Walkabout

This week, the Dads head into the Australian Outback to review Nicolas Roeg's mesmerizing and dreamlike 1971 survival drama, Walkabout.

Dan kicks things off by admitting he completely confused this movie with A Far Off Place, spending the first hour waiting for a dog that was never going to appear. Once the confusion settles, Sidey, Dan, Reegs, and Cris dive deep into this visual masterpiece starring Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg, and the legendary David Gulpilil.

In this episode:

- Dan's Kalahari Desert mix-up

- The culture clash: modern society vs. indigenous life

- Have humans evolved too fast for the modern world? (Cris predicts our WALL-E slug future)

- The indestructible nature of 1970s school uniform tights

- Why you shouldn't go hiking in formal leather school shoes

- The brilliant, almost entirely improvised performances from the young cast

- Comparisons to last week's film (Sovereign) on the topic of rejecting modern society

Verdict: Strong recommend across the board. A weird, beautiful, and thought-provoking classic.

Films/shows mentioned: Walkabout (1971), Sovereign (2025), A Far Off Place (1993), Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), WALL-E (2008), Crocodile Dundee (1986).

We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.
 
Until next time, we remain...
 
Bad Dads

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Walkabout. Yeah. What possessed you to pick this notorious film that features a 16-year-old uh Is that how old she is? Sorry? Is that how old she was?

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Yeah. To be honest, I didn't know it was this film. I've seen this film before, but I was telling Chris earlier I actually got this confused with another film where a little boy and his dog get lost in the Kalahari Desert. And that's the one that I thought we were watching. But Well, what was the name of that, do you remember? That was called Begins with a D. Since I found out afterwards. Oh, right. I thought it was this one. Don't walk about. No, it was that and that one, yeah. I've mashed the two films together, and I was talking to my sister about it, and she'd done exactly the same. She goes, Oh yeah, I know that one. It's a little boy and his sister, and they've got a dog. And I goes, Yeah, there's no dog in it, though. Like I couldn't then we realised we'd actually would mash these films together, so I wasn't the only one guilty of it in my family. But they were both around the 1970s. That other film it ended up this kid thinking that a Kalahari Bushman was cooking his dog, and I was waiting for that scene throughout the film, but that didn't come, but we got a whole different set of scene in this. And so this was by Nick Rogue, is it?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Nicholas Rogue, yeah. Nicholas Rogue. This was before Don't Look Now, I think. Uh no, I think this was his debut. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

So this was before it. Yeah. Oh right, okay, yeah, if you put it like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

That that's generally what it means, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:41

That's that's generally what it means, isn't it? Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Jenny Agatha. Yeah. And his son, Luke Rogue.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Is that the Lord Shrew?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Right. Yeah. That's quite an important part in the movie.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Neville from Dundee. Crocodile Dundee. And also the other guy from Crocodile Dundee. Paul Hogan. No. Yeah, I was gonna say. Paul Hogan. The the you know the dad that was he in the crocodile Dundee? Yeah. He was his kind of agent, what he says in Australian. Wait, who? The the dad in this film. Right. So so what how it kind of starts out, you get these, they're in a city, aren't they? You get the dad drinking all the time.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Well you get the first shot, is actually of I don't know what they call it anymore, Ouluru, is it? Right. Well we get a text called, don't we? They do, you get a bit of text, and there's like a and some French. Starts off with a bit of French. And then it's like a like a a cut between the sort of aboriginal rocks and the bricks and mortar of civilization, isn't it? A theme that'll keep coming back to you, the contrast between the indigenous people and the city people.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

And the yeah, exactly. So it starts.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

They tell us that when the when the indigenous people reach 16, I think, yeah. They get volleyed out into the wilderness and they have to live off the land. They have to do a walk. It's their walkabout.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

You've got to go and prove yourself, can you can you live off the land and everything? And you have this other kind of or juxtaposed to that is this cityscape where the fuck were they doing in that classroom?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah. It sounded like sex noises at first.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

I think doing their vows and things weren't there, practicing their and it was just And this was an international school for expats, it seems. Yeah. Yeah. I guess so, yeah. And they were just having all the Sorry, where is this happening?

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Like as a because I've not watched it in Australia. Okay. You get a very conspicuous when she's a very strong. And are they foreign to to the land? So they're sorry, you said international. They're English. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

I didn't know because it it's not explicit, so and I didn't know whether they were just couldn't be bothered to put on an accent or whether they were supposed to be experts, but they are experts. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

So you see them at school and there's lots of s shots of the city and stuff, but also shots of the Outback and also, you know. And then if she walks home, doesn't she pass the just being built Sydney Opera House? Oh right. And uh heads back to the apartment where she goes for a swim.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

There's some like I think there's there's a radio playing as she goes in. The mum's listening to the radio. The radio's gonna be in it quite a lot. And there her and her brother are frolicking in the pool. Dad's watching Dad comes home and just says nothing. Yeah. He comes in and he just sits on the balcony. I think someone stands and has a city, doesn't he? Yeah. And one of the kids chats up and he doesn't like react at all.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Well, even there, you've just got I mean, set back in the in the 70s and it it's just got like the rat race kind of theme going through it, isn't it? That he comes in, you know, she's just doing the dinner, they don't have any kind of relationship, there's no kind of warm relationship anyway. The mother and the father, he comes straight in, it's like tough day at the office, goes straight into the the the drinks cabinet, and he's just having a fag. Well, obviously, there's a bit more to it. There's a bit more to it. We're gonna see what happens soon. There's not a lot of talking in this film throughout it, and it's all done. I mean, a lot of the storytelling's visual storytelling, isn't it? It's it's to do with the the different shots, and it is beautifully shot, there's lots of colour.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Sometimes the budget forces you as the viewer to piece together what's happened because they didn't have quite enough budget or but possibly, or the way that he wanted this to be shot as well, because it it cuts a lot, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 5:20

And you dream it, you know, the There's also a lot of wildlife sort of loads of loads of wildlife shots, and the front is so you know, sometimes it's not as linear as as other films have have been where it just runs you through. You're not quite sure where that fits into the film until you watch it a little bit later.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

And even then you're not sure. Yeah, it's quite jarring because it moves almost immediately into the next car. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

So they've got a hitler mobile. There's just a quick flash of when they load the car up, so that ostensibly the kids are getting ready for school, right? They get in for a picnic, I think they think. Yeah. And it's weird. It's very odd, isn't it? You get the shot of the car and he's got petrol in the back of it, just quickly you get the shot of him putting the the can, a big can of petrol in there. Yeah. But it's not really clear what's happening for a long time. They go out, don't they? There's no real setup.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah. And they say something like, Oh, we've stopped again. But they're very, very clearly like out in the bush now. This is not this is not the city, right? Yeah. And suddenly they show the there's no petrol in the car anymore. He's they live in a high rise. This is now as far away as you can get from that. And she says something like, Oh and he speaks for the first time, I think, to say, Go and set up the food. Go and set up the picnic. And the lads, little lads running round, he's sort of playing with his first he's playing with an aeroplane, isn't he? And yeah. And she's like, Be careful, because obviously there's like all kinds of shit that could kill you out there. And the old man says, He's fine. And then he there's a there's a little sort of outcrop of rocks that the kid then goes, he's got a water pistol, and then the daughter's taking her time, she's put the the sort of picnic blanket out, she's got all the food that's been carefully prepared. There's even like a like it's like a terrine of some kind or whatever, and everything's sort of put out. All the while the dad's watching. He's no, he's he's making notes about geology. And the mine, yeah, he's like whatever his job is to do with geology or whatever it is, and he's sort of making notes and just not really paying attention to them at all. And then the kid gets his water pistol and he's going peow, peow, and he's doing like you know, like kids doing.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

The kid's about six or seven, or you know, he's not seven.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

He's just doing like cops and robbers or cowboys and ninjas or whatever, just shooting. And then the old man just gets out of gun and starts fucking shooting at him. Yeah, real gun. Yeah, and like knocks you for six because you're like, Whoa, what the fuck? He's lost.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

He's had a nervous breakdown and he he's come out here to kill the kids and kill himself. And kill himself.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

And when the kids sort of find a little gully to scarper away in, um she pins him down behind the rock and they take cover, and then they go down a little sort of dip, don't they? And yeah, and hide and he can't find them. And then you see him just get the big can of petrol, and the next time she looks over the rock, the car's on fire, and she sees him just fucking kill himself, just bang, straight through the head. And yeah, the kid's like, What's going on? He can just see all this fire. She's like, That's gonna be a while or something. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

She's like, No, nothing, nothing. You stay there, and she goes to get a bit of food. I think she grabs the radio and a blanket, a bottle of lemonade or whatever it is, and the car is on fire with a dad's dead body now kind of outside, and she wanders them off into the bush, kind of a lot calmer than than I think as anyone else. Anyone would have would be what she's doing, like taking this responsibility, I guess, with a brother. Let's just get get him away from here. This is probably like ten minutes in. Yeah. It's really early on. And then it begins their you know, their walkabout, I guess, their you know, their survival to to get back to some kind of civilization.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Yeah, but they're in the middle of nowhere, they got no water, they've got school way to go, right? The kid's about seven, she's sixteen, and they've shown you loads of times like the cameras constantly cutting to like horrible insects and lizards and all sorts of the dangerous things that live out in the middle of the world.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Yeah, it's grew. But it's one of those, you know, when you look round and you don't have a clue. Like there's no featureless. It's not like oh the civilization over there. You fucking can't see anything.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

And it's hundred it could be like hundreds of kilometres to anything at all. And it's probably hundreds of degrees, it's fucking red hot. So they start off, don't they? They walk and walk and walk and walk and walk.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Well, they get some climbing to the uh these rocks, you know. They they think like, well, highest point let's get to the highest point and we can see where we are. It's just more rocks and and it's just it's just more rocks, and there's the little boy is he's doing okay as she is, and he thinks it's all a bit of a game and a bit of an adventure, and he's still you know, he's well he's still like dad's gonna be back soon and all this. Yeah, and she's like, Oh, we just keep walking, and they ended up resting on the rocks at night and making the best or you just go to sleep now, so he does, and he's scam scrambling over the rocks, and you're thinking, Don't go over there, don't don't do this, don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

But you know, it's like if you like whatever it's a thing for schoolgirls and upskirting.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Yeah, and this movie's like but this is it's kind of a sexual movie, right? There is a lot of sexual undercurrent and tension going on in it.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

I think that was I think that was put on afterwards. I mean, because I I listened to it.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

It's right fucking there. He films up her skirt, she takes her clothes off a lot of the time. There's a I mean, he hangs himself at the end because she turns him down for sex, basically.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Oh, you're talking about the yeah, we're jumping right along to the thing there, but there's a different take on it. I mean, that it's been kind of looked upon that now by different people on the internet and everything, but I think the actual theme of the the movie, if we will cover it, is is more that was a Garden of Eden kind of experience, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

But she from her the cameras in her perspective ogles his ass and Dick like a number of times, right? We ogle her ass quite a lot. Yeah, but she does as well. So but I get the Garden of Eden. But this this is it, this is the whole kind of premise. So eventually, right, they're gonna they they they walk for ages and you know they're getting worse and worse, they don't have any water, and then they come across Loasis.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

She's she's carrying the little boy who's kind of falling almost sideways off her back. They haven't got long left. And she she's so tired carrying like this this kid who can't go anymore, and they see a tree and it's got sort of water around it, a little oasis in the middle and everything, and it's like got berries, and the birds are eating the berries, means that it's okay for them to eat as well. Right. So suddenly they've got everything they need again.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

You know, it's the the I mean, it's not crystal clear, it's like muddy. And the kids just like face down, like mmm.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

It's water, it's like bathing. It's water. Drink it or die. There's no choice.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

They can they can and they're not getting ill from the water, you know, anything like that. The water doesn't. At this point, it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

It's actually like a welcome bit of happiness for them because it's been pretty arduous to get to this point.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

It suddenly looks like everything that they've you know that they wake up. They got food, they got drinks, and then suddenly they wake up one morning and it's all gone dry. The water's the water's just been sucked away, and it's just mud, they haven't saved any, and they do another sort of day or two there, and they're just drying up. You can see it on their lips, they're they've made the best of what they could, getting little bits of cover and everything. Don't go out in the heat, he's kind of gonna get sunburned. And she keeps telling him not to not domestic. Then they see then they see this young Aboriginal boy who has set out from his tribe, I guess, to go and do this adult because. He's hunting, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

He's hunting lizards, and at first he's throwing spears. And it sort of makes it look like he's rubbish because he misses one and he sort of jumps up and down like and then he does get it and he this you see it's quite load. Oh, it's really I'm I would be dead. So he's got like five. But this makes I was like, oh, he's like he's this is his first time, and he's you know, he does and then you see him whack these animals where he can actually just whack him in this fucking app. It's real animals as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

There's quite a lot of animal brutality in this like you see many many animals.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

And then he and then he just like whaps it under his loincloth, and you realize he's got about fucking ten of these things. He's like stockpile of them, wasn't it? Oh, he's actually quite good. He sort of walks over and offers them, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_02 13:38

The boy and the language barrier. Water, water, and again the communication, the different culture. And she's saying, You've got to understand water.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

He doesn't have to understand the water because she's like real clipped English.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

But then the the little boy he's a better communicator, he's a bit younger, he hasn't been he hasn't gone through that school phase that uh ooh, you know, he hasn't done any of that so he knows he wants to. He's got this more innocent kind of way of of looking at the world, I guess, and you know, as say baby knows every language in the world, and he's younger, so he's able to communicate with this Aboriginal guy a lot quicker and and more simply and more natural to him, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

And he teaches them to how to find the water, there's water already there, it's just splits of weed in and some and like it's underground space to it.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

It's still there, it's just down.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

You know, it's just so they're able to then with his help live off the land. You know, suddenly they realise, wait a minute, we've got everything here, you know, there's there's food, they're not going hungry anymore, there's there's water, they've got all that they need. They're still travelling towards civilization, I guess. They they're just kind of going with this guy.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

You see them with the iguanas, wherever it is. Then he starts catching bigger and bigger. Then he says they just start barbecuing big like fucking legs from me. Like it's great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

You see him hunting a kangaroo, it's actually quite distressing. Like throwing spears at it, and you actually see them actually doing it. So it takes two or three, and the kangaroo's quiet overhead so it's dead. Oh, really? But then they jumped.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

There's quite a lot of them though in Australia, so I like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

And they make they also cut. It made me think a lot about my relationship with food because they cut from the guy killing the kangaroo and then himself stripping it to a butcher cutting up meat in it. Yeah, you know, and we're so divorced really from the process of food of like killing of animals and all that. It's like yeah, so they're much closer to it, aren't they? Yeah, so I think it's a good thing. I don't know a lot of right. The movie is a lot of the about comparing like Western culture with and western culture not coming off all that great.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Well, he he's you know, that kangaroo has been jumping around up until and those iguanas and anything else that he catches. Fucking jacked was that kangaroo boat. Yeah, yeah, hench. It was it's jumping around right up until the moment of death, you know. It's it's kind of whereas a little bit later on in the film, as we get to the end, they he just sees kind of hunters come along and shooting stuff down. Um more than they need.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

They take the indigenous, they're just taking what they need. These guys are just fucking killing trophies and all that.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

So they're We're gonna get to a big fucking like lake. Yeah, we get to this big lake, and this is where, you know, they've they're washing. There's the innocence of of kids just all being naked and and they're swimming and and there isn't any sex in it, but it does get as they go a little bit longer down, she noticed that he's you know, he's obviously naked as well, or he's got this loincloth on, and the the camera follows him a little bit and it catches her a few times being naked and her kind of being conscious of being naked, you know, very coy, sort of I don't know, like Adam and Eve kind of thing, I guess. I suppose that you know, she's her awakening of I'm naked here and that innocence is not she is naked. My missus' like, how old is she? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

I was like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Yeah, so she was I think yeah, you say it's like 16 at the time of filming and that.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

This was the moment my missus walked into when I was watching it to see how it was getting on, of course, as well. So she walks in, right? What are you watching? I said Dan picked this one, so and it was you know, the the film is trying to depict them being very innocently playing and and naked and yeah, they're like a little they're they're a sort of proto-family more than anything as they're going.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Like it's not definitely and the thing that I watched an interview with her afterwards, she said I don't regret like filming it. What I regret is people in the internet and everything taking it for like these sexual meanings after after we've done it, because it wasn't shot and filmed like that at all. It wasn't meant like that, it was meant of this kind of completely different storyline.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

But obviously, people do take a lot about that. The way that the camera is positioned a few times is borderline exploitative, including when his father when her father looks at her right at the beginning when she's at the pitch, he looks right up her skirt, yeah, and you're like, was that shot really necessary if this is a Bible thing? Like I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

I suppose it's an i i it's an innocence thing more than a Bible thing. I mean, I don't think you know they he's trying to shoot. Literally do the literally shoot Adam and Eve and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Anyway. It carries on with their journey until it's very dreamlike, and there's some weird bits like they there's a they walk right past a farm, don't they, where there's a white woman and he doesn't take her. Like he sees her as well, but he doesn't take her. You're a bit like, what the fuck is going on? That bit's never mentioned again. And then there's a bunch of meteorologists out in the middle of nowhere. Again, another kind of pervy scene where you've got these three guys trying to look down this woman's top and up her skirt while she and then they're not in it again. Just for any other reason apart from later, they do find one of the balloons. But yeah, it's scary when it pops, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

So yeah, again, sort of modern technology, you know, he would have a different ways of telling that how the weather's gonna close in and things, and this is this is their way of doing it. So they just have these different cultures, I guess. And it's a film also about communication because she can't really communicate with him, and she doesn't really like the comfortable. She doesn't really where the little boy he goes, says something in to the little boy and he goes, Oh, he wants me to go and get some wood. And you think, right, he he's on it there, and she's asking him a couple of times, can you tell him we need to go and get this? And he'll say he'll he'll you know, sign it out sign it out or communicate in things, and he's able to do it, but she's not. And uh they find this kind of abandoned house at one point, and you see the little boy, he finds some coins, doesn't he? And he pockets them, and he still kind of shows you that he's even at that young age, he's still got oh, that's money. The chase materialistic kind of race.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

And this is the house, the the vac the vacant house.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Yeah, the vacant house and he's he's doing like a tribal dance. Well, first she goes into the gaff. Because what would happen?

SPEAKER_00 20:17

She goes into the gaff and the game. She runs over, didn't she? Yeah. And and there's no one around, and then she goes outside and there's three graves. Yeah. Yeah. So they're all.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah, I don't I wasn't 100% sure it because a lot of this bit was quite a bit.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

I think it's all part of the mining thing, you know. There was a they're probably it that the farmland is is now, you know, been abandoned and the people there have died, but there is still photographs of how the house used to look and photos on the wall and things, and photos of the people there, and you're seeing sort of how society should be, I guess, compared to his tribal mating dance that he does outside. And she's totally freaked out about it, she doesn't know what it's about.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

She's always says we've had the the white hunters turn up and shoot a buffalo, because that's what sort of sends him over the edge, doesn't it? A bit. Yeah, definitely. He witnesses these w hunters turn up in their car and just shoot these buffalo way more than it's two or three of them, isn't it? And it's just two dudes.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

But he was wrestling one, wasn't he?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

He was about to catch one himself. Yeah. He was gonna break its neck. And you think someone you think another one of them, another buffalo is gonna run, but it turns out to be the Jeep. Yeah. And he sort of rolls out of the way, and then he watches them just fucking gun like four of them down.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

He's like, well, it's like a tear just one out of his face, like and he leaves.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

And she had I think she had also sort of given the impression that, well, we're safe now, you don't need to hang around with us. Yeah. She'd sort of like cut ties with him like fairly ruthlessly, and he goes off. And then it this is there's loads of weird stuff like this in the movie where it it then sort of cuts to a sort of big animal graveyard of all these bones. Yeah. And he's lying in amongst all these bones, but you don't see him, the camera sort of takes out the the Really slow, sort of panic shot. And then it gets to him and he wakes up and his eyes, you know, just open like that, and he's got all this almost like voodoo, how I'd imagine. Yeah. This voodoo sort of ritual paint makeup or a original kind of paint. And feathers in his hair and stuff, and he goes back to the house then and she just sort of looks through the window. He's at the other side of the window and he starts doing this dance, and you're like, what the fuck is going on?

SPEAKER_01 22:25

Is it like a mating dance or some sort of display? She's she feels threatened, I think.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Immediately she's like, I thought he'd gone, now he's back. Well, she doesn't have her top on, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:34

It's a crucial detail because she's like suddenly to she she covers herself, but he's outside doing like you. You can see a bird do, you know, it's like a bird's bird in paradise, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Then he grabs some flowers and he's like, Oh, this is not threatening. He's trying to impress her. He's trying to woo her.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

But it's the cultural kind of differences in communication, whereas in his culture, that would be probably something really amazing to see, and you know, the the girl would be honoured. She's just confused and scared because in her culture, it's like that is just totally weird. I don't know where the hell is going on.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

And also, what is like they've been comfortable, like you said, with their nakedness earlier, but that was out in the outback in this place, which is slightly closer to the Western culture. Now suddenly she's a bit more concerned about her modesty and you know that sort of thing, bleeding. All those kind of things. And and she turns him down and then they keep watch, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 23:26

All Yeah, her the little boy's. She's still scared. She's still scared. She's watching out for the little one while he's asleep.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

And then it it gets to morning and she's rather comes back, doesn't he? He comes back and says, Oh, he won't take my pen knife. That's what he says. And you're like, What? Because this is a weird fucking movie. Yeah. She keeps saying she w he won't take my pen knife, he won't take my pen knife.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

And he goes, Oh, I think he showed that it but his idea of that dancer goes, he must have been dancing because he was happy. Yeah. Yeah. That was it wasn't threatening to him, you know. He was but in the end it was all too much for him. He danced all night, he'd been turned down. Like, you know, and I guess in his culture.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

You see him trying to pick he dances for so long that he drops the flowers. He's trying to pick them up, and he's so exhausted he can't even bend over to pick the flowers up. So he's giving it literally like everything he's got, and he just can't take the rejection, so he hangs himself. Yeah. And they see him the next morning, and she's kind of a little bit she's not phased by anything, really, this chick.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

She she's he's like hanging there from the tree, he's putting himself on. She does I guess she doesn't understand it. Again, she's just a schoolgirl, but she doesn't understand it. She's certainly not taking any of the blame or or things, and and the little boy's just looking up, and again, he's not hugely phased by it or understanding of of what's going on. They're not that like breaking down or upset, but he does say, Oh, we went to a road the other day, and it's going, Oh, show me where the road is, and suddenly we're back on a tarmac road. And they're able to get to a town. Civilization and the town is just really unfriendly. Like, the first person they meet is stay away from the watering can, get away from the you know, it's like they're oh right. Just you what you need is something down there, go down there, like, and it's uh it's totally, you know, I don't know, just aggressively horrible and they end up walking, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:17

So they're supposed to be ostensibly here to be like, hello, civilization, we need to be saved, sort of thing. Uh the first guy that they greet is an asshole, and then the kid is like, let's just go to the mind. So they're like back walking again, like oh right, okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

So and then they stumble on this awful sort of pseudo kind of factory thing, yeah. Where they're making like plaster paris kind of statues of aboriginal people and things, and it's a white guy who's basically got basically it's like a bunch of slave labourer Aboriginal people to do all the work.

SPEAKER_04 25:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

And they are not adapted to this. And he's just ordering them around and like take ten-minute break and then back to work and see how it's all gone to shit, basically.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

And then it kind of cuts to another guy that we haven't met before, and he's driving home, and you follow him through the town and the city again, similar to where you came in, and actually it's the same apartment where he goes back and she's at she's mother now. She's or or an older, you know, a a lady she's grown up with gone ten years into the future, yeah, and she's she's cutting the the meat and everything, and he comes in and he just gives her some office politics bullshit, like, oh Sam is like gone on and Henry's having my job, so I'm having Ian's. And you know, this means we could be holidaying in the Gold Coast in a couple of years' time, and she just kind of looks into the distance a bit and thinks back to the the pure kind of innocence and like freedom that they had during that that's a bit around the the lake and everything when they were just swimming and they had enough to eat and they had no clothes and you know didn't have no fucks really at that particular point. Um and then it cuts and trades and that's the end of the film. And it just kind of gives you that because there is there's not a lot of speaking in this film really. It's all done visually with the camera. And it it kind of harks back to a time when whenever there's a lovely poem right at the end as well, then they talk, or a lovely and it's it it's b the gist of it is basically, you know, those days when you were just young and innocent and you had no fucks. Everybody's had those days when there was just like sat and they're thinking back to oh that was what life could be. We had it all. Should we had it all then, just at that moment, like you know, they were and now she's like he's he's excited because they could be holidaying in the Gold Coast in two years' time, like and he's a wage slave and yeah, yeah, and they weren't wrong with all that stuff, were they?

SPEAKER_01 27:55

But we never listened, did we? We just built and got worse and worse and worse in terms of that culture and civilization. Back in the in the 70s, think think what you think of AI and fucking Elon Musk and it sounds like a film about snake bites childhood, zero fucking.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

Well, it was It's about childhood in many ways, like an innocence of that. But that that time where you just have that moment of I don't know, when you're young enough to to you know go one way or the other, I I guess as far as you can get you've got no worries and no, you know, the freedom of not having the responsibilities of jobs and things we we might have had. It takes into a more extreme side of it, but at some point you make that turn and you go, right, well, I've got to get a job, I've got to do this, and you enter the rap race and and that's it. You're gonna kind of be in there. Uh I don't know if it's gonna happen to the rest of us and all of us, and it no, it's it's happened to me and it's happened to just about everyone I know because there's not many people that just have that kind of opportunity of freedom. Now I'm thinking the only people that I've ever even heard of really are the guys in in the Andaman Islands of the the Onge tribe or whatever it is in Yeah, the Sentinel Islands.

SPEAKER_03 29:06

In the Sentinel Islands, you know, that have just managed to steer away from Well we've also seen the other version of modern man in last week's Sovereign, where he refused the laws of humanity, but that didn't end up very well either. So I don't know, w in in modern times, which way is better.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Well, I mean the way that it ended for her father was that he couldn't kind of handle the life it was.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

The movie's very clear about what it thinks about it all, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it's not it's not particularly subtle. It's better this way than the new one.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

But it yeah, it's about communication, I guess, as well though. A bit more maybe.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

What have we lost in m like divorcing ourselves from that culture? What have we you know, because he shows things like community and our relationship with food and our relationship, our sexual relationships, our relationships with each other, all that stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Yeah, is that what rejection, all that, yeah. Exactly. What what have we what have we gained in having the society that has the cars and all the um the nice clothes and the swimming pools and all those kind of bits and pieces, but has got obviously a lot of responsibility on the other way of of you need to do this and your life is no l your hours are no longer your own. Whereas back in, you know, other than just getting the food, the rest of it was just play. I mean they have toys and things where they would show in the film as well where if he wasn't eating or looking for food, then they were just playing around and they were having a laugh.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

And I I think it is true though, I've always like thought like humans are not really adapted for the world that they live in now, because for a hundred thousand years of evolution we were living in a completely different state, you know. You basically would live until you're thirty or forty and like you you know, it was just about getting food and reproducing. This is only two hundred years. It just makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Exactly. It just makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

So where will we be in a thousand years? Like, you know, especially as human and like technology becomes more and more integrated as I suspect.

SPEAKER_03 31:11

Yeah, it's gonna be what do you call them, the slugs.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

It showed it in uh less brain, more fat slobs in chairs this game.

SPEAKER_03 31:21

Oh, War Lee. Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be like slugs. Less brain, more you know, more you're not gonna move everything turns into jelly and then we will. Well me, man, I'm crossfit. Shout out football key.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Big shout out to her tights for not getting laddered. Because she did three or four days in the bush and not a single ladder in her tights, so whatever brand that was. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

And they look spick and spam when they came in that house.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

She washed all the clothes and they kind of got their school uniform back on and looking the obsession with washing the school uniform was frying me because it was just like it was so out of place, but I guess that was the point, really, isn't it? Like because he's walking around the desert with a fucking schoolboy's cap on.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

But you need a hat in that heat, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yes, that's true. Like Van Damme in the Legionnaire. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Oh, that'd be a good one. But did you enjoy it then? Yeah, of course I did, yeah. I thought it was really good. I mean it's like weird and dreamlike and but plenty to chew on and I thought the kid was actually pretty good. Yeah. Considering his part, like he was in it a lot and his part was to be quite annoying.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

They they said that they didn't actually script a lot and you know, it was like two pages, I think, the the entire thing. I don't think you can script with a kid that young. No, they just said that they just let it film and a lot of it was just it had this yeah. They had that basis of this is where we are and this is where we'd like to get to, but then just let the magic happen on the film. And David Gilly Gilbert Yeah, I mean one of his first. Yeah, Jenny Fragging's terrific.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Jenny Agatha, is it? Terrible footwear choice for going.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

Yeah, yeah, high heels uh or like sort of medium heels anyway. Yeah. Um what in the old back? Yeah, yeah. She had her school shoes on, you know.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

So um I guess she thought she'd be like, quite a formal school shoot. So it's definitely not where you choose to go hiking in. No, I really enjoyed it as well. It's good. Excellent.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

Well, he did what Man Who Fell to Earth, the Bowie one as well. Um did a couple of his former, I think, as well. But so strong recommend. Strong strong. Yeah.