Walkabout

Saw Walkabout, a pastoral film about a teenage girl and her younger brother who get lost in the Australian outback. The film opens with the sounds of didgeridoos and animal cries played over footage of a city. A particular man is focused on: suited, middle-aged, fussy. He is somehow involved in a mining operation. Mining is used here (and later, near the end of the film) as a symbol of modern man's disregard for and destruction of nature. Anyway, the girl and boy are lost in the outback. They shall undergo The Walkabout which is (we are informed in an opening title-card) a spiritual journey undertaken by the Aboriginals to attain adulthood. Yes, these two kids are to be saved.

Specifically, they're to be saved by an Aboriginal dude who comes along to help them out for absolutely no reason. He of course doesn't want them to die, but once they're out of the desert and into some jungly forest, it seems like they might be able to take care of themselves. Anyway it sort of seems cheap that these kids survive The Walkabout solely because they had help every step of the way. Does that count as a true Walkabout? Anyway, the exoticization of the Aboriginal dude continues as he is made into a symbol for the wilds of Australia. He goes into full-blown weeping Indian mode at one point, witnessing the lazy (and therefore useless and invalid) hunting of a bunch of water buffalo. I feel the film's heart is in the right place but, like that 70s ad I liked, it's approach leaves something to be desired.

Anyway, the film is mostly about these two kids surviving and getting in touch with nature which, this being the 70s, means getting naked a lot. This also leads to a lot of footage of the girl swimming about in the nude which is only a symbol of her spiritual freedom and return to nature, man. It has nothing to do with her being hot (oh and also here, check out this panty-shot. Wink wink.) It also means a subdued but romantic relationship with the Aborigine which must have been pretty damn edgy for 1971) Every so often we flash over to civilization for these strange, overly-bright, David Lynch-ish scenes of antiseptic cleanliness and calm unpleasantness. The boy and girl also lug around a radio (another symbol of decadent Modern Man) which at one point describes the incredibly cruel process of preparing an ortolan and later jabberingly recites mathematical formulas. Oh Modern Man! When will you ever learn?

So I didn't think much of this film. It was beautiful and well-shot. It's not lazy or unimaginative, but it's got a one-note message of condemnation for basically anything that's the result of refining. I find this message insulting and naive, especially as its suggestion is for us all to abandon the cities for the trees. This would result in a lot more happiness perhaps, but also in a lot less people, and a lot more dead babies. Oh well? I do agree that the environment is in a bad shape and that we could all do to be more sincere and emotional and less materialistic, but let's have some restraint even in that, okay? The sexism and racism is just the perfect 1970s cherry on top. They are positive stereotypes at least, but it's still sex/racism underneath. Ah well.