Walkabout

Walkabout. Nicolas Roeg, 1971. 

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #10, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 100 minutes.

Summary: Many scenes of wild animals being killed and dismembered. All events are completely real, and the pain and terror of the animals is evident.

Details:

1) Our warm-up for the carnage to follow is a one-second shot of a dead plucked chicken (head still on, European shop style), 3:16.

2) The aborigine pursues a large lizard then spears it and beats it to death, 34:55-35:10. We get detailed close-ups of several other large lizards hanging from a cord around his waist through 35:55.
3) Decaying corpses of camels 39:58-40:06.

4) A kangaroo is speared and wounded at 40:50. We see his wound bleeding while he is chased through 41:26. He is speared, beaten to death, and graphically dismembered through 42:08.

5) A partially gutted rabbit is thrown onto a cooking fire and we see its organs swell, 43:26-43:42.

6) A small boar is lying on its back in a cook fire, flayed open, 49:42. The aborigine gets a handful of its guts and smears it on the boy’s sunburn, through 50:15.

7) A montage sequence that is 50% graphic animal killings begins at 58:55 and continues through 1:01:07. During this 2+ minutes: a large fish is speared and tossed on the ground; the aborigine chews on a (whole, unskinned) bat; a large lizard is speared and falls dead; a kangaroo is speared, falls dead, and is butchered; another big lizard is speared and we see it wince in pain then watch its flesh burst on a fire; another kangaroo is clubbed to death.

8) A large dead bird is carried by its feet, 1:08:12-1:08:52. We see it again 1:11:03-1:11:07 and 1:12:26-1:12:48.

9) Numerous water buffalo are shot and killed 1:16:53-1:18:04. A dead buffalo has its throat slit and is bled 1:18:55-1:19:10. We see the bodies decaying and covered with maggots 1:20:00-1:20:20.

10) View of a dead bird, 1:26:55-1:27:00

11) Surprise 1-second flashback to dismembering of a kangaroo, 1:37:35.

How unfortunate that this visionary filmmaker chose trashy “Mondo” style animal torture to portray intelligent ideas. Much has been intelligently written about Roeg’s superb design aesthetic, ingenious integration of sound and image, and themes explored in Walkabout. But his creative genius does not mandate our sitting through the slaughters. There are many other ways that Roeg could have demonstrated the contrasts between cultures, the sexual tension, and the grand mysteries of the film without resorting to base kill-porn.

@ BL