Walkabout(1971)
Directed by Nicholas Roeg
"I don't suppose it matters which way we go"
Two children are left to fend for themselves in the Australian wilderness after the father drives them out into the middle of nowhere and tries to murder them, setting his car on fire and eventually turning the gun on himself.
Wandering around and proving they have no survival skills whatsoever, they meet an aboriginal boy on a Walkabout, an initiation ritual.
Initially the girl is afraid of the boy, but her younger brother makes friend across the language barrier. It is this same barrier transcended at first that ultimately proves still far to vast for any substantial communication.
The aboriginal boy now become a man, on his own quest, follows the trumpets of adolescent hormone and propositions the girl in the only manner he knows how; a mating dance.
The girl misunderstanding, or outright refusing, and defacto invoking her "civilized ladylike nature in the face of his "savage" dance, leaves the boy hurt and distraught, with tragic results.
Just as two people can stand next to each one not knowing the other is in love with them, so do the kids find themselves, next to a highway all along. When they return to civilization though, they find no one will open their doors to assist them, and they end up wandering the paved streets just as lost in their familiar world, as they were in the wilds.
The story itself is unremarkable, but the film making particularly the editing is what tells this films story which is far grander in scope than it would initially lead you to believe.
Civilization, technology, innocence, sex, communication, death, rebirth, the cyclical nature of time, are all illuminated in this film through visual and auditory juxtapositions.
So many mirror images and sounds end up in this film that it almost overwhelms the story, thankfully it walks that razors edge with a grace, daring, and sense of purpose you just don't see today, at least not at such a technical level.
Nicholas Roeg's skills are found in his virtuoso editing, ranging from films like "The Man Who Fell To Earth" to "Don't Look Now", but his cultural sensitivity, and ability to make a film so simple and earnest feel epic and timeless, is why "Walkabout" is one of the greatest films ever made. The many wonderful Australian landscapes on display are icing on a very multi-layered cake.
directed by 
"Until The End Of The World" is 
It plays out like a miniseries, about a woman who just separated from her writer boyfriend(played by Sam Niel who serves as narrator), and crashes cars with wounded bank robbers, they offer to give her some of the money if she will transport the cash the rest of the way to Paris for them.
She agrees and uses her money to finance the trip that ensues for the rest of the movie. She immediately after meets William Hurt, a mysterious hitchhiker she becomes fascinated with.
He is on the lamb, but from who, and why? After he ditches her and steals a hefty sum she becomes obsessed with finding him. 
All the while a rouge Indian nuclear satellite hovers above the Earth, haywire and endangering a possible nuclear Apocalypse if it 
The world is closer to ending than it has ever been, which means its just a story on the news in the background, most people try to ignore. 
The first segment, in this three part film, is their chase cross country and continent, "A Dance Around The World", as the book about their lives is latter called. 
They begin in Italy, and go on to Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, San Francisco, and finally the Australian Outback, our heroin Miriam discovers, that Hurt is wanted for a stolen piece of Government property, a device that records the experience of seeing and translates the information as images.
He is recording the most beautiful places in the world, for his blind mother. He is the son of Max Von 
By the third segment they reach 
The aboriginals who run the lab with 
There are car crashes, planes losing power mid-flight, and one gorgeous locale after another. Like "
And it does, but for a film so dedicated to the pure spectacle and profound importance and danger of "seeing things", I didn't mind. 
Future content wise, there is a clear opposition between the dual natures of the machine, helping the blind to see the world, and allowing the 
Technology is a double edged sword, amazing but not without its serious ethical and 
Not released in North America yet in its full form I think. It's really just a beautiful film to watch, that's much sweeter and gentler than most sci-
While many of the songs are very good, most are awkwardly placed as well. No doubt 
Still its enthralling to hear such distinct music, laid against so many lovely backdrops, even if it doesn't all click. This is a road movie, for its first three and a half hours really, with the really sci-
I can't imagine how this was released as anything but 5 hours, the plot is so subtle and languid, I couldn't imagine this functioning quicker. The big budget sci-
Despite its hefty run time, I thought 
At one point when everyone assumes the world has ended Sam Niel's character is playing in a small band with several Aboriginal neural scientists, a few french-bank robbers, a British bounty hunter, and some random strays who wandered into the Australian compound fearful of nuclear fallout, and they play a music that sounds like Australian Blue Grass; Didgeridoo's and pianos, harmonica's, and trumpets, blending together to create something singular and new.
He notes to himself, "This entire trip hasn't been about helping a blind woman to see, or gazing into ourselves. But this adventure, the satellite, the machine, the crash, it all occurred, so we could be here, at this moment, to create this music which would have never otherwise existed, right at the crest of the end of the world". 
Few sci-
Directed by John Hillcoat(2005)
Since it's set in Australia it's technically not a "Western", though aside from that detail, and the replacement of Indians with Aboriganals, you'd hardly notice. However the distinction is important, because The Proposition is a deceptively clever film. The proposition in question is whether you should kill your brother to save your brother. The inherint drawback in chosing civilization over the wilds is it puts one instantly at odds with the wilds, in binary us vs. them, civilization vs. non-civilzation. Civilazation is the town, the law, it's fashions and fears, the wilds are the country itself, it's natives and non-whites, it's criminals, it's desolate terrain and animals. In choosing to kill his brother, Charlie Burns, takes up the proposition of civlization, to kill the strong and the other, in order to spare the meek and familiar. Had screen-writer Nick Cave, left the story there it would have been a midly interesting new western, what makes it great however is it complicates further.
The sherriffs wife wants revenge for her freind and demands the younger Burns boy be punished, as does the town and his superiors who don't understand why he released Charles in the first place. If the sheriff punishes the boy(a public wipping he will likely not survive), the pact will be broken, and he himself will have to face the Burns brothers should they return. In the wilds there are angry natives, roaming criminals and mercenaries, and a pregrant woman can be raped and murdered in her own home. 
While in the civilized town a young handicapped boy can be beaten to death publically for something he did not do and by rights does not understand. The proposition, or choice between the new nation or anarchy, is not one that can be easily made, and this is the subltle brilliance of this movie. Arthur burns at one point says when asked by another member of his gang wheter or not they are misanthropes; people who hate the world and everyone in it, to which he replies "Were not misanthropes were family". 
On one level it's just a very gritty western with lush cinematography and amazing music, and on another level it's a story about the founding of a country like Emir Kusturica's "Underground" was to Yugoslavia, and on yet another it's an weighing of the pros and cons of all civilizations(as many people pointed out Australia around this period resembles the wild American west to a T). You don't have to think about all this during the film to enjoy the story, but in it's at times thin or slow patches it might help to know that there are greater forces at work in this film than meet the eye(consider John Hurt's wonderfull speech early on the film, about why they are in Australia).
I don't particularly care for Westerns, it's rare when I fall for one, along with "3:10 To Yuma" another film which can go over peoples heads, this was a film that breathed great life into a genre I would not normally look at. It's difficult stuff in this film, but with a little thought and patience it rewards, where many similar movies just cram in extra gun fights. 
