Walkabout

Nicolas Roeg's first solo effort as a director is a mythic parable set in Australia, where a fourteen-year-old girl and her six-year-old brother are left to fend for themselves in the outback after their father's shocking suicide during a picnic. In a hypnotic flow of images, Roeg captures their journey through this deceptive paradise, aided by an Aboriginal boy who protects them from the dangers of the wild—but also introduces an undercurrent of sexual tension. With its breathtaking cinematography (Roeg operated the camera himself) and John Barry's haunting, yearning score, the Australian outback and its red desert are transformed into a primal landscape—imbuing the film with a mystical aura and a dreamlike, hallucinatory quality. Walkabout becomes a fever dream in which the children lose themselves in the heart of Australia, a place that offers a sense of freedom sharply contrasted with the stifling alienation of British colonial life.