Nicolas Roeg's "Walkabout" begins with a father taking his two children (played by Jenny Agutter and Luc Roeg) into the Australian outback, unsuccessfully attempting to kill them and subsequently committing suicide. In the process, he burns down the car he brought them to the location in, robbing them of their only immediate opportunity of escape and kick-starting a journey back to civilized society for the sibling twosome. An opening text scrawl explains the story's existence as the titular walkabout, a venture taken out by young aboriginals in a passage into adulthood and plays out as such for these two previously want-for-nothing kids - specifically Agutter. Rather than use this twist of cultural pursuit as the means by which he may pimp a particular kind of class condescension, Roeg instead focuses on telling juxtapositions and mesmeric invocations of life and death that, while painting a similarly damning portrait of modern civilization, recall the blend of humane passion and cinematic know-how of John Boorman's overlooked masterpiece, "The Emerald Forest." Barely is a movie's technical triumphs married with such human insight; never has the setting been shot as majestically as it is by Nic Roeg himself.

Vultures circle overhead, ghostly gasps and groans punctuate the film's minimalist soundtrack and sweat itself begins to dry up as Agutter and Roeg journey through the seemingly never-ending, barren landscape. When they do finally happen upon food, director Roeg acknowledges it as a fleeting respite, similarly hungry birds and critters arriving on-scene to compete with and, quickly, overpower the out-of-water partnership. As such, the arrival of an aborigine teen (David Gulpilil) makes for both salvation and revelation, "Walkabout" emphasizing how its central trio can work together in spite of their cultural divides but remaining painfully aware, and discriminating of, the walls we've built throughout so-called advancement. The painful disconnect is highlighted chiefly in the relationship formed between Agutter and Gulpilil, the former hungrily observing what modern life's taught her is the forbidden fruit and fearfully palming him off by the time he primitively begins to impress her. Delicious food for the mind for the bulk of its run time, "Walkabout" finally pulls at the heartstrings by the end, recalling the feat achieved by Michael Mann's "Heat" - an entirely different film - when Al Pacino found daughter Natalie Portman in a bath of blood. Beginning and ending with a suicide, Roeg's film is a masterpiece that sees superficial cultural advancement not simply as growth in the modern sense but as an aging process, at the end of which comes an agonized death (witness the longing in Agutter's eyes as she finds herself returned to the status quo existence). This is nothing short of a masterpiece.