Walkabout (DVD)

Walkabout (1971) starring Jenny Agutter, Lucien John, David Gulpilil, John Meillon. A teen-age girl (Agutter) and her young brother (John) are abandoned in the Australian outback after their father suffers a fatal breakdown. They end up depending on an Aboriginal youth (Gulpilil) for their survival. A mere summation of the plot, however, does not begin to describe this film. It has a near-hallucinatory quality, as the director makes strange jump-cuts and interpolations which seem to make no sense. A couple of nude scenes featuring Agutter, who was 16 at the time the movie was filmed, are thrown in for no apparent reason other than titillation. In fact, there are many scenes whose presence I can't explain, perhaps because the film doesn't adequately explain them. Whether there was some guiding hand behind the movie who could make sense of it all seems highly doubtful to me. And yet, I found it to be rather compelling. Grade: B