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| Walkabout [1971] | ![Walkabout [1971]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51P0S46F48L._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Nicolas Roeg
Actors: Jenny Agutter, David Gulpilil, Luc Roeg, John Meillon, Robert Mcdarra
Studio: 4 Front Video
Category: Video
List Price: £9.99
Buy New: £9.90
You Save: £0.09 (1%)
Buy New/Used from £6.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  (24 reviews)
Sales Rank: 4344
Format: Digital Sound, Director's Cut, Hifi Sound, Pal, Special Edition, Widescreen
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Media: VHS Tape
Running Time: 96 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Discs: 1
UPC: 044005986631
EAN: 0044005986631
ASIN: B00004R768
Release Date: February 8, 1999
Theatrical Release Date: June 1971
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Very few films achieve subliminal greatness with cross-cultural impact, but Walkabout is one of those films--a visual tone poem that functions more as an allegory than a conventionally plotted adventure. Considered a cult favourite for years, Nicolas Roeg's 1971 film centres upon two British children who are rescued in the Australian outback by a young aborigine. Through exquisite cinematography and a story of subtle human complexity, the film continues to resonate on many thematic and artistic levels. Just as Roeg intended, it is a cautionary morality tale in which the limitations and restrictions of civilisation become painfully clear when the two children (played by Jenny Agutter and Roeg's young son, Lucien John) cannot survive without the aborigine's assistance. They become primitives themselves, if only temporarily, while the young aborigine proves ultimately and tragically unable to join the "family" of civilisation. With its story of two worlds colliding, Walkabout now seems like a film for the ages, hypnotic and open to several compelling levels of interpretation. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Haunting November 7, 2008
'Walkabout' is an incredibly beautiful film and haunts you in a way almost beyond comprehension. The fact it is so subjective means it is a film to be revisited time and again. The only thing I can liken it's effect to is poetry. The lyrical nature of it, the stunning cinematography...I'd like to think that the entire meaning of the film can be tied up in the final scene where the character of Jenny Agutter loses herself in recollection- it has all the sense of sorrow for something lost that can never be found again, which is perhaps as good a summing up of the film as I can create.
Probably not for those who cannot stand 'meandering' or who like absolutism in films; for everyone else a hedonistic joy.
perfect October 11, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
jenny agutter gets her kit off and swims in a pool in an extended and gratuitous scene. perfect.
Beautiful...beautiful beautiful October 5, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Yes a realy lovely and touching and unique movie.If youhavent seen this you must see it now you will never forget the experience.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark aka poetryanimations at youtube
 A poignant movie, very close to being a classic September 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's unsettling to find that something you've treasured, now seen or met again, leaves you feeling a little flat. Did you change for the worse...have you become jaded...less open about feeling emotion? Or perhaps what you liked so much then simply isn't the wonder you thought it was. Note that elements of the plot are discussed.
A young girl (Jenny Agutter), 14, and her brother (billed as Lucien John, who actually was Nicolas Roeg's son, Luc) about 7, are driven far into the Australian outback by their father for a picnic. We've seen the family...the children at school, the mother preparing food while she smokes and looks distracted, the daughter swimming in the pool of their expensive apartment building, the father a businessman who stares out the window at her. For the picnic, the mother has stayed at home. The father is preoccupied in the car. He stops and the daughter lays out the food while her brother runs about among rocks. A shot rings out and the bullet hits the rocks by the boy. The father is firing. The daughter runs to her brother and scoops him up to hide. He shoots at them several more times, then demands that they come back so that they can return home. After a pause the father pours gasoline on the car, ignites it and shoots himself. The children are stranded in the middle of scrub desert with only what little food they can carry. They start walking. They eventually find some muddy water and fruit, but in the morning the water has disappeared and the fruit has all been eaten by birds. And they meet a 16-year-old Aboriginal boy (David Gulpilil) who is doing walkabout, the months' long initiation to manhood where he must survive, or not survive, by himself.
The heart of the story is how he helps them survive, how he looks after them, how sexual feelings arise, how the girl is shaped by her conventional attitudes and is unaware of the boy except as someone who will take them back to civilization, how the boy is shaped by his tribal rituals and has no other way to express himself. The climax of the boy's feelings and his attempt to express them is poignant and sad.
The film, however, is punctuated at the beginning and end and occasionally throughout with shots of civilized life which appear to make civilization less appealing than the primitive and direct life the boy brings to the girl and her brother. Is butchering to bring meat to the supermarket really any different than butchering a kangaroo or a lizard? Doesn't the treatment of Aborigines as children compare unfavorably with the resourcefulness and cheerfulness of the boy? Isn't killing for food better than using high-powered rifles to kill animals for sport? The movie is oblique enough so that these "civilized" moments don't overpower the basic story, but they are still there. Viewing the film now, they seemed unnecessary intrusions into what remains a very strong and affecting story of two young people utterly unable to communicate because of their own conventions.
The movie is beautifully photographed. Two sequences stand out for me. In one, after days in the desert and scrub, the three find themselves walking on through a forest of eucalyptus trees, palms and green scrub. The little brother is trotting along with the young man telling him a long and involved story about a boy on a ladder. Not a word is understood but they both enjoy the experience. The other sequence is in an abandoned, ruined farm house. The young man has painted himself and is dancing what appears to be a ritual of declaration to the girl. He can't express himself any other way and she can only show that she is frightened. He dances until he is exhausted. In the morning she and her brother find him in a resolution that is quite sad.
This is on balance a wonderful movie that, for me, hasn't aged as well as I thought it would. In particular, John Barry's film score seems now to be far too lush and intrusive. Concentrate on the story of the two young people, however, and you won't be disappointed. It's a film well worth having.
Walkabout August 18, 2008
"Into my heart a air that chills from far yon country blows"...... a most beautiful film, visual poetry a sumptious feast from Roeg, we are taken with Agutter and a young Roeg Junior across the Australian Outback when the two siblings are abandoned by their Father's suicide and botched attempts to kill them. They are befriended and saved by a young Aborigine and together they experience their own rites of passage. The most vivid and memorable scene is when later Agutter now an adult has a flashback over her husbands' shoulder and we are taken back to that lost land of innocence and freedom one to which she can never return as can none of us
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