Rabbit Proof Fence

Rabbit Proof Fence depicts a dark chapter in Australia's history. For most of the 20th century, in fact right up to the 1970s, the government removed mixed-race children from their mothers, who were often black, and forcibly placed them in institutions where they were indoctrinated with the colonists' values and religion. Very few of them were accepted as equal citizens. Instead they ended up serving the whites. Rabbit Proof Fence is thus a necessary film that shows a terribly tragic consequence of racism.

The film, which is based on real events, is set in the early 1930s and is about Molly, her younger sister Daisy and their cousin Gracie, who are taken to the Moore River Native Settlement, 2,000 km from the reserve where they lived with their mothers and grandmothers. The eldest, Molly, is an unusually bright girl with a will of steel, and it is not long before she is ready to defy every danger and obstacle to get home.

The girls escape, hotly pursued by the tracker Moodoo, who is also Aboriginal. He is not easily shaken off, but the girls face other hardships along the way too. How will they get food and water? Where can they sleep safely? How will they find their way home at all? When Molly finds the great fence that leads north to the reserve, the girls take fresh heart, but exhausted by their exertions it can be hard to keep a cool head.

The Australian Phillip Noyce, who usually directs thrillers in Hollywood, has returned home to make an unusually simple and sober film. Noyce is so sparing with his effects, however, that you could wish he would let rip now and then. As it is, you can safely leave your handkerchief at home. Dramatically the film is also somewhat static, but it gains in realism.