Sunday 18 May 2014

Films: Walkabout & Wake in Fright

Despite the glorious weather today, I took a train journey of 50 mins duration each way, to sit in the Rio, watching their Beyond Civilisation double bill, set in the Australian outback. Well, if I hadn't been that keen, I wouldn't have bothered - but these films - Walkabout (1971) and Wake in Fright - sounded excellent. Besides, I'd have been bored, just sitting in the sun for the afternoon..

I was lucky, firstly, that the Overground runs direct from just up the road from me, at West Brompton station, to Dalston Kingsland, just down the road from the Rio, as it happens. Not only is it handy not to have to change, but the Overground is cheaper than the Tube - particularly since I'd have to go through Zone 1 to get to the other side of town. Secondly, I was lucky, because not only were there no Tube trains running through West Brompton today, but neither were there Overground trains for much of the line (planned engineering works take place at weekends, to minimise disruption). Anyhow, I took my book with me - rather excellent, The Last Queen - I do recommend it - and between the outward and return journeys I got a lot of it read. The fare turned out to be £1.50 each way - rather good value for a 50-minute journey! I'd forgotten about the cheap fares on Sundays. I knew from Google Maps to turn left from the station, and within a few steps the cinema was actually in sight! Easy-peasy.

I'd been early enough to get the train before the one I needed to get - which is great, except that the cinema wasn't open yet when I got to it! So I hung around, trying to look as though I wasn't waiting for the doors to open.. there was a notice saying that it would open at 1.15, it was about 1.10 at this point (by my watch). They eventually opened at about 1.20. There's a café in the lobby, where you can buy your ticket if there's no-one in the ticket office. Handy, that café - I took advantage of the fact that they sold ice cream.. There only seems to be one screen, and the whole place is a bit scruffy, but the staff were friendly, and I liked it.

Stairs led to the balcony, but I knew from the website that that was closed today, and the guy who sold me my tickets (for both films, two for the price of one) and ice cream also told me where the entrance to the stalls was. I was, of course, the first in, and it took so long for anyone to join me that I seriously wondered whether I'd be the only one there! I wasn't, of course. Rather cramped toilets were located on either side of the screen. Nice comfy seats  - although a bit bum-numbing after a double-bill - and nice plush red curtains covering the screen, that opened when the film was due to start and drew closed after the credits finished. Oh, and another nice touch - no ads! So I didn't mind that each film started a bit later than advertised.

The first was Walkabout (1971) - a highly visual and quite moving piece that tells the tale of a teenage Jenny Agutter and her little brother, whose father is obviously having problems that aren't divulged. Anyway, he drives them into the outback for a picnic, then starts taking potshots at them. When he can't catch them, he torches the car and shoots himself. Which would be bad enough, except now the kids are alone in the desert, with no idea which way to go, and no decent provisions. They're in a bad way by the time they come across an Aboriginal lad on walkabout - the traditional initiation ceremony whereby a teenage boy heads off into the wilderness on his own, forced to fend for himself. He helps them.. and as he leads them back to the world they know, the film becomes a metaphor for the conflict between his world and the "civilised" one, of crowds, traffic, cities.. A memorable piece, the more so because I've always been fascinated by the outback - the idea of a vast expanse of desert, with, to paraphrase Bill Bryson, more things in it that can kill you than anywhere else on the planet.

We had a short break before the second film - Wake in Fright. Now there's a promising title! (Also known as Outback.) Also made in 1971, this is a slightly more conventional story, but no less striking. A young teacher - Gary Bond - faces the same problem as so many - the difficulty in finding a post. As he explains at one point in the film, he studied history and literature - but if your parents are nobody, what can you do but teach? The only way he could get a job was to become a bonded teacher with the Department of Education, which bond he has to work off - which means he has to work wherever they tell him. So he ends up in the back end of beyond, teaching what, I'm not quite sure, from the evidence of the opening scene, which has the class staring at him in silent boredom until he says they can go. How well behaved they were in those days..!

Well, if the first film was about the conflict between modern civilisation and the traditional way of life, you could say that this film was about the conflict between an idea of civilisation - or sophistication - and the hard-drinking, lowbrow, society of the miners of the outback. In the first film, civilisation pretty much won - in this one, it's not such a clear victor. This guy starts out as a tortured intellectual, thinking himself better than those around him, feeling he deserves greater things. He overnights in a rough mining town on his way on holiday - and after he comes into contact with the locals, including the slightly manic, alcoholic, local doctor, Donald Pleasence, things are never quite the same again as he's drawn ever more into their world. Memorable, truly.

I swung by the cemetery for a while on the way home..

 
 
Tomorrow's film is looking like, ahem, Godzilla again. That is, of course, providing that its IMDB rating doesn't slip again.. and providing that I'd rather do that than just head to the cemetery again!

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