In another Australian film I watched, Rabbit-Proof Fence, the central characters are three Aborigine children who run away to the wilderness, unable to adapt to white society. In Walkabout, roles are reversed as two white children are stranded in the wilderness where their "civilized" upbringing does them no good. Both films highlight the difficulties each culture, particularly whites, have in understanding each other.
Walkabout begins with a father taking his teenage daughter and young son out to the desert to have a picnic. He then inexplicably starts shooting at them causing them to flee and hide. Then he sets the car on fire and shoots himself in the head, thus stranding the two children in the middle of nowhere. After salvaging what she can, the girl leads her brother away from the wreckage and they wander the wilderness. Being proper English kids, they are ill prepared for the desert and soon find themselves laying beside a dried up waterhole dying of dehydration. They are rescued by a Aboriginal boy on a walkabout, a rite of passage where he must go into the outback and survive on his own. He allows the two of them to tag along his walkabout as they wander the vast wilderness.
I think when most people read that premise, they would assume that the film is about the noble savage and the ignorant white man, where the "savage" teaches the other about the virtues of his culture, nature, and ultimately friendship. On the surface, this is what Walkabout would seem to be about. The Aborigine boy acts as their survival guide; hunting, starting fires, finding water and trekking across the landscape. However beneath the beautiful shots of nature and budding companionship lies an uncertainty between the boy and the girl. While watching, I read it as a sexual tension between the two, and there is definitely a strong sexual undertone to the film. They are two teenagers at the cusp of their sexuality and there are several not-so-subtle shots to support their quiet fixation (and fear) of each other. However, even beyond that, there is the issue of communication.
I guess I forgot to mention that the boy does not speak or understand English and obviously the girl and her brother do not speak his language either. If there is a conflict of the film, it is in the failure of the boy and the girl to communicate with each other despite their unspoken friendship. They have grown up in their own separate worlds and cannot cross over. Director Nicolas Roeg points out the folly of their plight in pointing out that their worlds are actually quite similar. He does this by inserting shots of the "civilized" world and juxtaposing them with shots of the wilderness. For instance, when the boy starts to cut up a kangaroo he just killed, it is contrasted with a butcher at a store butchering meat, showing that they are one and the same. Unfortunately it is a conclusion they cannot reach on their own.
Throughout the film, the girl never really adapts to the wilderness or more importantly, to the boy. She still sees herself as a proper English girl and is concerned with keeping their clothes clean as to not look like tramps and reminding her brother to not ruin his good shoes. When they first meet she runs up to the boy asking for water over and over in English even when it is clear he does not understand. In perhaps the most significant line of the film, she says to him:
"Water. Drink. We want water to drink. you must understand! Anyone can understand that. We want to drink. I can't make it any simpler. Water. To drink. The water hole has dried up. Where do they keep the water?"
English speakers are the worst at this as they automatically assume that other people will understand them if they just somehow say the same thing differently or repeatedly. As someone who has difficulty communicating with my grandparents in Chinese, I can attest to this. If I don't know a word in Chinese I will simply say it in English, hoping, expecting, that they understand. I will even go as far as to say that English word in a Chinese accent as if that will help. It does not.
It is important to note that in this scene after the girl's rant, the young brother is able to get his point across through sign language. He simply points to his mouth and makes a sound and instantly the Aborigine understands. Throughout the film the two of them are able to communicate in a way that the girl cannot because she is too far gone into her way of thinking. It is because of the boy's youth and nativity that he is able to adapt better to the wilderness and the Aborigine.
Perhaps more tragic is the Aborigine's inability to express himself to the girl. There is a quiet bond between the two that seems obvious to the viewer yet the two cannot find a way to acknowledge each other in that manner. There is a curious scene in the middle where he leads the two past a camp and doesn't tell them about it. What is his motivation? I took it to mean that he liked them too much to let them go or maybe he assumed they'd stick around forever, but even if they did, could their silent happiness last? At the end of the film, the Aborigine attempts to win her over with a courtship dance that she does not understand. But more tragically, like how she persisted about the water in English, he doesn't know any other way to get his point across. He persists with the dance all day and night, not understanding that she doesn't understand and has thus rejected it without knowing it, which leads to the somber ending.
Wow, that was a lot of analysis I just did, but I really like how in a film where there doesn't seem to be much plot at all, you can still talk about so much, yet I barely scratched the surface about the film's qualities. Walkabout is a really beautifully shot film showcasing the Australian outback in an almost surreal manner. You don't really know how long they have been wandering around for. It could be a couple days, it could just as easily be a month; there is no real sense of time in the film. I really liked these scenes as it was sort of like a buddy road trip movie. All they have are each other and they seem genuinely happy together and be in one with nature. I suppose the pinnacle of this sentiment is a scene where the girl swims in a pond naked in a moment of pure tranquillity, a scene that is later reflected upon longingly years later when she is back in civilization.
If I had one complaint about the film, it is that after the girl and her brother find the road, there is a lull that lessens the impact of what just proceeded it. I feel that could have been tightened up a little if not cut out completely. Other than that, I really liked this film. There are those moments of joy and beauty, yet it is underlined by a pessimistic and somber feeling. Despite their experiences with each other, the boy can never be a part of her world and vice versa. The typical noble savage story takes a wrong turn as she never truly allows herself to open up to him though years later it is one of her biggest regrets as she thinks back upon those moments. It is not necessarily a story of people being lost in the wilderness, but a story of people being lost in themselves.*
Grade: A-
*Pretty sure I read that line somewhere, but I'm not sure who to credit.
No comments:
Post a Comment