WALKABOUT

UK/Australia, 1971, 99 minutes, Colour.
Jenny Agutter, Lucien John, David Gulpilil, John Meillon.
Directed by Nicholas Roeg.

Walkabout is a photographer's film, a kind of cinema-poem about Australia, its people, its animals, its terrain, its myths and tradition; Many Australian audiences tended to take it literally and were very disappointed in its lack of realism, especially about Aborigine customs; however, if the film is seen as a poem, an exploration in images, colour and music of the land, then it has much to offer. While the themes may seem obvious at times, they are nonetheless worth thinking about. Overseas, the film was very well received by critics.

The director is photographer, Nicholas Roeg, who shot such films as Fahrenheit 451 and Far from the Madding Crowd and directed the Mick Jagger film, Performance. His son, Lucien John, plays the little boy. Jenny Agutter, who plays the heroine, was one of The Railway Children and won an Emrny (U.S. Television award) for her role in The Snow Goose with Richard Harris.

The film has great beauty and interest.

1. The film opened with a description of a walkabout, emphasising that it was a test for a 15 year old with stress on maturity and survival. Is this really what the film was about? Why?

2. What is the nature of a walkabout? Why do the aborigines perform it? (Is it a kind of ritual for them? Now?)

3. Many audiences criticised the film because of its failures of realism, e.g. the afternoon drive from Sydney to the desert, the children in their uniforms. Others defend the film by calling it a poem rather than a short story so that the details are imaginative or symbolic rather than literal or realistic. This would give quite a different interpretation to the film. Which do you think is truer to the film? Why?

4. The film opened with the Australian urban setting - Sydney, suburbs, school-children, cars, business worries, domestic scenes. How important for the whole film were these opening sequences? Were they strong enough for the comparison that was to be made between the white man's city culture and the desert civilisation of the blast man?

5. Why was the father agitated? Were you surprised when he drove them to the desert? Were you surprised when he tried to shoot his children? Why did he do this? What did it mean in terms of parents and children and the walkabout of the film?

6. What were the attitudes of the children towards their father? Did the little boy understand what went on? What responsibilities did it place on the girl?

7. How was the desert environment communicated visually? Was the desert; shown as beautiful or ugly, as hostile or friendly or neutral? Were the scenes of the beautiful flora and fauna overdone or was there a purpose in this?

8. How did the white children fare in their walkabout? How did they fit into the desert? How would the desert have destroyed them? How did it challenge the children to maturity and survival? How did they respond to the challenge?

9. Were you glad when the boy arrived? Was the desert friendly to him? How did the film show him at hone in the desert? How did it contrast the civilisations - in terms of harmony with the land and environment, capacity for survival and skills? Was the primitive civilisation being favoured at the expense of the modern culture which couldn't cope with nature?

10. What point was made about friendship and communication between the races? How serious a barrier was language? What united the children even though each spoke his own language?

11. How effective was the cross-cutting between kangaroos and death in the desert to the butchers' shop scenes? What was the message? Did it intrude in the middle of the film - too moralising, or did it make sense in this poem?

12. How did the weather station people come across to the audience? Were they presented unfairly, in too unfavourable a manner - contrasting with the aborigines and their encounter with death and the charred wreck of the car? How did the attitudes of the white man and black man differ? And the adult aborigines with the children?

13. How was desert happiness symbolised in the shared food, the naturalness of the swimming, the searching?

14. Were you glad they found the house and the road? Was the native boy?

15. What was the significance of the boy's dance? Literally, it was a death dance and he killed himself. Commentators say the aborigines do not act like this. Does this matter for the poem of the film? The aborigine does a death dance, trying to attract the white girl. She is afraid, hostile, although sensing what the overtures of the dance could mean. The black dies; the white lives - the black is driven to death by the lack of response, indifference, hostility of the white. Does the dance make sense in terms of the film's theme?

16. How did the white man's suspicion and unwillingness to share or help contrast with the help of the aborigines? How is this a condemnation of the virtues of property and ownership in civilisation?

17. How did this walkabout affect the girl in later years? What was the significance of showing her in later years and the details of her memory - freedom, happiness, sharing, lack of fear, communing with persons and with nature? Her regrets?

18. The director photographed the film. How did the film come across as a photographer's film?