Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) – P. Noyce

Although it elides most real details in favour of an emotional overview, this story of three Aboriginal girls who escape from a virtual prison camp for “half-caste” girls is dramatically compelling and rewarding.  It is also a didactic history lesson, telling viewers (worldwide) about Australia’s policy of removing children from their families in order to propagate a vision of White Australia.  This fear of Blackness is embodied by Kenneth Branagh who plays the official charged with overseeing the lives of Indigenous Australians in Western Australia in the 1930’s when the film takes place. (Children were removed all the way up until 1970 – they are referred to as the “stolen generations” and an apology was only offered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008; this movie may have swayed public opinion).  The acting by the three central girls, aged 14, 10, and 8 is a bit variable and the baddies are really bad but the film’s episodic structure, where encounters with kindly and insidious Aussies are interspersed with beautiful landscapes and some voiceover narration, helps to keep things on track and elevates the film to a kind of fable.  At the end, we see two of the girls as elderly adults as we discover that we have been watching a true story.  Shame, shame, shame on Australia.