Jayclops' musings on his favorite pasttime and escape.
Humanity and wilderness.
June 28, 2007Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)
It is difficult not to be mesmerized by Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout. Undeniably, it’s beautifully shot, not just because you have every feast of nature unfolding at your very own eyes masterfully shot by Roeg himself, but the film also has an irresistible story, an experience worth going through despite the lingering uncertainty that reverberates on the fate of the characters who stride along with nature’s mysterious yet mystical magnanimity.
From the start, we are already introduced to the concept of the walkabout – the rite of passage of an adolescent Australian male aborigine to adulthood/maturity wherein he is thrown to the wilderness to not just live but survive, even at the cost of other fellow aborigine. But even before we are introduced to this fellow about to venture into his walkabout, we see a white schoolgirl (Jenny Agutter) who’s roughly about eighteen and his young inquisitive brother (Lucien John, Roeg’s own son), both clad in uniform running aimlessly and escaping from a berserk father who starts shooting at them, sets the car into flames and shoots himself in the head. The two find themselves unable to get back to main road. They are lost.
We are sucked into the desert journey and we find ourselves in the abundance of elements that sets us into a reflective mood. For one, we are clearly drawn into a comparison of life in the urban jungle and the real one where man is deduced into a mere creature along with other animals whose basic skill would be to live and live alone. The director does not dwell on the obvious and trivial, but the experience is something transcendental. On the other hand, the striking contrasts – splicing shots of meat chopping for instance – may seem disruptive but does not diminish the film’s beauty.
It is also worth noting that Roeg wants us to focus in the setting of the desert as the world and life’s path where we are able to utilize our intellect (common sense), get in touch with our emotions and fulfill our humanity. The white schoolgirl and her younger brother remained nameless and the young aborigine’s language is never translated (?) to stress that what is important lies in the fundamental, even in the ways we communicate with each other. The film also points out that man’s deliberate destruction of nature in whatever form does not only lead to environmental cataclysm but also signifies an inner disruption in the very core of man.
With the abundance of flora and fauna, it may seem as a bloated National Geographic episode on the Australian outback, but of course, it’s more than just being caught up in the resplendent beauty of God’s creation. It is a testament to the inexplicable life-changing wonders and a timely check, no matter how repetitive it may be, on humanity’s stewardship.
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