Walkabout

Watched Walkabout, since it was on iPlayer and I’ve heard fairly often what a classic film it is, mostly in the same breath as ‘And, y’know, 16-year-old Jenny Agutter naked’. In fact, I thought it was a very immature, gimmicky and poorly-crafted piece of work. What it has going for it is beauty, reflecting Roeg’s background as a cinematographer, with a great many beautifully-composed shots and awe-inspiring locations. There’s something appealing about Agutter, too, something about her airy aloofness that makes her seem ethereal, disconnected from the world around her, and she certainly has a great deal of beauty.

But the film is just undeveloped, juvenile and shallow. From the hallucinogenic and inexplicable opening scenes to the realisation that the aboriginal boy will never be more than a bizarre spectacle and that we will never learn anything significant about the walkabout beyond what we see, everything is rushed, vague and flimsy. Proponents of the film will argue that its vagueness is poetic, deep, profound; I can’t escape the image of Roeg throwing things together haphazardly, clutching at sophistication but never bothering to do the thinking required. When you see the utterly brainless juxtapositions of aboriginal hunting and the Western meat industry, or brick walls and cliff faces, I don’t see how you can think that that sort of subtlety is part of an overall piece of depth and intelligence. As for the nude scenes, they are unnecessary and exploitative, as lowbrow as any overt pornography, and the fact that I think that everything I’ve ever seen Agutter in beyond The Railway Children has featured her pubic hair utterly removes the novelty, even if nowadays the scene would incur charges of child pornography.