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What about?
Jan. 4th, 2010 09:22 am"Obviously intended as a statement on the exploitation of the natural world and native cultures by European civilization, the film nevertheless maintains an evocative vagueness that usually -- but not always -- favors poetry over didacticism."
-- All Movie Guide
No, not Avatar. Ron and I watched Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout (1971) last night. Which, while it is also a noble savage story, is of course very different from Avatar:
Another way of looking at what Roeg is doing is by considering what he is choosing not to do. The WALKABOUT story line is the familiar one of people from civilization surviving in nature. Its lineage is older than its first great example, ROBINSON CRUSOE, and in recent times it has been especially popular in science fiction. Defoe, the first important bourgeois English novelist, wrote his version as a celebration of the individual. Robinson is the classic middle class man who even in solitude can establish an economy of production and consumption. We appreciate his self-confidence, ingenuity, and optimism. In Defoe’s version the story affirms individual wit and self-reliance, traits which are generally stressed in the story line’s tradition. The civilized person in nature theme almost always focuses on establishing a functioning economy. (Thoreau begins WALDEN with a long chapter on economy, in various senses of the word.) Most of our interest is in the techniques, attempts, setbacks and inevitable triumphs of the protagonist in doing so. The story’s other emphasis is on sustaining social relations. Robinson meets his man Friday, the Swiss Family Robinson maintains the traditional European family in the wilds, etc., etc. Even in dark inversions and ironic distortions, such as LORD OF THE FLIES, the question of social relations is central, as it is in other variants on the theme such as the lost platoon or drifting lifeboat versions.
Roeg changes both of these traditional interests quite drastically. Rather than the characteristic documentary concern with the means of survival—what we could call the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG approach to the theme—he gives us a six and a fourteen year old who are pitifully unable to survive alone. Roeg could have dismissed the economic basis by putting his protagonists in an Edenic setting, but he chooses a harsh environment and then ignores the nature of a hunting and foraging economy. He shows it, to be sure, but he carefully avoids any depth consideration of it. For Roeg, survival is no achievement, and civilization socializes out any native capacity for survival. Curiously, Roeg also chooses not to explore the social dimension of this theme. Again, he shows it, but he does not really examine it. Rather he gives us very essentialist characters: a static girl/woman, her brother who is a mere chorus to her, and the young native hunter who remains interesting but impenetrable since we cannot understand his language, his culture, or his motivations. It is a given that this young woman and this young man meet, but they can never really interact. Roeg shows a dilemma and refuses to comment on it. It is near-tragedy in a moral vacuum.
-- Chuck Kleinhans, Nicholas Roeg: Permutations without profundity (from Jump Cut, no. 3, 1974, pp. 13-17)
-- All Movie Guide
No, not Avatar. Ron and I watched Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout (1971) last night. Which, while it is also a noble savage story, is of course very different from Avatar:
Another way of looking at what Roeg is doing is by considering what he is choosing not to do. The WALKABOUT story line is the familiar one of people from civilization surviving in nature. Its lineage is older than its first great example, ROBINSON CRUSOE, and in recent times it has been especially popular in science fiction. Defoe, the first important bourgeois English novelist, wrote his version as a celebration of the individual. Robinson is the classic middle class man who even in solitude can establish an economy of production and consumption. We appreciate his self-confidence, ingenuity, and optimism. In Defoe’s version the story affirms individual wit and self-reliance, traits which are generally stressed in the story line’s tradition. The civilized person in nature theme almost always focuses on establishing a functioning economy. (Thoreau begins WALDEN with a long chapter on economy, in various senses of the word.) Most of our interest is in the techniques, attempts, setbacks and inevitable triumphs of the protagonist in doing so. The story’s other emphasis is on sustaining social relations. Robinson meets his man Friday, the Swiss Family Robinson maintains the traditional European family in the wilds, etc., etc. Even in dark inversions and ironic distortions, such as LORD OF THE FLIES, the question of social relations is central, as it is in other variants on the theme such as the lost platoon or drifting lifeboat versions.
Roeg changes both of these traditional interests quite drastically. Rather than the characteristic documentary concern with the means of survival—what we could call the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG approach to the theme—he gives us a six and a fourteen year old who are pitifully unable to survive alone. Roeg could have dismissed the economic basis by putting his protagonists in an Edenic setting, but he chooses a harsh environment and then ignores the nature of a hunting and foraging economy. He shows it, to be sure, but he carefully avoids any depth consideration of it. For Roeg, survival is no achievement, and civilization socializes out any native capacity for survival. Curiously, Roeg also chooses not to explore the social dimension of this theme. Again, he shows it, but he does not really examine it. Rather he gives us very essentialist characters: a static girl/woman, her brother who is a mere chorus to her, and the young native hunter who remains interesting but impenetrable since we cannot understand his language, his culture, or his motivations. It is a given that this young woman and this young man meet, but they can never really interact. Roeg shows a dilemma and refuses to comment on it. It is near-tragedy in a moral vacuum.
-- Chuck Kleinhans, Nicholas Roeg: Permutations without profundity (from Jump Cut, no. 3, 1974, pp. 13-17)
