Mar. 15, 2004 - 8:48 am
i missed writing my review on Chaplin's Limelight (1952), but i may write that later. i'm not sure if i'll get to see something tonight or not. anyway, Walkabout is continuing on with my Australian film history interest. (if that wasn't already obvious.)
Walkabout is the story of a young girl and her very young brother who get stranded in the outback after their father attempts to kill them and then commits suicide. while trying to find their way back to the civilized world, they come across a young aboriginal man on his walkabout. if you're not familiar with what a walkabout is, it's sort of a coming-of-age journey that aboriginal men take around the outback by themselves in order to learn how to survive and live off of the land.
sometimes i like to go out on a limb and just say that a respected film is just bad. i'll do that here. granted, i haven't seen tons of things saying that this is a great film, but that's the general impression i get from reading critical reviews. those are incorrect.
first of all, as i was telling my mom while we watched it together, i think the film is portrayed as being realistic for the most part, but certain plot elements simply would not happen in real life. i'm going to go ahead and SPOIL the plot, since i think it rather sucks anyway, so stop reading if you plan on seeing it. at the end of the film, the aboriginal man sees white hunters with a huge truck firing rifles at buffalo, killing some rather huge beasts with very little effort. it's so easy for them, and they don't even need the food or anything. they're doing it for sport. so the aboriginal man hangs himself. i'm sorry, but he simply would not have killed himself over this. he has been killing animals himself in very violent ways throughout the entire two hours. throwing spears at kangaroos' heads and then clubbing the wounded animal to death, etc.
it's a very very violent film. the suicide we thought was just idiotic. and then there's some weirdness where the little boy watches his naked sister swimming (cross cut simultaneously with the aboriginal killing defenseless animals no less). the "special effects" of this film which basically involve some bad editing, slow motion, screeching sound effects, and lots of other things that don't belong in an archaic setting such as this are very distracting and they make you wish you weren't watching the film.
the only benefits of this movie to me were the fact that you got to see just a tiny bit of Australian society in the early 1970s, and the fact that the movie does showcase a lot of the native animals. other than that, it was a washout. do not watch this movie.