Dir. Phillip Noyce, 2002, Australia, 94 mins
Cast:
Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan, David Gulpili, Ningali Lawford, Jason Clarke, Kenneth Branagh
Emotional and understated, Rabbit Proof Fence is a departure from director Phillip Noyce's usual mainstream thrillers (Clear and Present Danger, Sliver, Dead Calm, The Saint, The Bone Collector) and back to his roots in the Australian outback.
From the 1930s to the 1970s The Aborigines Act gave the Australian government the power to permanently remove "half-caste" children from their families to eradicate their mixed genes. Rabbit Proof Fence focuses on three little girls who escape from the authorities and make the 1,200 mile journey home across the desert. It is Walkabout, meets Night of the Hunter, meets Wizard of Oz.
Noyce has said he remembers seeing segregated Aborigines when he was growing up in Australia, and the film is clearly influenced by his desire to find a meaning behind what at face value is an incomprehensible ruling.
The film is one of small gestures; a simple plot surrounds minimal dialogue, particularly between the girls (capably played by Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury and Laura Monaghan). Instead Noyce lets the enormity of the situation and the sweeping outback scream loud. The remarkable journey is enhanced by breathtaking cinematography that sends us swooping over the desert or circling around the little creatures like a predator.
Full of deliberately contrasting scenes between the two cultures, highlighting the absurd contradictions of the Act, this film could easily have been a simple tale of black versus white, right versus wrong. But Noyce doesn't want to alienate a core part of his audience. For every unsympathetic white Australian with a gun, goes a kind-hearted one with a sandwich wrapped in brown paper.
The runaways' nemesis is Chief Protector of Aborigines, A O Neville, brilliantly revealed by Kenneth Branagh, as a lonely, bureaucracy-obsessed individual, depicted either in his office, studying maps or from unflattering low-angled camera shots. But Noyce also portrays him as a victim of his time. A well-meaning, kindly uncle whose fulfilment of his white man's burden in 1930s Australia is conveyed as misguided rather than despotic. "Given the benefit all our culture has to offer .. The native must be helped" Neville says, in an attempt to explain the plight of mixed raced children who defy classification.
The problem is not, the film tells us, Neville's inherent evil, but his lack of understanding of the Aborigine people, holed up in his dull paper-filled office, whilst they run about in a vast fertile desert, at one with nature and themselves. Any flawed Aborigine character is portrayed, along with Neville, as a victim of the system. The Tracker (David Gulpilil, who played Black Boy in Walkabout) only works as a runaway hunter to be near his segregated daughter.
The film is a political gem that pays tribute to generations of snatched children and exposes a shameful period in Australian history politicians still refuse to apologise for. Noyce's film pays homage to the survivors of the Stolen Generation, in a story respectfully conveyed through Aborigine eyes by a white Australian director. The decision to bring the final scenes up-to-date using the real-life protagonists, is emotionally charged and hopefully also helped to bring Noyce's personal journey to a close.
Rebecca Kemp
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