I don’t remember how I saw this movie, I watched it. This is a film by British director Nicholas Roeg, called "Walkabout", 1971, and I watched it under the name "Walkabout", which is the name of the film in Australia, where the film is set, a tradition among Aboriginal people to send 16-year-olds to wander alone, trying to find or
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I don’t remember how I saw this movie, I watched it. This is a film by British director Nicholas Roeg, called "Walkabout", 1971, and I watched it under the name "Walkabout", which is the name of the film in Australia, where the film is set, a tradition among Aboriginal people to send 16-year-olds to wander alone, trying to find or even kill on the road, this is done to introduce them to real life. The film is based on the novel by D.V. Marshall, but somewhat modified. Spoilers! ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------- A family with two children lives somewhere in the city, in an apartment building. The children go to school, the father works somewhere, no details about their lives are shown to us, but one day the father goes with the children somewhere far out of town, as if for a picnic. The mood of the father is bad, he is irritated, then they stop to eat, but the father does not get out of the car, the boy plays with his toys, the older daughter exhibits food when the father starts shooting at them, the boy thinks it is a game, the girl understands that the father wants to kill them, hides and hides his brother, and then takes him away, from afar she sees the father pouring gasoline and setting fire to the car, and then shoots himself in the head with a gun. She goes back to the picnic, picks up some food, radio and water, and they run away. There are mountains and mountains, and they don’t know where to go. And their wandering begins. At some point, they come across a puddle of water, from where they manage to get drunk and even wash and stretch their clothes, but in the morning this small pond is dry, the water has gone. What to do next, they do not know when suddenly they meet an aboriginal boy about the age of a girl, perhaps he is the one who was sent to wander for adulthood. The boy speaks absolutely no English, with great difficulty they manage to explain to him that they need water, he understands and shows them how to get water. Then they go already three, the aborigine gets food, killing animals. One day he leads them to some abandoned shed and also shows the boy where the road passes. Then he goes on a hunt, where he encounters the horrific cruelty of white hunters, who not only shoot at the buffalo he tried to catch himself, almost knocking him down in the car, but just shoot at all the animals he met on the way, the Aboriginal is literally shocked by this. He returns back to the boy and the girl, without saying a word, and then suddenly disappears somewhere and appears all painted and decorated with two inflorescences in his hands, starting to perform some ritual dance in front of the girl, apparently he likes her, but her ritual only scares, he dances to exhaustion, and in the morning they find him dead hanging from a tree. They leave there, find at last some very unfriendly person who directs them to some settlement. In the end, we see an adult girl who remembers these events from her life. The film, of course, is very peculiar, the plot can hardly be called fascinating, and the images, as the director said, are pure improvisation. The script, although based on the novel, consisted of only 14 pages, everything else, including the place where it was shot, was a matter of chance and improvisation. He was somewhat obsessed with bathing naked girls, the scene is quite long in the course of the action, and then again shown in the memories, however, there it looks a little different. I was somewhat surprised by the low emotionality of the children, especially the almost grown-up girl, when they face death. The film was met with very contradictory reviews, as always, it began to look for all sorts of “meanings” up to the departure from everyday life of citizens back to paradise, nature, some critics called it the greatest film. Well, everyone can make up their own mind if they watch this movie, but it makes an impression.
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