A young sister and brother are abandoned in the harsh Australian outback and must learn to exist in the natural world, without their usual comforts, in this hypnotic masterpiece from Nicolas Roeg. Along the way, they meet a young aborigine on his “walkabout,” a rite of passage in which adolescent boys are initiated into manhood by journeying into the wilderness alone. Walkabout is a thrilling adventure as well as a provocative rumination on time and civilization. —The Criterion Collection
London-born Nicolas Roeg served in the military as a projectionist, and entered the movie industry immediately after World War II as a gofer and apprentice editor. He joined MGM’s British studios in 1950, and eventually became a cinematographer in 1959, working on a multitude of films of all types, from second unit work on Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to primary photography on the rock & roll exploitation films Just for Fun (1963), Every Day’s a Holiday (1965), and The System (1966). He moved into the director’s chair with Performance (1970), which he co-directed with Donald Cammell, and made a major impression with the low-keyed, eerily compelling drama Walkabout (1971). By the mid-‘70s, Roeg was one of England’s most respected filmmakers, responsible for the unsettling thriller Don’t Look Now (1973), and the sci-fi drama The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). With the possible exception Insignificance (1985) and the compellingly obscure Track 29 (1988) Roeg’s output throughout the 1980s… read more
I'd first seen Walkabout years ago, and after finally finding a copy on DVD, I watched it again to work on some film pacing ideas. Roeg's use of detailed cutaways worked perfectly, as did his choice to allow some shots to linger. The film never became boring, though the aside to the researchers wasn't particularly needed.
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.
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Nic Roeg’s first solo effort as director. An English teenager (Jenny Agutter) and her much younger brother (played by Roeg’s son, simply billed as Lucien John) become suddenly stranded in the middle… read review
Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout tells the story of two children, one a teenage schoolgirl (Jenny Agutter) and the other her little brother (Luc Roeg), who are put into a deeply disturbing and unexpected… read review
A wit of this film starts with the introduction. Through a presentation in the text we see what’s Walkabout. Then we see images of a father who is close to madness and decides to kill his two sons… read review
Although at a glance this film seems to be about civilization and the natural world (from which the civilized beings are estranged, somehow contributing to their dysfunctional state as in the father… read review
