the problems of communication thereof were probably fresh at the time but are obvious and old hat now. "Dances With Wolves" tackled the same issues almost 20 years later. Still, this is an artistic piece with loads of awesome nature footage, plus it’s interesting to see Agutter so young in the bush. It’s a must if you appreciate movies like “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (1975) or anything by Terrence Malick. David Gulpilil went on to appear in such notable flicks as “Crocodile Dundee” (1986) and “Australia” (2008). The film
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Cast
- Jenny AgutterGirl
- Luc RoegWhite Boy
- David GulpililBlack Boy
- John MeillonMan
- Robert McDarraMan
- Peter CarverNo Hoper
- John IllingsworthYoung Man
- Hilary BambergerWoman
- Barry DonnellyAustralian Scientist
- Noeline BrownGerman Scientist
Crew
- Nicolas RoegDirector
- Edward BondWriter
- James Vance MarshallNovel
- Nicolas RoegDirector of Photography
- John BarryOriginal Music Composer
- Alan PattilloEditor
- Antony GibbsEditor
- Si LitvinoffProducer
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Pairings
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Similar in taste
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous 201975% alikeBook · Both grave, contemplative, prestige.
Dujanah 201773% alikeGame · Both contemplative, grave, prestige.
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