Release Date: November 29, 2002
Starring: Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan, David Gulpilil, Kenneth Branagh
Directed by: Phillip Noyce
Written by: Christine Olsen
Distributed by: Miramax Films
MPAA Rating: PG (emotional thematic material)
The separation of young children from their parents is unquestionably deeply tragic, but you wouldn’t know it from watching Rabbit-Proof Fence. The film, directed by Phillip Noyce and adapted by Christine Olsen from Doris Pilkington Gamiara’s true-story account of the Australian government’s racist policy of Aboriginal resettlement from 1905 to 1971, is devoid of emotion and awash in optimism. Never once does the film beg for tears, but just the same, the viewer may find himself so moved at the end of this incredible account of persistence and bravery.
The policy in question involved the removal of children of mixed race from their homes -- by force, if necessary -- to special camps thousands of miles away. At the beginning of a movie, which takes place in 1931, such a fate befalls 14-year-old Molly (Everlyn Sampi), her 8-year-old sister Daisy (Tianna Sansbury), and their 10-year-old cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan), who, after being spotted by a local constable outside of Jigalong, in the far northern reaches of Western Australia, are captured and taken by train to the Moore River resettlement camp, 1,200 miles to the south.
Before long, though, the resourceful and persistent Molly (Gamiara’s mother) has formulated a plan for escape, which involves following the “rabbit-proof” fence -- a fence built to protect the country’s farmland from rabbits that courses across the entire continent from north to south -- all the way back to Jigalong. All the while, the girls depend on the help of settlers whom they meet along the way, while eluding the Moore River camp’s experienced tracker, a black man named Moodoo (David Gulpilil).
As can be expected, the movie features a breathtaking view of the terrain the girls must cross, and there is constantly the sense that walking across the Australian Outback is some of the hardest going on Earth. The ground underfoot is rocky and uneven, with only the barest vegetation -- meaning the girls are exposed to all of the elements around the clock. Nevertheless, Molly is the epitome of ingenuity, and along the way she contrives a number of believable methods of keeping the girls alive and pressing onward.
Much of the girls’ survival is due to the help of strangers, and Noyce does much to show that the three youngsters’ greatest fear was not being caught by Moodoo -- even though that would have meant further detainment at Moore River, and punishment with solitary confinement -- but having their trust betrayed by a stranger. Noyce uses cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s work on a broad scale -- vast landscape shots -- and on a microscopic level -- close-ups of Sampi’s eyes to show Molly’s constant suspicion and wariness of outsiders.
As with most movies that feature little dialogue, the visuals become very important, and something as simple as a character’s eyes can take on an enormous gravity in a particular scene. Gulpilil, who plays the sinewy tracker Moodoo (one can almost imagine that he is the human reincarnation of a bloodhound), leers out at the world with piercing brown eyes that rightfully scare most Aboriginal children out of leaving the reservation. But toward the end, as the girls continually elude him, is it possible that we see a bit of pride in those same orbs?
After all, Moodoo is working for the white man’s establishment, one that, at the top, is run by the chief protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, A.O. Neville (Kenneth Branagh). Neville is a man who believes very seriously in the viability of the government’s resettlement policy -- in one telling scene, he says that the Aborigine man must be saved from himself. These are the sort semantic discrepancies that governments invent to ease their own consciences: though their motives are different, the Australian government was essentially enacting the same policy of racial purity that Adolf Hitler would mandate as the chancellor of Nazi Germany just a decade hence. While Neville, as played by Branagh, is clearly no Hitler, he is just the same completely deluded; in his performance, Branagh achieves the cinematic equivalent of acquittal for reasons of insanity.
The movie does lack a strong villain, which in many ways is what this story needs, though there is also the possibility that a life-and-death game of hide-and-seek would develop (think of a Western Australian transplant of The Fugitive). Noyce, who obviously wanted to make a very personal memoir to the so-called “stolen generation,” completely avoided using Hollywoodized elements such as the classically evil bad guy (even though the movie’s lines between good and evil are vivid and static). He even occasionally implies, through extended takes and Peter Gabriel’s haunting score, that, as harrowing as the girls’ trek across the Outback was, it may have also been somewhat spiritual. Indeed, the Spartan quality of the movie and its setting reinforces this notion.
But that in no way absolves the Australian government of their actions for over half a century -- though it’s likely they won’t be shamed, either, because countries all over the world, including the United States, have enacted similarly racist policies throughout their histories. The movie doesn’t pounce on the Australian government, either; Rabbit-Proof Fence is more concerned with the heroic tale of persistence that is sure to win viewers’ hearts rather than leaving them depressed.
all contents © 2002 Craig Roush