Walkabout (1971)
Directed by Nicolas Roeg
Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aboriginal boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.
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What critics compared Walkabout to
Mama begins with a crazed father failing in his attempt to murder his two children before turning the gun on himself (an homage to the opening of Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout?).
(It's like a passage out of Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout.)
The part is played by David Gulpilil, who first appeared in the seminal Australian film Walkabout (at the time he spelled his surname Gumpilil).
"Rabbit-Proof Fence" is a well-made film all the way around, recalling the works of pioneering Australian filmmakers Peter Weir and George Miller British director Nicolas Roeg's mesmerizing 1971 film "Walkabout."
Noyce also doesn't overlook the irony of the past, in particular the assimilation of Aboriginals into white culture, illustrated by the stalwart tracker (played by Walkabout star, David Gupilil), who enforces white law and captures any kids that escape the settlement.
In many ways Rabbit-Proof Fence is similar to Nicolas Roegâs 1971 classic Walkabout â both films capitalize on the alien environment of the Aussie outlands, but Noyceâs film is grounded in the dirty history of his native country.
She then sees the return of a young girl who ran away to her boyfriend, brought in by Moodoo (David Gulpilil, "Walkabout"), an Aboriginal tracker whose daughter is also being held at the camp.
There’s also good support from David Gulpilil as the native tracker sent after the girls, which was a shrewd casting decision, because Rabbit-Proof Fence is, in many ways, Philip Noyce’s Walkabout (of which Gulpilil was the star).
Nicolas Roeg's " Walkabout " touches on some of the same feelings as "Picnic at Hanging Rock."
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Movies like Lord of the Flies (1963), Walkabout (1971), Bless the Beasts & Children (1971), The Bad News Bears (1976), The Cowboys (1972), The Squid and the Whale (2005), Kids (1995), and Pretty Baby (1978) all had a part in pushing the boundaries on how the portrayal of children is seen on film.
The former has resulted in countless essays discussing in minute detail the elements that are unique and interesting about the way in which Roeg ( Walkabout ) filmed and assembled the movie.
Hollywood was cranking out honest-to-God masterpieces, or at least near masterpieces, on a regular basis, and aesthetes like Roeg (whose previous Walkabout is a similarly dreamlike evocation of time and place) were getting Hollywood-funded distribution for their unconventional imaginings of the metaphysical world.
Fresh from the success of his first two films (“Performance” 1970, and “Walkabout” 1971) Roeg cast international stars Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as a married couple coming to grips with the death of their daughter.
It's rare when a filmmaker helms one genuine masterpiece in his lifetime, let alone two (and consecutively!), yet that was the case when Nicolas Roeg followed 1971's Walkabout with another motion picture equally as brilliant.
Made in between his memorable directorial debut, Performance, and his two subsequent films, Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth (which have come to be recognized as his signature works), Walkabout is a bit of a lost work.