Walkabout (1971)

The review calls Walkabout a 1971 stunner and atmospheric adventure that remains feverish and intimate, a radical film of its decade. It singles out Jenny Agutter’s complex, intelligent performance and the film as Roeg’s emotional arrival.

The critic praises Roeg's use of images and editing to create a hypnotic journey contrasting innocence and civilization, highlighting the film's dream-like quality and inevitable loss of innocence.

The critic hails the film as a masterful, totemic work of profound spiritual and existential power that has lost none of its force. He singles out its raw, awe-inspiring imagery of the outback and its exploration of human nature, innocence, and civilization's corruption.

The critic praises Roeg’s debut solo feature as vividly capturing the Australian outback as an ancient, timeless setting for fable and allegory. It highlights the film’s pure cinema qualities through mesmerising landscape images, subjective viewpoints and editing, plus its coming-of-age and cultural themes.

The critic praises Nicolas Roeg’s 1971 film as a seminal work of the Australian New Wave for its striking atmospheric contrasts between beauty and menace in the outback. They single out David Gulpilil’s warm, affecting performance as the Indigenous man who befriends the lost siblings.

The critic recalls first seeing the film as a child and finds it even better on rewatch for its considered lyricism, long sweeping shots of the desert, and passages without dialogue. They single out its embodiment of pure film language in contrast to modern fast-cut editing.

The film explores the tension between industry and nature through the children's journey in the outback, guided by an Aboriginal boy, emphasizing cultural clashes and humanity.

Nicolas Roeg's film is a deep but elusive story of cultural clash and survival in the outback, using an elliptical style rather than conventional perils or romance. It contrasts wilderness life with civilised routines through sparse dialogue, footnote scenes and nature footage, while highlighting the non-professional casting and Jenny Agutter's sensual performance.

The critic describes the film as a violent fable about silence and the tactics of people in unknown conditions, calling it a plain, muscular work that is handsome and shocking to look at. She singles out its link to Romantic feelings for barbarism and savage savants.

The critic finds the film a sincere evocation of nostalgia for an innocence that probably never existed, with sympathies for simple folk and lovely images of the journey. He notes that its fancy techniques undermine the simple message and that the performances are direct while the film itself is elaborate.

The critic calls the film a tepid artistic effort about children lost in the Australian wilds who are befriended by an aborigine, noting that pretty pictures alone cannot sustain the fragile and forced adaptation. He singles out the over-reliance on inserts of insects, reptiles, and wild beasts as inhibiting the story.

The critic praises Roeg's meditative, poetic direction and striking visuals in this tale of cultural and natural disconnection. He highlights the film's thematic depth on alienation, communication barriers, and humanity's relationship to the environment, calling it unforgettable and groundbreaking.

The critic praises the stunning cinematography that conveys the vastness of the landscape alongside intimate drama, and the superb performances of the young cast in this dialogue-minimal film. She singles out the immersive Outback odyssey as an epic that captures cultural shifts, loss, and a world on the brink of change.

The review hails Walkabout as a masterpiece and perfect cinematic experience, lauding its meditation on cultural clashes, rituals, gender roles, and the gap between modern and ancient worlds. It singles out the wordless relationship between the Aboriginal boy and the girl, along with the film's enigmatic, primal vision and flawless structure.

In this retrospective obituary piece, the critic describes Walkabout as one of Roeg's masterpieces, noting its terrifying prologue, existential dread, and symbolic exploration of cultural/racial tensions and coming-of-age. It praises the feverish, vision-quest intensity of the imagery and its status as a key Australian New Wave film.

The piece highlights Walkabout as an auspicious directorial debut for Nicolas Roeg, noting its status as an art-house classic and the improved Criterion transfer of this poetic outback tale. It emphasizes the film's literary origins and strong transfer quality over previous editions.