Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful.
Review: Anyone who loves real cinema eventually arrives at Walkabout, a beautifully spare 1971 masterpiece by British director Nicholas Roeg. The enormously simple story of an English boy and girl who get lost in the Australian outback, and need the help of an aborigine boy to get back to civilization, Walkabout nevertheless manages to ask complicated questions that are central to society. Questions about race, class, and whether progress is necessarily a good thing. Luckily for the viewer, it does not provide any easy answers to these questions, but considers its audiences as intelligent, cognizant beings. Therefore, there is *something* in the reviews I've read here that claim it is a "head movie." However, it also works on an emotional level, juxtaposing images wonderfully to create sensations. Despite its simplicity, Walkabout can be read in a number of different ways; it could be a microcosmic re-telling of how the English colonized Australia, stumbling onto the continent, misunderstanding and ignoring the indiginous culture, and imposing themselves on the country. 'Water! Water! I can't make it any simpler. Anyone can understand that,' says Jenny Agutter to the Aborigine, completely failing to see why he has any excuse for not speaking her language. Roeg gives the situation hope, however, in his own son, who plays Boy, Girl's younger brother, who is much more willing to adapt. The cinematography is beautiful. Roeg makes Australia look like outer space, drawing out the alien nature of the landscape (from the point of view of two British). It is a spectacular, erotically gorgeous film.
Rating: 
Summary: Okay, but it strays FAR away from the book
Review: I just watched this in school today. We have just finished the book, and I must say that, when comparing the movie to the book, the book takes the cake. This movie strayed so far from the book that it was ridiculous. There were only two or three things from the book that appeared in the movie. I did not get the scenes with the weather balloon people, the plaster of paris family (what was it with that woman that was in the desert?) The movie had many scenes that simply had no point being there in the first place.As far as acting goes, the two kid actors did very well, as did the aboriginal that appeared in the movie. The cinematography was also good. I liked the music score, too. To put it simply, if you read the book and are looking forward to viewing the movie, just be ready for a poor adaptation.
Rating:
Summary: One of my all-time favourite movies
Review: This really is one of my all-time favourite movies. I first saw it when it was in theatrical release, back when I lived in Seattle. With just one viewing, it made a profound impact onmy friends and me. We got into long discussions over the meaning, the visuals and the incredible children actors in the movie. I went back to see it again, but it was already out of release. I looked for it on VHS for a long time, and it has only recently been available again. Last year, I took my copy to my family Christmas with people from the ages of 80+ to 10 years old. Everyone got something out of it (but probably not the same thing, eh). The fact that it has a message for different people at different stages in their lives says a lot about the universality of the images and the theme of an Eden lost. This is one of the most visually rich movies you will see, and you can share it with many friends. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: WALKABOUT
Review: Walkabout, Nicholas Roeg's masterpeice. A masterpeice it is, but not for the reasons usually stated. This film does not demonstrate the loss of Eden or the over-stated ruin of the world by modern technology. It is much more serene than that. This film focuses on forcing us to cope with the facts of life in a way that they seem less threatening. Instead of bluntly saying: civilization=bad, nature=good, it compares them in a peaceful, yet incredibly invasive way. We can all draw our own conclusions and use common sense to determine which form of society is correct. Going astray from the subliminal message of the film, Walkabout is one of the finest peices of cinematography I have ever seen. This cinema is so innovative that I could name countless pictures that shamelessly copy it, simply because Walkabout happens to be one of those innovations that was ignored by most viewers, but certainly not by Hollywood. It incorporates so many different forms of cinematography that sometimes it sneaks up on you. Most films that have good cinematography are made by such poseurs. They display it like a new Rolls Royce without a thought about flow or sensitivity. Walkabout expertly mixes good cinematography with a story. It seems so natural as you watch it. Just watch Walkabout. Be patient with it. You will feel more comfortable with all aspects of life.
Rating: 
Summary: Weird, too weird
Review: I hated this movie. I don't think I got it. There were TOO many things that didn't make any sense to me - the weather balloon people, why the father killed himself, the hunters, the plaster of paris family, or why the boy killed himself. Maybe it was just too deep but I missed the whole point. My family just took away my renting privledges because I told them this was a "masterpiece". Oh well.
Rating:
Summary: Made me buy a DVD player
Review: Did we all have a particular DVD that made us suddenly say: I *must* buy a player? This was mine. A long-time cinema buff, I'd somehow always managed to avoid this one. OK, so a couple of kids are lost in the outback, and an aboriginal helps them back to 'civilization', and they can't communicate at all... well, how entertaining could *that* be? Then one lazy Saturday night... what's on TV? Not much choice, it'll have to be Walkabout on the ABC (our BBC / PBS; and thank God I didn't yet have cable, or I'd have missed it for sure). Well, I was an emotional wreck at the end. John Barry's score would have been partly responsible - his music always gets to me (Midnight Cowboy, On Her Majesty's Secret Service). Then soon after this, I saw the director's cut at the cinema, and this must have been the first time in *any* movie that I got a spot of 'misty-eyes' (no way, I did *not* cry) triggered by a photographic effect. This was the cutting/transition effect in the sequence where we hear the little boy's voice telling some rambling story, as they walk, the camera spotting them at different angles, fleetingly, distantly, through the lush growth... If it's ever in your local cinema, just see it. Meantime, grab the DVD, lie back, and let it wash over you.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting, intuitive
Review: This is a wonderful film and has stood the test of time in a remarkable way. Can landscape be erotic? In this film it can. It is a brave movie and still has the capacity to shock. Jenny Agutter is absolutely gorgeous, holding the film together with a mesmerising, seductive performance. And it is filmed beautifully.
Rating:
Summary: Truth, Beauty, Simplicity
Review: "Walkabout" is a beautiful film about how people adapt to new environments yet are irreversibly shaped by their old ones. The film is about a brother and sister whose father takes them on a picnic in the Australian outback and for some inexplicable reason attempts to shoot them. When he fails to accomplish this, the father kills himself and destroys his vehicle so that the children are stranded in the outback. The children wonder through the outback in an attempt to reach civilization. At first the daughter (played by the beautiful Jenny Agutter) attempts to maintain an illusion of control and civilized behavior. Despite the fact that she and her brother are now in a natural environment with its own requirements, she compels him to wear his blazer and school hat. Eventually, they meet and are rescued by a young aborigine who is surviving in the outback on his own as a rite of passage. This rite is called the walkabout--hence the title of the film. As time passes, the children literally and symbolically shed their social garb. They dress with little or no clothing and attune themselves to the wild. The teenaged sister develops physical relations with the aborigine while the younger brother (who is still a child) begins to learn his language. Eventually the party reaches an outcrop of civilization and the story comes to its climactic end. The sister immediately resumes her civilized identity and distances herself from the aborigine. Tragically, the aborigine chooses this moment to court her according to the custom of his people. Where this might have been acceptable to the sister in the outback it merely repulses her in civilization. The aborigine hangs himself and the sister dresses her brother in his hat and blazer and continues toward on to civilization. At the end of the film she is married and living in her parents' former apartment. Her husband comes home to tell her about his new promotion at work, but her mind is occupied with recollections of life in the outback. The film operates on several levels. On one level, it is a story of paradise found and then relinquished. On another level the film explores how subjective "normalcy" is. In one scene the aborigine shoots and chops up a kangaroo. The image is grisly until the film mixes it with shots of a uniformed butcher chopping meat. The scene suggests that beneath our layers we all have the same basic needs and are operating on the same level. But far from arguing about the universal quality of all things, the film demonstrates how the environment is the determining factor of human behavior. The children cannot survive the outback unless they adapt to it, which is something the aborigine teaches them to do. The aborigine cannot survive in civilization unless he changes who and what he is. Ultimately, while people can adapt to new environments in this film, they cannot shed their original identities. The film ends with a note of sadness and a lack of completion.
Rating:
Summary: Walkabout, the Movie, Corrupts Walkabout, the Book
Review: As a middle school English teacher, I was delighted to finally find the movie that bears the same title as one of my favorite adolescent novels. To my disappointment, the movie is nothing like the book. The Book: Two children from South Carolina crash in the Northern Territory on their way to visit their Uncle Keith in Adelaide. Thirteen-year-old Mary drags her little brother to safety and then watches in horror as the pilot and navigator disintgrate when the plane explodes. Mary takes care of her eight-year-old brother, Peter, by wrapping a wound on his leg and giving him the only food they have which is a stick of candy. While the two search for food, a young aboriginal who is on the last leg of his "walkabout" (a rite of passage to prove his manhood) discovers the children. Mary is appalled that he is black and horrified that he is naked. The book is a wonderful opportunity to teach young people about acceptance and tolerance. While Mary has such compassion for Peter, she is shallow and petty in her assessment of the aboriginal. Peter, on the other hand, quickly becomes friends with the bush boy while Mary brings her cultural misgivings to the relationship and eventually causes the boy to die from mental euthanasia. It is only at the boy's death does Mary realize his goodness and her own bigotry. The children bury the boy who has taught them enough survival skills for the two of them to make it to the "valley-of-waters-down-under-the earth" where the children find plenty of food and water and ultimately an aboriginal family who shows the children how to get to a house. The reader knows the children will make it back home after enduring their own rite of passage. The Movie: In this horribly contrived movie, the children are taken on a picnic by their father who has inappropriate feelings for his daughter, Mary. The father commits suicide. The bush boy has designs on Mary, too, which is so far removed from the book as to suggest that the maker of the movie never read James Vance Marshall's novel. The camera zooms in the the crotches of trees for who knows what Freudian absurdity. The children are all conflicted by their relationships because the director seems to want to force some sort of sexual feelings between Mary and the bush boy. In the book, Mary is terrified that the bush boy might harm her even though Marshall makes it very clear that for the bush people there is a time and season for all things, and the bush boy would simply not be interested in a young girl. As a matter of fact, since aboriginals in this particular territory of Australia are all naked, the bush boy doesn't even know Mary is a "lubra," or young girl for most of the book because she is wearing clothing. More importantly, he doesn't care. He thinks the children are from some "freakish" backward tribe because of their total lack of survival skills, but he is kind to them, teaches them, and guides them. The point of the book is that the bush boy might seem to be less civilized than his white counterparts, but in fact is far more advanced in the treatment of his fellow beings than are the children; particularly Mary. The move is sick, twisted, and so disgusting that I have chosen to show A Far Off Place after I teach Walkabout because its namesake is nothing but an awful distortion of a beautiful book. I question how in the world anyone could enjoy such an awful film.
Rating: 
Summary: Voila..you see the world, you see yourself.
Review: This 1971 film was a buzzmaker; not only was it a forerunner in the filming techniques, Walkabout was an audacious attempt during a time of great controversies (end of Vietnam War, nascent awareness of protecting nature, etc) Bravely capturing some of the darknest sides of human nature the so-called civiliazed world had refused to acknowledge before, Walkabout is the story of 2 British/Australian children stranded in the Australian outback, surving w/ the aids of a Aborigine teen who is coming in contact w/ the world as well as his manliness (a ritual called walkabout). The distinctive visual aspects of this film evolve around the tense collision of progress and of nature against the backdrop of Australia's beautiful outback. In the preview, the audience is forewarned of a showdown at a place where man is just another creature competing for space and for food. The director not only emphasizes the beauty of nature but also its aggressive nature toward the weak, and of course its resistance to progress. The truly stunning way human nature is presented in the midst of nature, however, is the best part of this film; each character is moved by nature as his or her human instinct becomes bare in the wonder of the harsh world where the rule is simple yet fair. Certainly a film not afraid to showcase its differences, Walkabout manifests many controversial questions to the viewing audience. While dazzled by the simplistic beauty of the Australian outback, the tensile harmony and the permanent symbiosis of the wilderness further stress the aspect of civilization's root in nature, and nature's influence on civilization. As the audience follows the main characters through trials of the most primordial kinds, I myself feel the tension building up as modern men's nature fuses with the ancient law of survivor. Personally I see no objection in trying to locate a point where the "caveman instinct" co-dominates with the modern knowledge in order for us to stay in focus on humanity's purpose. Progress is not evil. Some may blame technological advance as a main source of evil in the modern world because many primordial instincts are now weak rivaling with extrinsic, materialistic callings. As shown in several shots in which modern people's action are shown to resemble Aborigine's, what Walkabout concludes is that mankind never sheds the basic essence of our nature.
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