How do you interpret the final scene?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Walkabout
Rory_Brandybuck — 11 years ago(November 09, 2014 07:37 AM)
All through the film the girl's time in the outback is portrayed as a horrific experience for her, and she can't wait to get back to civilisation. Yet when we see her years later she is looking back with nostalgia on it as an idyllic, carefree existence. So is she:
(a) looking back at the past through rose-tinted glasses, or
(b) thinking about what might have been if she had accepted the boy's courtship.
I'm not sure, but I'm tending towards (b). What do other people think? -
L0GAN5 — 11 years ago(November 10, 2014 07:31 AM)
If we accept that the reading of The Shropshire Lad over the end scene conveys its meaning then those events never actually happened, at least not exactly as portrayed i.e. nostalgia often distorts memories of the past.
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wrs6565 — 11 years ago(January 26, 2015 06:03 PM)
Somewhere between A & B, I think. I also suspect that the point of the scenes with her as a married woman in civilization is that her life is now pretty boring, her husband seems to be a bland corporate tool who calls her "doll." So she fantasizes about her time in the wasteland as Eden.
It's a beautifully haunting scene too, not just in how it's shot but also John Barry's music, one of the few times syrupy strings have actually worked really well as movie music. -
Hereafter — 10 years ago(April 13, 2015 04:56 PM)
One of my all time favorite scenes in Walkabout, her husband is taking and we start to listen to what he is saying then his voice fades beneath the music and the viewer disconnects and becomes part of her day dream. Powerful and well crafted cinema.
I don't think she ever contemplated or regretted not accepting the boy's courtship, that concept was to abstract in the context of the film as they played there roles very alien to each other.
I am sure her comfortable and modern life pales against the rich experience when her life was unpredictable and lost in the Australian landscape and she often recalls these memories as a form of escapism.
Walkabout is rich in "moments" and this would have to be one of the more powerful and poignant sequences. -
Adam60z — 5 years ago(March 27, 2021 09:02 AM)
I don't think it's years later; maybe about a year. I don't get why the boy commit suicide. We saw this film in my high school senior English class. I was the class film buff and let them know Jenny Agutter was later in Logan's Run and American Werewolf in London.
Mean people suck. -
huwdj — 11 months ago(April 08, 2025 06:57 PM)
From the film, I always thought he chose to die because she rejected him.
Years later I read the book and it was because he saw in her expression, his death. Not something that would occur to most of us but it was the belief and understanding within his tribe.
I have always depended on the kindness of Strangers - and the bastards let me down!
