A Look Back: The Running Man (1987)

"This is television, that's all it is. It has nothing to do with people, it's to do with ratings! For fifty years, we've told them what to eat, what to drink, what to wear. For Christ's sake, Ben, don't you understand? Americans love television. They wean their kids on it. Listen. They love game shows, they love wrestling, they love sports and violence. So what do we do? We give 'em what they want! We're number one, Ben, that's all that counts, believe me."

-Damon Killian, in The Running Man (1987) 

Based on a 1982 sci-fi novel by Richard Bachman (Stephen King, actually), the motion picture version of The Running Man (1987) arrived in theaters during the Great Year of Arnold Schwarzenegger; the very season that also brought audiences John McTiernan's spectacular Predator.  

Although viewers typically and rightly associate Schwarzenegger with action and s.f. films, The Running Man ably -- and rather surprisingly -- functions best as a pointed satire of American television and politics.   

While the writing and performances in this dystopian film tend towards the razor sharp, the action sequences in the film don't always hold up as well in terms of 21st century expectations. They feel episodic and repetitive.  To be certain, the film is a highly entertaining experience from start to finish, but never, precisely, the adrenalin-inducing thrill ride that some action fans might hope for or expect.

Still, it seems the film's trademark action scenes did inspire a real life competition TV series titled American Gladiators (1989 - 1996), right down to the spandex costumes. Also, one might argue that the episodic nature of the action sequences in the film in some way mirrors the episodic nature of television programming, which adheres strictly to formula, as unalterable as death or taxes.

Bachman/King's literary version of The Running Man remains far more grim, serious and spectacular in approach than the Schwarzenegger film, a fact which makes the possibility of a more source-faithful movie adaptation a possibility, especially in this age of remakes. The novel is set in a totalitarian America in 2025 and involves a man, Ben Richards, "running" on a popular TV program so as to pay for expensive medicine for his ailing daughter.  

The movie version eliminates this important character background and motivation, as well as the novel's incendiary, unforgettable ending; one which transforms Richards from a game show contestant to a bona-fide enemy of the state, martyr and so-called "terrorist."  

The 1987 movie version is less interested in creating real, identifiable characters and building a believable dystopian future world than it is in commenting humorously (if accurately) on aspects of our own  culture.  Not there's anything wrong with that.

Like I wrote above, it's the biting satire of American media and politics that makes The Running Man such a rewarding film to watch over almost forty years after it was released. If anything, the film's observations about our entertainment seems only more apt in 2025, after we've all endured more than two decades of reality television programming.

The movie version of The Running Man actually has much more in common with Roger Corman and Paul Bartel's trail-blazing Death Race 2000 (1975) than it does with King's literary portrait of a totalitarian future America.

In both Death Race 2000 and The Running Man, the media and the government have joined forces -- through a popular TV show -- to divert  the attention of the poverty-stricken masses. While the country fails, these "bread and circuses" successfully keep the populace distracted from real problems, namely the class warfare between the haves and the have-nots.  In both films, the popular TV show also overtly focuses on bloodshed and violence, either in the form of a cross-country race or a pedestrian chase.

Directed by Paul Michael Glaser, The Running Man also shares much in common with another great 1987 science fiction movie: Verhoeven's RoboCop (which I'll be reviewing next Tuesday).

Both cinematic endeavors feature short, satirical commercials and imagery that reveal, at length, how crass and stupid network television can really be. Ironically, considering Schwarzenegger's presence, The Running Man also shares RoboCop's  anti-establishment suspicion of the ascendant right wing in America during the eighties.  

Where RoboCop humorously depicted the end result of privatizing anything and everything in America, including the police force, The Running Man gazes more directly at the cult of celebrity in America and the ever-increasing blending of politics and entertainment.  

Lest we forget it, a Hollywood actor was President of the United States in 1987 and, because of his advanced age, some folks considered him more a showman by many than an actual leader in terms of policy and administration. The Running Man takes that premise further, envisioning a wholesale blending of entertainment and politics at every level of government.  

For instance, at one point in the film, Killian (game show host Richard Dawson) barks "Get me the Justice Department...Entertainment Division."  In the same scene, he orders an underling to "get me the President's agent."  In another sequence, "court-appointed talent agents" are discussed.

The idea here is that Hollywood and politics are a match made in Heaven (or is it Hell?).  Both Hollywood and Washington D.C. focus on the same important task: selling imagery and fantasy, not reality, to an American populace desperately seeking hope, truth and justice.

The film is even more cynical than that description suggests. The Running Man posits that concepts such as justice are all just a game, anyway...a spin of the wheel of fortune.

And in the world of The Running Man, freedom isn't even on the board.  You can win such great prizes (if you're lucky...) as "trial by jury," "suspended sentence" and even "a full pardon," but real liberty is absent.  

"I'm not into politics.  I'm into survival."

The Running Man is set in the year 2019. The World Economy has collapsed and food, oil and natural resources are in short supply all over the United States.  

Because of these crises, a police state has arisen in America.  No dissent is tolerated, and television is controlled and created entirely by the State.

Helicopter pilot Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger) is arrested by his fellow officers when he refuses to open fire on unarmed civilians during an urban food riot.  But the State manipulates video footage of this event and thus transforms the innocent Richards into "The Butcher of Bakersfield."  

This is another example of government's manipulation of media, and media imagery in the film; the transformation of a real-life hero into a hiss-able villain for wide-scale public consumption.  An easily digestible image or sound-bite is packaged and sold, rather than a possibly-damaging, harder-to-countenance reality.

Richards is sent to a work camp and spends the next eighteen months there.  After an escape from the labor camp, Ben Richards is apprehended by authorities thanks to lovely, Amber (Maria Conchita Alonso), a citizen who believes the lies about "The Butcher."

When Damon Killian (Dawson), host of the number one TV show, The Running Man, sees news footage of Richards in action, the ratings-hungry showman realizes he's discovered the next great star.  He quickly negotiates to have Ben Richards turned over to him.

Richards reluctantly appears on The Running Man, a game show in which contestants run for their lives...against terrible odds. There, he is pitted against government "heroes" -- really bloodthirsty killers --with names such as Sub-Zero, Bloodlust, Buzzsaw, Dynamite and Captain Freedom (Jesse Ventura).  

However, if Richards can hook up with the People's Network, a growing resistance movement, and gain control of the Running Man transmission, Killian may have a few surprises coming his way...

"Mr. Richards, I'm your court-appointed theatrical agent."

The Running Man works overtime, and with more than a modicum of cleverness, to create a world in which image and reality don't match up. 

Again, this is what I have often termed the Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid/Don't Worry Be Happy duality of the decade.  

Americans were asked in the eighties s to believe that they could spend (much) more on national defense and pay lower taxes and shrink government all at the same time.  

This was the essence of  the argument in 1980, but by 1988, government had grown considerably, adding 61,000 Federal jobs to Washington. Also, taxes were raised three times, in 1983 (gas tax), in 1984, and in the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Finally, America piled on 2.7 trillion dollars to the national debt in those eight years.  The people were sold the very appealing mantra of lower taxes, smaller government and affordable defense, but that was not the reality that was delivered by Washington D.C.

The Running Man reflects the huge gap between reality and fantasy that we saw in real life during those years.  Damon Killian -- whose name always makes me think of Simon Cowell --  is a character who puts on a face of love and kindness for audiences. He kisses old ladies, and hand-holds nervous contestants. But he is actually a mean-spirited, power-mad, control-freak. In one scene, Killian nearly trips on a newly waxed floor in his office building. An employee apologizes to him, and Killian graciously accepts the apology to the employee's face. As soon as the custodian is gone, Killian orders him to be fired. The face of the establishment is affable, but the actions are destructive to those not in power.

This is just one small example of the reality/imagery gap. As mentioned above, Killian has the Bakersfield food riot videotape edited so that it presents a lie, the very opposite of the truth. A man who should be lauded as a hero, Richards, is instead despised as a villain...all so Killian can get better ratings. Similarly, Killian makes another attempt to deceive audiences late in the film, utilizing "traveling mattes" and other state-of-the-art special effects techniques to make it appear as though Richards is killed in the contest when, in fact, he has escaped unharmed.  The message: make people live in a constructed reality, rather than face real life.  Today we call this an ideological bubble.

Another of Killian's lies: last season's winners on The Running Man are not celebrating on a tropical beach somewhere, they've been murdered by Killian.  

Described succinctly, everything Killian does in public and for the TV show is a show. It bears no resemblance to reality. It's just show business...but this behavior is especially sinister in the film because lives are on the line, and the movie has explicitly connected show business to politics and government.

The people of America aren't exactly spared harsh criticism by this satire either. Although Killian repeatedly discusses "traditional morality" and such on The Running Man, the people in America are actually nourished on a steady diet of violence, avarice and perversion.  

We see this fact exemplified in one of the commercials made for the film, Climbing for Dollars, which shows hungry dogs nipping at the feet of contestants as they climb a rope, scrambling to collect money.

At another point, we see a poster for a television series titled "The Hate Boat."   Again, this is not traditional morality, it's sex and violence as governmental distraction or sleight-of-hand.  As long as we're watching the telly, we're not watching the actions of our overlords as they dismantle democracy.

The audience members watching The Running Man are particularly fickle too.  At first they mourn when their gladiators die in battle.  But soon enough, they are hooting and hollering in favor of Richards, the very man who killed their "favorites."

Again, the projected image is one of decency and traditional values, but it's not real.  "Words can't express" how sad the audience feels at the loss of their heroes says Killian. But then he cuts to commercials, and sells more "Cadre Cola."

Apparently mourning can't get in the way of making a few bucks. And the audience can't even remember who they were rooting for before the commercial break.  

The Running Man works efficiently as a satire because it reveals so well how films and TV can, in the wrong hands, be utterly manipulated and manipulative. The film's master-stroke regarding this leitmotif involves the casting of Richard Dawson, former host of Family Feud. Hiring Dawson was a real coup, because he very ably mocks his familiar game show persona but then layers on the screen character's private, caustic face. Dawson makes for an extraordinary villain by playing on our expectations and then totally subverting them.  

In The New York Times, Vincent Canby noted: "Mr. Dawson, who was the host of television's long-running ''Family Feud'' game show, is wonderfully comic as a fellow who'd star his own beloved dad as the ''running man'' if it would buy him a few points. His hair always perfectly blow-dried, his haberdashery immaculate, Mr. Dawson steals the movie as a personality composed of equal parts of Phil Donahue, Merv Griffin and Maximilien Francois Marie Isidore (Mickey) Robespierre."

More than the imposing Schwarzenegger, Dawson is the fuel that drives The Running Man, making it so very wicked, so much fun, and seemingly so real.

That established, this is also one of the Governator's most impressive film performances. The Washington Post wrote: "Pumped and primed for self-parody, the burly star proves as funny as he is ferocious in this tough guy's commentary on America's preoccupation with violence and game shows."  I agree with that review as well.  If Dawson is willing to mock his public image here (and he is), Schwarzenegger courageously goes down that same path with his co-star, even mimicking his most famous screen line, "I'll be back," and opening himself up for Dawson's great comeback.

"Only in reruns..."

There's something very post-modern happening here. The Running Man tackles the unholy juncture of television and politics at the same time that it playfully pivots off our intimate knowledge and affection for Dawson's and Schwarzennegger's familiar screen personas.  It's a very, very...meta equation, for lack of a better term.

I only wish that the action scenes in The Running Man were a little more varied, a little less predictable  A killer is called on stage, and then he goes in to hunt Richards.  Richard is victorious and it's time for another hunter.  Rinse and repeat. Watching the film, you get the distinct sense that all of the talent was energized by the film's witty ideas, but that the action scenes were sort of left to fend for themselves.  Of course, as I noted above, the repetitive nature of the fight scenes could be a deliberate allusion to the repetitive nature of game shows.  We tune in every week to see the same thing, don't we?

Still, The Running Man isn't out of steam, even today. It gets a lot of the "future" detail just right.  From fears of an economic collapse to fuel shortages, the film makes some pretty accurate guesses about the 2010s. At one point, Ben Richards books his escape route/travel itinerary on an interactive television set, a precursor to something we do on the Internet now all the time.  

And also, of course, this 1987 film seems to understand that our television and politics were headed towards a generation of ingrained and unimaginable cruelty.

It's not a pretty picture, but I bet that with just a few tweaks here and there, Killian's The Running Man would be a pretty big hit with some people these days....

20 Years/Top 10 Posts: #1: Prometheus (2012)

[The number one most frequently read post here in my first 20 years blogging is my 2012 review of the Alien prequel, Prometheus.  This review was originally posted on 6/19/2012, and has since been read well over 45,000 times, and linked to across the web.] 

Director Ridley Scott has already given the science fiction cinema two of its greatest and most cherished films: Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982).  His new  genre film, Prometheus (2012) brazenly grasps for the same zenith in terms of quality…and largely succeeds.  The film features twice the symbolic imagery of Blade Runner, and many, many times the implications of Alien.

In terms of visualization, Prometheus is nothing less than staggering. And in terms of narrative and meaning, Scott and his controversial writer Damon Lindelof have forged an intricate puzzle box, one which remains available to multiple interpretations and deep analysis.

This high-minded, symbolic approach to silver screen science fiction has not pleased some of the more literal-minded critics and audiences.  Indeed, there is a fine line between creating an open-ended, ambitious work of art that provokes discussion and crafting a movie that is so open-ended and impenetrable that the narrative itself seems muddled.  

Although I remain sensitive to those who insist that Prometheus is so confused and cryptic as to be  meaningless, I remain delighted that Ridley Scott has crafted an elaborate, complex film; one worthy of multiple viewings, and which can be best understood through careful dissection and consideration of the text’s symbols and multitudinous allusions.  A thorough understanding of the film is gleaned not necessarily by following the 1-2-3 steps of the plot, but rather through interpreting the deliberate nods to earlier films (such as Lawrence of Arabia [1962] or Blade Runner), and reckoning with a consistently-applied leitmotif that contextualizes all the players -- including the alien engineers -- in a specific manner.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have long been concerned with the way that the modern genre film has determinedly eschewed sub-text, and spoon-fed us obvious answers to  mysteries and puzzles.  Prometheus flouts this convention, and practically begs for an engaged, active, thoughtful viewership.  I would be a hypocrite if I complained both about the lack of ambiguity in most contemporary blockbusters and then shouted down Prometheus for its commendable surfeit of ambiguity.  If the film errs somewhat on the side of being inscrutable, so be it. 

In other words, this is precisely the kind of film I hoped Ridley Scott would give us.  Prometheus largely exceeds my own sky-high expectations because it is provocative, challenging, infuriating, dense, and daring.  Some of the specific questions that fans have hungered to have answered, like “what’s the exact life cycle of the creatures we see in the film?” are ultimately held subordinate to the committed exploration of Scott’s chosen thesis: that all parents -- God included -- in some manner hate their children, and that children, equally, despise those who gave them life.  This the film's thematic terrain, and once you accept it (even if you disagree with the premise...), the film opens up and becomes infinitely more accessible.  

By charting the dynamics of the parent/child dilemma, Prometheus thus emerges as the ultimate “Generation Gap” film. The underlying, subconscious reason for this reciprocal relationship of apparent hatred involves our very mortality, a topic that Ridley Scott also explored meaningfully in Blade Runner.  Parents want to live longer and hold onto their supremacy until the bitter end.  And children -- symbols of a future that parents won’t live to see -- want to usurp established authority and become dominant sooner rather than later.

The problem with the human condition, Prometheus suggests, is that we cannot see ourselves simultaneously as both children and parents, and that this tunnel-vision regarding our self image provokes resentment equally in those we raise, and those who raised us. This central running motif about parents/children actually resolves -- albeit obliquely -- many of the problems I’ve read that people have with the film.  

Why do the Engineers hate us?  Why does Holloway hate David? What does David feel for Weyland?

All the answers – or at least most of them – can be excavated by comprehending the particularities of the parent/child relationship in question. If we go in search of our Creator, Prometheus warns, we must understand that our Creator may not like, let alone love, his creation. After all, we possess something he does not: an unwritten future…one filled with potential and possibilities rather than an already-inscribed history of regrets and mistakes.  

If you view Scott’s Prometheus through this lens of parent/child relationships -- and consider the imagery and symbols that support this reading -- you may begin to view the 2012 film as a work of art that asks some very important and pointed questions about our nature.  This is worthy intellectual territory for an Alien-related movie to explore, since so much of that franchise mythos has been about the pain and horror associated with “birth.”  

Beyond that painful physical experience, Prometheus suggests, the real horror awaits.  Birth is just the beginning of the pain.  Try living up to God's expectations...

“A King has his reign, and then he dies.  It’s inevitable.”

In the distant past and presumably on Earth, a white-skinned humanoid – an Engineer – consumes a viscous black fluid and promptly begins to disintegrate. He tumbles into a roaring waterfall and his decomposing body fills the water with his DNA…the building blocks of life.

In 2089 AD on Earth, scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and her lover, Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) put together the final piece of a strange puzzle.  In a prehistoric cave on the Isle of Skye, they find the sixth pictograph showcasing a star map; one pointing towards mankind’s destiny in a distant solar system.

In 2093 AD, Shaw and Holloway awake from cryo-sleep aboard the space vessel Prometheus, a ship under the command of Captain Janek (Idris Alba). With the patronage of the Weyland Company -- represented by executive Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) and a polite android named David (Michael Fassbender) -- the two scientists explain their theory of the star map to a skeptical crew.  

Shaw and Holloway believe that mankind was created by a race of alien engineers, and that the pictographs in the prehistoric caves represent an invitation to seek them out.  Prometheus is now near its destination: a life-supporting moon around a ringed planet, called LV-223.  Here Shaw hopes to find evidence of man’s beginnings.

On the moon’s surface, an exploratory team discovers an Engineer construction: a giant earthen temple that generates its own breathable atmosphere.  Inside the temple stands thousands of vases which contain a viscous black fluid…possibly a life form, possibly a bio-weapon.  

When the containers start to leak, a chain of events is set into motion that will threaten not only Shaw and Holloway, but all human life on Earth itself.

“Don’t all children want their parents to die?”

Gazing deeply into Prometheus’s DNA, one can detect how the parent-child relationship is expressed up-and-down in terms of the dramatis personae and the central narrative.  In terms of the latter, man goes out in search of his “beginnings” or parents, the alien Engineers.  And man’s child, the android David (Michael Fassbender), also embarks on the search for his own destiny or freedom -- beyond man -- at the same time.

In terms of the former, most of the important characters in the film are developed in ways that signify they are either children or parents…or both. 

Take protagonist Elizabeth Shaw, for example.  We learn from an early flashback/dream sequence that she lost both of her parents when she was very young.  Furthermore, she is unable to bear children herself.  Because of the absence of parents in her life, and because of her own inability to become a parent, Shaw is a woman of deep “faith,” viewing the Christian God as parental source of wisdom, support, and comfort.   She has fashioned a "personal" parent in the western, New Testament God image.

In need of a benevolent father figure to replace the one she lost all those years ago, Shaw “chooses to believe” that the Engineers are mankind’s creators, and that they are good, loving, wise creatures awaiting her arrival -- or return? -- with outstretched arms.  Her assumptions -- forged in the heartbreaking absence of human parents -- prove utterly wrong, and Shaw grows vengeful and bitter in the course of the film, determined to hold the Engineers’ feet to the fire for failing to live up to her personal imaginings of them.  

Why do the Engineers hate their own children?  Shaw asserts that she “deserves answers” to this pressing riddle.  This is so because she has erected her entire life and self-image around the myth of a loving God, benevolent father to the human race.  As the film ends, Shaw doubles down on her belief that the Engineers must love their grown children, and heads off to their planet of origin to confirm the answer she seeks.  This pursuit of her Creators is not one based on facts, since we have seen with our own eyes that the Engineers are unremittingly hostile.  Rather, Shaw's zealous continuation of the journey is the result of a closed mind, one which won't accept new data and new facts.  And yes, her character -- while heroic -- is certainly a comment on epistemic closure in those of faith.  One wonders, perhaps, if Shaw views herself as the prodigal child, one who has committed some (unknown) sin, but who will ultimately be accepted upon her return.  If she (along with the human race)  represents the Engineers' prodigal child, then the xenomorphs may be our more dutiful siblings...

Meredith Vickers is also defined in Prometheus as a child.  She is the long-suffering daughter of tycoon, scientist and magnate Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce).  Vickers has waited patiently throughout her adult life for her father to relinquish control of his multi-billion dollar company so that she can assume it herself; so that she can start constructing her own legacy. 

But Weyland is reluctant to let go.  So reluctant, in fact, that he finances a mission to LV-223 on the long shot chance of discovering the secret of immortality from the Engineers…from God.  Late in the film, Meredith rails against her father for his failure to observe the accepted way of things. Like Shaw she is angry and embittered by her experience with a parent.  He won't let her complete the process of transformation...of becoming.

It’s inevitable, Vickers tells Weyland, that a king has his reign…and then dies.  But Weyland steadfastly refuses to end his reign, landing Vickers in a kind of arrested state of not-quite maturity.   Trapped in that purgatory, she is not respected by others, and her authority inside the company is constantly questioned. Vickers is always heir to the throne, but never gets to sit on that throne.  She watches her father's death not with dread or pain, but with something akin to acceptance.  It was time for him to go, and his last act -- going to an alien to demand more life -- was pathetic and needy.

Weyland’s other child is David, the android or artificial life form that he created. Weyland serves as both God and father to David.  But he has created David not to be an independent entity or even an individual with a unique personality, but rather a living glorification of Weyland’s reputation as a genius.  

Accordingly, Weyland is routinely dismissive of David, noting in front of others that although David is immortal, he possesses “no soul.”  The uneasy nature of the David/Weyland relationship is best expressed in a sequence in the medical bay, during which David washes his father’s feet.

Foot washing is a Christian religious ritual.  In the Roman Catholic tradition, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on the eve of the Last Supper, his final night on Earth.  In this tradition -- unusually -- the superior washes the feet of the servants, or the apparent inferiors.   Jesus said: “You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have given you an example…that you should do as I have done to you.”

What David’s act of foot washing signifies is not the love of a son for an elderly, infirm father, but rather a subtle warning to Weyland that he, perhaps, should be prepared to wash the feet (symbolically) of the Engineers rather than demand from these absent parents more life (fucker…to paraphrase Blade Runner).  

David’s act of foot washing looks like one of subordination and respect, but in the tradition of Jesus, it is actually not subordinate at all.  Rather, David informs his father -- in the deliberately symbolic terms of foot washing -- that he should act just as David has acted.  He should wash the feet of the others, to humble himself before the Engineers.  But David knows that Weyland is arrogant and prideful and will not follow his example.  This suits David, because he wishes his father dead so that he can chart his own path.  He no longer wishes to take orders from the Old Man. 

Another child in Prometheus, of course, is the human race itself.  It is the (perhaps unwanted…) child of the Engineers.  And in typically childish fashion, this child goes before its parents and demands answers about life.  The Engineers -- as parents -- however, clearly fear the humans.  The humans – their children – have in two millennia escaped their playpen (Earth) and sought them out at Daddy’s work, on LV-223.  This act suggests, perhaps, that the child shall eventually overcome the father, and eclipse the father. 

This deep fear, I submit, is the source of resentment on the part of the Engineers: they have created something that they can’t control, but which may outlive them and out-achieve them.  Now, if you read the net with any regularity, there’s much talk about the film's deleted “Space Jesus” and the idea that the Engineers sent an emissary to Earth, Christ, who was killed by humans.  That is the specific reason, apparently, that the Engineers dislike us.  But that omitted explanation was also rejected by Scott as too “on the nose,” and does not mitigate or undo the explanation I supply here. 

In fact, the idea of a parent being jealous or vengeful towards a child conforms beautifully with the Prometheus myth, which the film evokes.  In Greek Myth, Prometheus is a God-like creature, a Titan, who created man from clay and then stole fire for mankind so that the child could stand on equal footing with his progenitor.  Prometheus’s punishment from his fellow Gods was everlasting torment.  Implicit in this story is the belief that the Gods -- the ultimate parent figures -- don't want competitors.  They fear that Prometheus's gift will make man an equal, just as many parents fear that their children, once grown up, will be equals...or betters.

One interpretation of Prometheus suggests that the Engineer seen in the prologue is either a Prometheus-like renegade or heretic who similarly gives the “magic of life” – his very DNA – to create man, perhaps over the ardent objections of the other Engineers.  Why does he do so?  We can’t know, of course, but perhaps this Engineer wanted to create something that was “good” instead of something destructive, like the black ooze biological weapon which – no matter which way you cut it, or what life form you utilize as intermediary – always ends up as vicious population control: a nasty, saliva-dripping xenomorph.

In this reading of the film, an “unwanted” child, the human race, is created by an unsanctioned renegade, and the rest of the Engineers realize they must destroy it before the child threatens them and eclipses them.  

Another possible reading: the Engineer in the prologue creates man simply because he can.  This is a deliberate mirror of Holloway’s explanation for David in the film’s dialogue.  Holloway tells David that mankind gave birth to an artificial life form only to prove that it could create life, not out of love, not out of responsibility, and not out of any deeper meaning or emotional truth. 

By extension, perhaps this explanation applies to the Engineers and the human race too.  The Engineers conducted a test (they seem to be experimenters...)…and humans were the (fearsome) and unexpected result.  Not all parents intend to be parents in the first place, after all.  For some, parenthood is an unexpected and unwanted burden.  This is the existentialist, nihilist interpretation of the film.  Man goes out into space in search of the meaning of life, only to get the answer that his life -- his very existence -- is meaningless. How does he know?  Because the Bible (er, God...) tells him so.

I have read in many venues since Prometheus’s premiere how much genre audiences apparently dislike the character of Charlie Holloway, and how critics and viewers have grappled with what a “shithead” he is.  Why is he so mean and condescending to David?  

The answer, again, determinedly concerns parents and children.  As the Engineers view their creation with disdain, so does Holloway view mankind’s creation, David, with disdain.  But it’s not merely disdain…it is casual disdain.  

This rude and condescending behavior expresses Charlie’s hypocrisy, and his absolute inability to see himself as both a father and a son.  He goes to space to find his genetic father, while belittling and destroying mankind’s son...a miracle who stands right there in front of him.  Can’t he see that he is treating David in a way he would not want to be treated by his father or God?

I submit Holloway is actually a pretty intriguing character because of this casual, reflexive, unthinking rejection of David as a “lesser” being.  This is racism in its worst form, a thoughtless denigration of one of God’s creations.  And sometimes, this kind of racism exists in even the most enlightened individuals.  The point is that men – even great men like Charlie Holloway – can’t always see their own hypocrisy, or their own blind spots.  Charlie never gives voice to a specific reason for his hatred of David, he just blindly considers him inferior because David is artificial...just as generations have blindly considered African-Americans inferior because of skin color, or gay people inferior because of sexual identity.   

Does this racist behavior make Charlie a shithead?  I don’t know.  It certainly makes him a genuinely complicated character.  He seeks a God who loves him, like Shaw, one that he wishes to “talk to,” but yet he steadfastly denies that very love to David, a being created by man.  It’s a very elegant dynamic and point of comparison, and one that reveals how so many people of faith wear blinders in the face of their own foibles.   Charlie can position himself only as a child, shirking his responsibilities as father.

Weyland’s trajectory is similar to Charlie’s.  He has played God, but is not kind or good to his creation, David.  Yet Weyland wholly expects his God to honor a personal demand for immortality.  The Engineers have no reason to grant Weyland this prize, and in fact the brazen nature of the request only seems to confirm the Engineers’ apparent belief that man will eclipse them and threaten them if left unchecked.  Human appetites are boundless.  As Weyland dies at the end of the film, he warns David that there is only “nothing” (a reference to the desert, and Lawrence of Arabia).  What he means, however, is that -- going back to the existentialist interpretation of Prometheus -- God has no answers to give.  This is important information for David. Weyland has no answers to give, either.

Given the importance of the parent/child dynamic in Prometheus, the significance of the black ooze may just be that it violently makes parents of even the most unwilling organisms.  It usurps the normal life process and co-opts life for its own agenda.  And again, that may qualify as a cynical definition of “children,” at least according to some.  Children are a demand on time and resources, and the grisly bio-weapon of the Engineers forces unwanted parenthood on one and all. But the children of the black ooze are literally monsters, slavering beasts dedicated to murder, and therefore true weapons of mass destruction.  And yes, if the Engineers did create the black ooze, that makes the black ooze -- and by extension the xenomorphs -- our "brothers."

Now, of course, I don’t feel this way about children and parents.  I’m a happy parent of a delightful and wonderful five year old boy…who happily plays with Kenner Alien toys, incidentally.  But Prometheus gazes deeply at the reasons why parents and children sometimes gaze at one another across a gulf of suspicion and dislike.  Parents and children vie for resources and time in the quest to achieve dominance and immortality.  “Don’t all children want their parents to die?” David asks late in the film, and Shaw rebuts him, stating emphatically that the answer is negative. 

But judging by the interactions between parents and children in the film, and taking into account the Prometheus myth, the film makes a case that David is right.  Parents fear children because the ascent of their offspring in some way portends the death of the creator.  And there's nothing more frightening -- even to Gods, apparently -- than facing annihilation and oblivion.  And children fear and hate parents because parents control them and hold onto precious life to the bitter end.

This is a rich, consistently-applied theme, diagrammed in character after character, and literally hard-written into the structure of Prometheus itself.  Of course, some will ask, if the Engineers despise their children so much, why give them an invitation to come visit?

The simple answer is that it’s a trick invitation.  Notice that the children are invited not to a home world, but to a dangerous weapons facility.  If the children come, they’ll more than likely be destroyed.  If you've ever been ambushed at a family gathering, you kind of get the point.  An invitation to "come home" isn't necessarily or automatically benign, is it?

  

“It looks insubordinate, but it isn’t really:” David the Android, and the Lawrence of Arabia (1962) connection.

One of the key characters in Prometheus is Michael Fassbender’s effete android, David.  As we witness early in the film, David has adopted as his human role model the character of T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia.  Specifically, he models his hair to resemble Peter O’Toole’s cut in that film.  One also wonders if he is  named David after that film’s director: David Lean.

By remembering some of the details and dialogue of Lawrence of Arabia, we begin to unlock the puzzle of David’s behavior and motivations.  Other critics have already pointed out, accurately, that dialogue in Prometheus deliberately and explicitly references Lawrence of Arabia on three occasions.  

These are when David notes “Big things have small beginnings,” when Weyland notes that the “key” to doing risky things is “not minding that it hurts,” and the commentary, finally, that “there is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.”

Yet such references are only the tip of the metaphorical iceberg.  

In ways important and complex, David clearly models his very behavior and actions after his cinematic hero.  For instance, T.E. Lawrence tells General Murray (David Wolfsit) in the Lean film that his manner looks insubordinate “but it isn’t really.”  

This is precisely David’s manner. He operates by an agenda that is seems insubordinate, but is not. Over and over, David ignores the orders of his superiors. Specifically, he opens the door to the temple vase room over Holloway and Shaw’s objections, and then de-activates the live feed showing his progress to the ship’s bridge, irking Vickers.  By and large, David -- like Lawrence -- “pretends” to be insubordinate, when this is not the case.  He is secretly operating by Weyland's command.  In other words, he is perfectly subordinate...at least until he can be free of his "father."

Also harking back to the filmic T.E. Lawrence, David recognizes his isolation and also independence from those surrounding him.  He is neither human, nor alien engineer.  He is singular in his nature. In Lean’s film, Lawrence describes himself as similarly possessing “no tribe,” and believes that this lack of specific membership makes him the perfect person to “execute the law,” as he tells Aida Abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn).  

Again, consider David’s behavior in Prometheus: It reveals no allegiance to any particular group, but rather a consideration only for David’s “law,” his personal quest, I believe, to “kill” his parents (Weyland and the other humans) and become, essentially, for the first time, a free man instead of a slave.  

When David suggests to Shaw that she rescue him from the alien bridge and return to the engineer spacecraft, he is essentially operating according his own agenda.  When he “views” Shaw’s dreams, similarly, we are led to believe that this is not something that was part of David’s recognized duty, since Shaw registers surprise.  David also lies to Vickers about Weyland and seems to suggest, to Shaw, that he would like to see Weyland – his “father” – dead.  Everything David says and does in the film is -- on some fundamental level -- related to his own desires and needs.  If those needs conform with Vickers’s, Shaw’s, Holloway’s or Weyland’s, that’s fine.  But if they don’t, David doesn't hesitate to take the path that seems to most benefit him.

Finally, David, like his cinematic mentor, seems to recognize the fact that he is virtually indestructible, or at least hard to kill.  He observes safety protocol and rituals, such as adorning a spacesuit and helmet, but these are affectations for the comfort of the nearby humans. David can touch biological black ooze without worrying for his survival, for instance.  And even when his head is severed from his body, he continues to thrive. 

As T.E. Lawrence joked with Colonel Brighton (Anthony Quayle) in Lawrence of Arabia: “They can only kill me with a golden bullet.”  Very clearly, the same assessment could be made of David.  He expects to be immortal, sans a nasty encounter or two with an angry Engineer.

The point of all these allusions is simple.  T.E. Lawrence suggests in Lean’s film that his allegiance is to “England…and other things,” a comment which cements his status as a man of uncertain or conflicted loyalties.  David could very well describe his sense of allegiance as being to “Weyland…and other things.”  He has thus learned from viewing Lawrence of Arabia how to successfully navigate conflicts and still achieve a goal he desires.  The Lean film is our visual cue to understanding David’s “nature,” and there are even scenes in both films where the David/T.E. Lawrence make mention of their emotional or unemotional state of “fear.”

The Lawrence of Arabia comparison is important in another way.  Specifically, in context of the parent/child dynamic the film explores so assiduously, T.E. Lawrence grants David the advice and wisdom of a mentor he actually likes, an important alternative to the cruel Weyland.  Similarly, the film itself is considered one of the greatest works of film art in history.  This is a status Prometheus hopes to achieve, only as a science fiction masterwork.  

In other words, David longs to be T.E. Lawrence, and Prometheus longs to be David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, metaphorically-speaking.  A key to understanding Prometheus is to understand what the text of Lawrence of Arabia means to both David and to Ridley Scott.  If you aren’t familiar with the classic film, you’re missing a whole avenue of interpretation and symbolism.

The Alien (1979) Connection: Too Much or Not Enough?

Prometheus depicts the story of the space jockey – an alien engineer – and reveals to audiences more of that famous alien’s technology and history.  As you can see from the Alien Movie Matrix that I printed below this post this morning, Prometheus also knowingly conforms to many of the tropes established in the Alien series.  There are familiar character types, including an android, a company man (or woman in this case), and comic relief.  In terms of plot situations, we get another pregnancy, plus new alien life forms, a heroic self-sacrifice (Janek), and a failed mission (Weyland’s quest for immortality).  So for those who wonder if Prometheus is truly an Alien film, the component parts – the DNA – answer in the affirmative.  A xenomorph may not hold center stage, but the conventions of the franchise play out all over again, in recognizable but adapted form.  Using all the paints and ingredients of Alien, Scott has created a new masterpiece in the same vein.

The connection to Alien established, Ridley Scott is also creative the father here, and so we can also recognize his career DNA in Prometheus. 

Specifically, the director has imported Roy Batty’s quest from Blade Runner to serve as an important motivating factor here.  Weyland, much like Rutger Hauer’s famous Replicant, is facing a built-in expiration date, the impending end of his life.  As Batty went to visit his God, Tyrell for answers about immortality, so does Weyland petition his God, the Engineer in this matter.  In both situations, the quest ends…badly.  But the connection between Prometheus and Blade Runner is made explicit in visual terms during Weyland’s holographic presentation.  Weyland’s office closely resembles Tyrell’s sun-drenched sky-rise paradise, right down to the majestic columns bracketing the frame.  Weyland is thus – interestingly -- both petitioner and petitioned in this film, both a Creator and a child; both Tyrell and Batty, essentially. But Weyland picks up the quest for immortality where Batty left off.

In terms of Alien, Prometheus certainly continues Scott’s penchant for showcasing grisly, unexpected births.  Here, Shaw’s alien “baby” turns into a protean, giant face-hugger-like creation, and uses the Engineer’s body to incubate a monstrous, vaguely familiar xenomorph.  

Again, I realize that many fans of the Alien series have been upset with Prometheus for not more directly creating a definable life-cycle for the creatures in this film.  However there’s an easy and simple enough way to understand the monsters: Every road that the black goo embarks upon leads to one destination, eventually: the xenomorph.

Sometimes the route is direct, sometimes not.  It depends, I suppose, on the host DNA and the amount of black goo utilized.  But in the end, the weapon acts as just that, a weapon, and always creates a near-indestructible “beast.”  It’s a clear enough dynamic: whatever intermediary medium is used, you start with black goo and end up with a monster that eliminates, hopefully, your enemies.  I can see, however, why this kind of amorphous process rubs Alien fans the wrong way.  It’s a big change from what we have seen before, and change is always difficult to reckon with, at least initially.  Over time, as audiences come to accept Prometheus, I believe this concern will dissipate and people will start to recognize the film as, indeed, a genre masterpiece.

That sense of mastery rests in Scott's sense of composition, in the visuals he so carefully crafts to allude to other, great stories.  The film's opening -- an aerial tracking shot across a primordial planet surface -- is incredibly beautiful, and reminds one (intentionally, we must assume) of the Dawn of Man passage in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  As the camera move over roiling river rapids (a UFO hovering above), we intuit the sense of the swirling, turbid forces that give rise to life.  Sequences later in the film, overtly Lovecraftian in nature, fill us with anticipatory dread.  The temple of the Engineers -- a veritable necropolis -- is a vision inspired by Milton.  Again, this is an appropriate allusion.  The crew of Prometheus goes out in search of God and finds, instead, the devil.  In Paradise Lost, man was tempted by the devil (and by the fruit of the tree of knowledge) to leave innocence and paradise behind.  That loss of faith and innocence seems reflected in the film in Shaw's spiritual journey and loss of faith.

Clearly, I’ve written a lengthy piece here, and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of Prometheus, its symbols, and hidden meaning. I think it's a wonderful thing to be given a film so rich in meaning, motif, and allusion that it can’t easily be digested or parsed in one 250-word review.  Before I close, I just want to comment, finally, on the canny design of the Engineers.  With their alabaster skin and haunting black eyes, they resemble – to me anyway – humanoid sharks.  There’s something fearsome and predatory about them, and by coincidence, no doubt, here’s a recent news story on the net suggesting that sharks and humans share a common ancestor.   Engineer DNA?

That’s a nice bit of serendipity that works in Prometheus’s favor, I think. But at least on a subconscious level, when we view the Engineers, we are viewing things that we already judge fearsome....human and shark natures. That's important to the success of the film's final act.  For here, the terror rests not on slimy shape-shifting aliens, but on a reckoning with these twisted, over-sized reflection of ourselves.  That fact fits in with the theme of parents and children too.  The Engineers are a mirror for human life, only with an overtly wicked visual twist.

These are my thoughts on Prometheus right now, but I will continue to communicate them in future postings, hopefully with significant interaction from all of you, the readers.  Right now, more than anything, I want to see the movie again.  It was definitely worth the wait.

20 Years/Top 10 Posts #2: Walkabout (1971)

[This review is the second-most read blog in its first twenty years, with 45,000 (45K views) It was originally posted on February 15, 2011.]

Before director Nicolas Roeg gave the world one of the finest and most disturbing horror films ever made, Don't Look Now, in 1973, he crafted an equally brilliant but very different film set in the Australian Outback, 1971's Walkabout.  

Based loosely on a 1959 adventure novel by James Vance Marshall, Walkabout amply displays the director's unfettered, prodigious talent for crafting symbolic visuals. Roeg's considerable efforts here remind the engaged viewer that film -- in the final analysis -- is truly a visual art form.  

To wit, Walkabout is a film consisting of very little dialogue, and the shooting script was reportedly just fourteen pages long.  And yet there isn't a moment of "emptiness" to be found anywhere in Walkabout.  Rather, through the repeating motif of cross-cuts, director Roeg encourages audiences to consider a story about innocence, and perhaps more specifically, the death of innocence.

With the Outback serving as both a backdrop and character in the film's narrative, and by marshaling a voice-over poem at just the right moment (from Alfred Edward Housman's 1896 work "A Shropshire Lad,") Roeg crafts an immensely emotional film; one that will deeply affect you for days after a screening.  This is even more the case now, since Roeg's director's cut is featured on the blu ray edition rather than the original theatrical release (which trimmed much of the film's full frontal nudity).

When Walkabout was released in 1971, Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars but sheepishly discouraged reading too much into the film's overwhelming symbolism.   Other critics have generally been more willing to engage the film on its own terms.  Writing in The San Francisco Chronicle, critic Edward Guthmann (in 1997) wrote that Walkabout is a "a film that's part anthem to the primitive world and part rebuke to the dull, overinsulated selfishness of contemporary man."  

Sight and Sound's James Bell calls the movie "a piece of ‘pure’ cinema through the use of mesmerising images of the landscape, dramatic shifts to the subjective points of view of its characters, and the jarring juxtapositions in editing for which he [Roeg] would become well known."

Dominated by dazzling photography, gorgeous images and a lush John Barry score, Walkabout ably serves up a side-by-side comparison between disparate worlds: city life in modern Adelaide (though it looks like Sydney) and the wild, untamed life of the Outback.  

Unexpectedly, the crueler, more savage  and difficult world, according to the film, is that of the modern and "civilized" man. In the desert, at least, you can understand your enemies.

"I don't suppose it matters which way we go..."

In Walkabout, a teenage girl (Jenny Agutter) and her pre-adolescent brother (Lucien John) are transported out into the desert by their emotionally-distant father, a "structural geologist."  While the girl prepares a picnic in the desert and the boy plays with a toy airplane, the father -- seen rifling through work papers -- unexpectedly snaps.  Taking out a gun, he begins shooting at his own children.

The girl and the boy escape the surprising homicide attempt, and only the girl witnesses her father kill himself.  While their Volkswagen burns in the desert, the forsaken girl and boy begin a long, lonely trek through the desert, hoping to find their way home.  

This 1970s equivalent of Hansel & Gretel, the boy and girl, walk for days until coming upon a miraculous oasis: a small pond and a fruit-bearing tree.  After a few days, however, they have used it  all up and the slice of paradise becomes a haven for serpents; for snakes.

Soon, the girl and boy encounter an Aborigine teenager (David Gulpilil) on a "walkabout," a rite of passage in which young men trace the heritage of their ancestors on the land.  

This kindly Aborigine leads the boy and girl through the desert safely, provides for their survival needs (by kangaroo hunting and fishing...) and teaches them his ways.  The white boy even picks up his language.  After a time, these three youngsters cohere like a true family, and the Aborigine develops an unspoken -- and forbidden -- romantic love for the girl.

After some time in the desert, the Aborigine young man gets the lost youngsters to an abandoned farm, another safe haven for this "family" to play house. But when the lovestruck Aborigine launches into a courtship dance before the English girl, she coolly and silently rejects him.  

The next day, the girl and the boy find out exactly what that rejection has meant to their generous friend, and then head on...down the road, in hopes of returning to civilization.

Some years later, the grown girl -- now a bored housewife in Sydney -- tunes out her dullard husband's vacuous talk of office politics and remembers those long-gone days in the Outback; her days with the Aborigine boy and her brother...  

A final voice over ends the film on a melancholy and wistful note.  "That is the land of lost content/I see it shining plain/The happy highways where I went/And cannot come again."

"Every man, every woman, is a star."

As noted above, Walkabout is a comparison of disparate worlds. To achieve that comparison, Nicolas Roeg uses a variety of visual symbols in Walkabout to suggest the corruption -- or at least strangeness -- of the so-called "civilized world." 

Early in the film, for example, we see Agutter's character setting-up a blanket and picnic lunch out in harsh desert; clearly a misguided attempt to tame the unspoiled Earth. While she imposes mankind's sense of order on the desert, the film cross-cuts to views of lizards and other inhabitants, going about their business, oblivious to her attempts. 

In the same scene, the girl's father goes crazy after Roeg cuts to insert shots of work papers: seemingly endless alphabetical lists of minerals and sheets of byzantine maps. The visual implication set up by the editing is that the father's madness is caused by his job; that the pressure (represented by his work papers) makes him irrevocably snap. The civilized world has made him deranged. 

This critique of civilization recurs throughout the film.  For instance, as mentioned above, the boy and the girl find an oasis of life in the desert -- water and food -- and without thought of consequences, use it up in a matter of days.  When they leave, the land is dry; the fruit is stale and only snakes inhabit the tree.  

It wouldn't be a stretch to suggest that this image is a veiled reference to the Garden of Eden parable; and the idea of man expelled from paradise.  

Perhaps more plainly, the destruction of the desert oasis and its resources is referenced late in the film when the boy and the girl come across a similar setting, writ large: a virtually abandoned mining town.  

The town is now nothing but a scrap heap, a garbage junk in the middle of the Outback.  Everything of value has been taken from it (as was the case at the desert oasis) and man has left behind only his garbage and detritus; mountains of twisted steel and rubber.

Another scene, mid-way through the film, also deliberately critiques modern man.  The Aborigine, the boy and the girl come in close proximity to a plantation where a white man is exploiting the local Aborigine youth to create cheap plaster statues of kangaroos and the like.  Again, the idea here is one of taking a resource (in this case, a human resource) and using it for self-interest; to line one's own pockets.

Later in the film, Gulpilil's character spies  white hunters shooting game near the abandoned farm.  We see an animal die in slow motion, struck by bullets.  The sight of this deeply upsets the Aborigine, a hunter himself.  And the reason, I suspect is that the hunters have evidenced no respect for their quarry.  Their technology (their guns and their jeeps) gives them an unfair advantage over the land, and a distance from their behavior.  Skill does not come into the picture.  

By contrast, the Aborigine boy hunts to provide for his new family; and and does not kill more than the family can eat.  He survives based on his skill; not based on the technology he possesses. To express this point, Roeg again crosscuts between images of the Aborigine boy cutting up a kangaroo and images of a city butcher chopping up meat in his store.  The idea implicit here, again, is that one culture is interested in survival, the other in commerce; in making money off the land

Eventually, even the heroic Aborigine boy played by Gulpilil is contextualized as a resource to be used up.  He rescues the boy and the girl, even leading them safely to a highway and a home of sorts.  But when he seeks a deeper meaning -- an emotional connection with the English girl -- she shuts him down.  She ignores him.  He has crossed a barrier she will not tread across and she essentially ignores him and spurns him for it.  Her attitude, now that  personal survival safety has been established, seems to be "what have you done for me lately?"  

Only in the film's last scene, do we see an older, reflective woman consider the Aborigine boy; and what he meant in her life; and what he gave to  her.  She imagines a scene right out of Paradise: the three wanderers in the desert frolicking in the water; on a rock.  It is an image of lost innocence, and it is the image we leave on in Walkabout.

In toto, the image of civilized man in Walkabout is not at all positive.  He is a creature who uses the land, rather than living off it in harmony, and he is obsessed with things that -- in the context of the desert -- have no significant meaning (consider the read weather balloons set loose in the wild by a group of horny European scientists in one scene...what purpose do they serve?).

Roeg's point isn't so much that we should all live in the wild and hunt for our own food.  The point is that in the vast desert, commerce, alphabetical lists of minerals, weather balloons and society's rules concerning miscegenation serve no useful or meaningful purpose.  Rather, torn from their context in city life, they actually go against nature, even human nature.

Although it is uncomfortable to write about this in our morally judgmental society today -- especially given that both Jenny Agutter's and David Gulpilil's characters are minors in Walkabout -- the plain fact of the matter is that as the film plays out, the Aborigine boy and the English girl become very much aware of each other's sexuality.  An attraction forms, and in this environment who can say it would be wrong for them to act on it?  They are, essentially, the only inhabitants of this vast desert, and also the mother and father figure in the ad hoc family.

Gulpilil's character -- a man of nature -- understands that this is a relationship that could and should happen, given the circumstances.  

But returned to modern civilization (and bred to that civilization), Agutter's character cannot make the same leap.  Instead, she denies any feeling she might have for the Aborigine boy and falls back on the "etiquette" of her culture.  Early in Walkabout we see her practicing etiquette lessons while listening to a program on the radio; and that's the very world the English girl retreats to at film's end.

One of the best sequences in Walkabout (and one trimmed upon theatrical release) finds Roeg  again cross-cutting, this time between the Aborigine boy hunting with the English boy, and Agutter's young girl swimming sensuously in a desert pool, nude.  The feeling evoked here is of total freedom and innocence; of doing what comes naturally to survive. Of just living --and enjoying life -- in such an unforgiving, chaotic terrain.

Walkabout suggests that living off a harsh, natural land is tough work.  You have scorpions, ants, dehydration and other challenges to overcome.  You have to find water and hunt for your supper.  But I believe the film's ultimate point is that there is nothing harsher and more difficult than living a life that goes against your very nature.  

I submit that's the unhappy destination where Agutter's character finds herself at film's end.  A caged bird in an antiseptic high-rise apartment building, with only her memories of freedom to sustain her.  Certainly, the wistful nature of the final voice over suggests the idea of a paradise lost.

Walkabout's ending diagrams the death of innocence.  Gulpilil's character has learned that he cannot adapt  to the strange rules of  modern "civilization."  And in that coda -- set years after his demise - Agutter's sense of hoplessness is tangible.  It reflects, purposefully, the little boy's sense of defeat early in the film, upon reckoning with the unending desert, one stretching to unknown horizons.

"We're lost, aren't we?"