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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
RABBIT PROOF FENCE
A rarity, an intelligent film for adults and children. Preadolescents and teenagers will be
attracted to the resourceful Molly (Sampi), 14, who figures out how to navigate across
900 miles in the Australian Outback, often carrying her younger sister on her back, and
survive while trying to allude the police. Based on fact and set in 1931, Molly, her cousin Gracie
(Monaghan), and her eight-year-old sister Daisy (Sansbury) are forcibly taken from their
family as part of the Australian government’s policy of permanently removing half-castes
children–part Aborigine, part white–to be trained and educated for integration into white
society. With only the shoes on their feet, the girls flee from the Dickensian Moore River
Native Settlement pursued by a tracker. By following the Rabbit Proof Fence, the world’s
longest unbroken barrier of its kind, through the desert, Molly hopes to be reunited with
her mother. This exciting adventure film never condescends; the girls act their age. They
can be temperamental, frightened, and vulnerable to the elements. Nor is the film
preachy. The legal guardian of all Aboriginal people in Western Australia, AO Neville
(Branagh) is portrayed as blatantly racist but sincere in his beliefs. He believed that the
answer to the “coloured problem” was to breed out the Aborigine population. Director
Noyce respects the intelligence of the audience to see the ridiculousness and tragedy of
this policy, without resorting into making Neville, or other whites, a buffoon. If anything,
this tact makes the film more powerful.
DVD Features: The half-hour documentary is a fascinating look on Noyce’s search
for three Aboriginal children to carry his film. One would-be actress is
replaced, while the lead (Sampi, an emerging method actress) buckles under
the pressure. The commentary includes many interesting nuggets of
information, including the middle-of-the-night phone call that led to the
film.KT
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