news | action | information | events | contact | search | news | action | information | events | contact | search |
key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lRabbit Proof Fence European reviews
Kataweb Cinema di Mario Sest Regia di: Phillip Noyce Kataweb cinema organizza un'anteprima per i suoi lettori lunedì 28 ottobre a Roma. Per partecipare basta scrivere un'email al sito specificando se si vuole venire accompagnati e dando il proprio numero di telefono.
2 Novembre 2002 - Rabbit Proof Fence, Recinto a prova di coniglio. La traduzione italiana del titolo dell’ultimo film di Philip Noyce ha delle proprietà che raramente i titoli dei film possiedono: quella di offrire il senso del film e insieme ad esso l’intollerabile ingiustizia di cui racconta. Il film, infatti, ambientato negli anni trenta in Australia, innanzitutto ci informa di un imbarazzante precedente di quella che chiamiamo con goffa imprecisione civiltà occidentale. I bianchi costruirono un articolato recinto nel cuore dell’Australia per dividere e delimitare i territori popolati dsgli aborigeni, ovvero la razza che dopo aver popolato il continente per cinquanta mila anni, se lo è visto strappare da individui di carnagione pallida, i quali disponevano di una tale considerazione di sé da rinchiuderli, come animali di natura inferiore, in un enorme zoo desertico e misterioso. Tratto da una storia vera raccontata in un libro dalla figlia di una delle protagoniste, il film racconta dell’incredibile fuga di tre ragazzine meticce (metà aborigene e metà bianche) da una sorta di lager per bambini, nel quale venivano rinchiusi tutti i minori di sangue misto. L’ossessione delle istituzioni era infatti quella che gli intrecci tra le due razze portassero ad una contaminazione e diffusione dell’elemento aborigeno nella società contemporanea. Per questo praticavano operazioni di pulizia etnica come quella di strappare alle famiglie e alle madri i bambini meticci, per impedire che si accoppiassero di nuovo con sangue aborigeno. Un sangue che andava slavato fino a farlo completamente scomparire attraverso progressivi accoppiamenti con gli individui di pelle chiara, come illustra Mr. Neville, che ebbe in mano i destini di tutta la popolazione aborigena fino agli anni ’40, interpretato da Mr. Kenneth Branagh che, privato dell’istrionismo marmoreo di cui è così prodigo nei film che dirige, è qui ad una delle sue interpretazioni migliori. 12mila miglia, in poco più di un mese, attraversando steppe e deserti. Perlopiù a piedi scalzi. Philip Noyce è un ottimo tecnico della tensione (Ore 10 calma piatta, Giochi di potere, Il collezionista di ossa), ma sarebbe un po’ audace definirlo un autore nonostante i suoi film d’esordio (come Newsfront), lavoravano già vent’anni fa ad un revisionismo progressista della storia ufficiale e anglosassone dell’Australia. Ma la vibrazione colma di tremore e angoscia con la quale segue la fuga delle tre ragazzine, Josie (14 anni), Gracie (10 anni), e Daisy (8) in un territorio così assurdo e incomprensibile, fatto di sterminate pianure bruciate e praterie decolorate, superfici rugose istoriate da licheni ciclopici e colline isolate nel silenzio, è il sintomo tipico di uno sguardo coinvolto senza riserve in ciò che racconta. Le magmatiche percussioni della musica di Peter Gabriel, i paesaggi che sembrano appartenere ad un pianeta lontano, alimentano l’emozione silenziosa e fluida, che il passo inesorabile della fuga trasmette senza interruzione al film. La scena in cui vengono strappate ai parenti, è straziante; la ricostruzione storica che spiega come le tre bambine finirono per diventare un caso nazionale, è condotta con cura e senza fanatismo, ma, soprattutto, la recitazione delle piccole protagoniste, senza lacrime, eccessi, esplosioni emotive, è il segno della risposta più potente che si possa dare ad una cultura che invade e pretende di possedere il tuo mondo come una malevola stirpe di alieni: la prima regola è quella di non concedere loro ciò che non possono in alcun modo strapparti, l’espressione delle tue emozioni. E’ un principio che le tre bambine sembrano condividere con il loro peggior nemico, il cacciatore, anch’esso aborigeno, che gli occidentali mettono sulle sue tracce, interpretato da David Gulpilil, il più famoso attore aborigeno del cinema australiano dagli anni Settanta ad oggi Due delle tre riusciranno a ritornare dalle donne della loro famiglia, proprio seguendo l’infinito recinto costruito dai dominatori anglosassoni ma, come racconta la vera Josie, ancora vivente, al termine del film, lei stessa dovrà subire l’incredibile dolore di vedersi sotratta una figlia che non vedrà mai più. Presentato in anteprima a Taormina, il film ha toccato la platea del teatro greco che sui titoli di coda si è stretta intorno al regista, assendiandolo con un lungo e affettuoso applauso. Source: Kataweb Cinema Revision Cinema Elisa Schianchi
Una sconvolgente storia di razzismo e segregazione, un'anacronistica ed incredibile vicenda di violenza e cecità politica, un orrore che tuttora persiste impunito e che andò avanti dai primi del ‘900 sino agli anni ‘70 (mentre in Europa scoppiava la contestazione e si ascoltava musica Rock): quello della Generazione Rubata. Il dramma inizia quando viene varato, nell'Australia dell'Ovest, un programma di epurazione che prevede di strappare dalle famiglie aborigene i bambini meticci per stanziarli in campi di concentramento dove saranno preparati ad una nuova vita presso la società dei bianchi. La vicenda narrata prende spunto dall'opera indefessa e orgogliosa di Mr Neville, Protettore Capo degli Aborigeni Australiani (che, dal canto loro, non potevano che chiamarlo "il Diavolo"), che per una distorta visione del dovere e dell'abnegazione alla causa, nonché per un concetto, ai limiti del nazismo, di tutoraggio e curatela nei confronti di una razza ritenuta incapace di auto determinarsi, si renderà responsabile di centinaia di migliaia di sequestri legalizzati - vere deportazioni di bambini - e della distruzione di un'importantissima parte della cultura dei nativi australiani. Il suo piano, infatti, è quello di impedire le congiunzioni tra i meticci e gli aborigeni di sangue puro per giungere, procedendo nelle generazioni e con gli incroci selezionati con individui di sangue ariano, ad una nuova razza bianca e scongiurare, in ogni caso e ad ogni costo, la diffusione dell’elemento aborigeno nella società contemporanea. Il recinto a prova di coniglio del titolo è un'immensa protezione costruita per l'intera lunghezza dell'Australia dell'Ovest da nord a sud per tenere non solo i conigli (calamità importata dall’Europa al pari delle malattie infettive) separati dai campi coltivati ma anche e soprattutto per dividere i territori riservati agli aborigeni, la razza che aveva popolato il continente per cinquanta mila anni, considerata ora inferiore e da relegare in un enorme zoo desertico coatto da filo spinato e ferro, da quelli popolati dai bianchi, e così ferire, dell'ennesima violenza propria dell'uomo, la terra e la natura. La storia narrata è quella coraggiosa e vera, già raccontata in un libro dalla figlia di una delle protagoniste, di tre bambine meticce: Molly di 14 anni, sua sorella Daisy di 8 e la loro cuginetta Gracie di 10 anni che, segregate nel campo di Moore River, riuscirono a tornare nel loro villaggio natio di Jigalong, percorrendo 1500 miglia in poco più di un mese a piedi nudi, attraverso steppe e deserto, riuscendo a sfuggire ai poliziotti e ad un cacciatore nativo (interpretato da David Gulpilil, il più famoso attore aborigeno del cinema australiano), messi sulle loro tracce dal Ministero in quello che fu, al tempo, un vero smacco per il Potere costituito, un caso nazionale a memoria del fallimento dell’ossessione per il progetto di pulizia etnica così tenacemente propagandato dalle Istituzioni. Tre magnifiche piccole interpreti impreziosiscono la scena facendo da felice contro altare alla potente forza espressiva della recitazione di un genio dello schermo e del teatro come Kenneth Branagh, qui straordinariamente asciutto ed intenso, e la colonna sonora di Peter Gabriel, ispirato da un impegno ed un'ambizione al coinvolgimento chiaramente molto sentiti, danno profondità alla dimensione dello spazio quasi irreale del deserto australiano senza fine, aiutati anche da una fotografia di rara bellezza ed evocazione che fa delle pianure arse dal sole e dei licheni ciclopici circondati da silenzio e nulla, il punto di origine di una vibrazione emozionale che fa parte del racconto stesso. Un film molto amato dal regista Phillip Noyce, qui anche nei panni di produttore del progetto, che, dopo Ore Dieci Calma Piatta, Giochi Di Potere ed Il Collezionista Di Ossa, inverte clamorosamente la marcia, abbandonando la via del blockbuster hollywoodiano, per puntare su un argomento scottante e di difficile digestione per il proprio Paese, realizzando un film duro, caustico, lento e mai arreso come i piccoli passi delle bambine sulla via di casa. Pur indagando con profondità l’aspetto sociologico ed umano della vicenda, Noyce non rinuncia all’arte della tensione e del dramma attraverso lo sviluppo del duello a distanza tra l’arguzia della piccola Molly e la concretezza di Moodoo, il cacciatore cui nessuno sfugge, oppure le riprese dall’alto, inquietanti fino a togliere il respiro, di praterie immani, piatte e scolorite, o di paesaggi notturni di terrore, teatro di inseguimenti disperati tra insidie e trabocchetti. Una sospensione dei tempi troppo compiaciuta e dilatata toglie un po' di pathos ad un racconto di per sé efficace già solo per la sostanza della denuncia ma non pregiudica, comunque, in nessuna misura, il valore di un'opera che è densa e coraggiosa come l’atto di accusa che porta avanti. Source: Revision Cinema BBC Films
Reviewed by Jamie Russell reviewer's rating 16 October 2002 - Based on true events, "Rabbit-Proof Fence" is a moving story of racial prejudice, agoraphobic desert vistas, and amazing endurance as three girls walk 1,500 miles to find their mothers in 30s Australia. These are the shocking facts behind the movie: during the early years of the 20th century, white Australians panicked about the supposed disaster of an "unwanted third race" of "half-caste" Aborigine children. Special detention centres were set up across the continent to keep the mixed race children from "contaminating" the rest of Australian society, and orders were given to forcibly remove "half-caste" children from their families. It was a disastrous, racist policy that brought about the misery of the so-called "stolen generations". In "Rabbit-Proof Fence", Australian director Phillip Noyce gives us a perceptive, uplifting drama that highlights - and overcomes - that racist policy. Having been forcible separated from their natural mothers, three girls - Molly (Sampi), Daisy (Sansbury), and Gracie (Monaghan) - escape from the Moore River Native Settlement, presided over by AO Neville (Branagh). With an epic journey ahead of them, the girls set out to find their way back home by following the rabbit-proof fence that stretches across the Outback. Cutting back and forth between the children's journey and Neville's increasingly desperate attempts to capture them, Noyce's sensitive dramatization swaps angry politics for emotional sympathy, concentrating on the plight of the children instead of ranting against the authorities. By highlighting the realities of this hidden genocide (unbelievably, the policy continued until the early 70s), "Rabbit-Proof Fence" stands as a powerful, worthy testimony to the suffering of the stolen generations. "Rabbit-Proof Fence" opens in UK cinemas on Friday 8th November 2002. Source: BBC Films iofilm
Reviewed by The Wolf November, 2002 - Coming at last to the shaming history of white Australia's attitude towards its native population, Philip Noyce, known as an Aussie director who made recent must-miss thrillers (The Saint, The Bone Collector), goes back to basics, as if Hollywood had never dazzled his consciousness. Based on a true story, the film has a simplicity that burns through the sole of cynicism. This is cruelty, based on high-minded ideals. In the Thirties, the government passed a law for the protection of Aboriginals, which meant that "half caste" children could be forcefully taken from their mothers and given to white families, who would provide them with a better life. Although racist to its core, the law was designed to "protect the natives against themselves" and offer a privileged alternative to those who would otherwise have to live like bush rats. There was also the matter of "the unwanted third race", which, it was believed, could be bred out in three generations. The unwanted third race was the half-caste and what was being bred out was "black blood." Molly and little Daisy and their cousin Gracie were taken and transported in a cage on a train 1200 miles to the Moore River Native Settlement where they would live in bare dormitories and be assessed for future adoption. It was more like a concentration camp than a boarding school, far out in the country, administered by matrons in starched white uniforms. The film tells of the children's escape and how they follow the rabbit-proof fence across a blistering desert, pursued by men on horseback and a native tracker, to where they hope is home. If it wasn't true, this would not be believed. The tenacity and courage required to survive such an impossible journey, without food or water or geographical knowledge, is beyond imagination. Miracles happen, it's true, but this required a greater magic, if magic it was. The look is bleached and untouched. Christopher Doyle's cinematography has a rawness that belies the romance of the outback. The performances of the children, untrained in acting, have an honesty and dignity that breaks your heart. Noyce tells their story. He doesn't elaborate. He stands back to allow the girls room to be together. Of course, he was there, helping them, but the way he filmed it, you would swear they were on their own. Source: iofilm Film 2002 (BBC) THE BIG RELEASE 5 November 2002 - "Rabbit Proof Fence" is the latest from Australian director Phillip Noyce, who made his name in the great Australian film boom of the late 70s and went on to make star-driven Hollywood hits such as "Patriot Games". Noyce has returned to his homeland to bring us the remarkable true story of three little Aboriginal girls who escaped from a mission station and walked home across 1,500 miles of Outback. Featuring Kenneth Branagh as the Chief Protector of Aborigines, the film exposes an aspect of the country’s recent history which elements of the Australian establishment remain reluctant to confront. It is set in 1931, when the Australian government sanctioned a policy whereby mixed-race Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their families and placed in white households as domestic servants. Rabbit-Proof Fence is one of those movies that you certainly feel the better for having seen. Noyce displays a masterful control of style and tone and makes full use of not only a wonderful cast, including some very talented child actors, but also the remarkable landscape. Kenneth Branagh is very good as Chief Protector Neville, managing to capture the man's fervour and zeal, along with his conviction that he was doing the right thing, even when it is apparent to our post-20th century eyes that he was in fact a bigoted lunatic. The film manages to make some incredibly powerful points about institutionalised racism and the misuse of power, without ever hammering them home too heavily. "Rabbit-Proof Fence" opens around the country from Friday 8th November, 2002. Financial Times By Nigel Andrews 6 November, 2002 - Never trust an instant critical consensus. From Perth to Peoria, reviewers have been standing on their hind legs, ears and teeth twitching, forepaws vibrating in applause, to greet the Australian film Rabbit-Proof Fence. A multitude of critics enraptured is a terrifying sight, against the law of nature. "What's wrong with the movie?" should be the sane layman's response. (Art with depth and durability almost never gets this quick-action Glee Club adulation.) Answer in this case: it is a piece of ingratiating PC hooey, so steeped in political hindsight and liberal sentimentality that the lack of craft, artistry or originality can easily go unnoticed. A truth-based morality pageant at which enlightened souls can nod in happy, sappy unison. Something like Gandhi. "1,500 miles is a long way home," says the advertising line. And it is, as we trek across the Australian desert with Molly (14), Daisie (8) and Gracie (10), three Aboriginal girls who have escaped from the detention camp where they were taken after being culled for their colour. This actually happened during the first half of the last century. Aboriginal children were torn from their families to oblige some rabbit-brained racial purification policy administered by a chief protector called Mr Neville. The idea was to spread the dark-skinned youngsters through white society as servants and/or to encourage a pattern of white-prone interbreeding. Kenneth Branagh plays Neville as a tight-lipped martinet pedagogically fragmenting each sentence with full stops. "The Aboriginal has simply. Been. Bred. Out", he says when demonstrating in a slideshow the virtues of generational decolourisation. He is less a character, more a piece of walking exposition, there to give some concise, hissable briefings before receding into the scenery. The main focus is on Molly, Daisie and Gracie. The memories of the still- living first two, who are sisters, inspired the book by Molly's daughter which in turn inspired the film by screenwriter Christine Olsen and Australo-Hollywood director Phillip Noyce (Newsfront, Dead Calm, Patriot Games). So much inspiring, so little inspiration. After a majestic aerial opening, with the camera flying over grey-brown plains patterned with trees like bursts of soft fire (the cinematographer is Christopher Doyle of Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love), we descend to earth for two hours of stilted scripting, gauche acting and by-the-numbers storytelling. Unlike the kids in Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout - slyly and searingly real as mini-adults lost in a savage wilderness - this trio, played by Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury and Laura Monaghan, behave like camera-shy tots. Every line of dialogue seems tortured forth, every facial expression coached into being by a director who hasn't made his young actors take the imaginative leap into a bygone time. No one has taken that leap, really: not even composer Peter Gabriel, though his doomy, percussive score provides more drama than anything else. Once the Great Walk begins, as the three girls feel their way home along the vast trajectory of the title fence - a wire barrier actually built across thousands of kilometres of north-west Australia to stop rabbits vandalising farmland - the film becomes a cinch for hankie-clutchers. It doesn't have to be good to move us, it just has to present, after many a teasing mile of dusty suffering, the actuality that Molly and Daisy did get home and were swept into weeping mum's arms. Gracie was less lucky, being recaptured. But we forget about her, as about the briefly captioned information that in later years Molly and her offspring had more brushes with Mr Neville and his racial-cleansing cohorts. Rabbit-Proof Fence doesn't want to spoil the bit of history designed to make us feel good by broadening it into a larger vista that might make us feel bad: might vex us, perplex us or make us think about whether there can ever be an end to the misbegotten missionary zeal with which human beings torment other human beings. Source: Financial Times Glasgow Evening Herald Hannah McGill 7 November 2002 - Rabbit-Proof Fence has already swept the board of Australian film awards, scooped the Standard Life Audience Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and attracted global press attention. By packaging a human rights outrage - the government-sponsored removal of Australian Aborigine children from their families between 1910 and 1970 - inside a stirring adventure story, and adding ample big-screen gloss, director Phillip Noyce has made a shamelessly rabble-rousing issue movie, as emotional as it is political. Films that claim to be "true" are always problematic - especially when they tug this insistently at the heartstrings - but this is a powerful and important work, as well as a technically impressive one. Based on Doris Pilkington's memoir of her own mother, Molly, Rabbit-Proof Fence follows three Aboriginal girls who are taken from their families in the 1930s and put in a Christian mission far away from home. Molly (Everlyn Sampi), her sister Daisy (Tianna Sanbury), and their cousin, Gracie (Laura Monaghan), flee their captors and walk the 1500 miles back to their outback village, guided by the rabbit-proof fence that bisects the continent. Meanwhile, the government's chief protector of Aboriginies, A O Neville (Kenneth Branagh), strives to track the girls down and bring them back into custody. Noyce has drawn remarkable work from his youngest performers, Sampi in particular. Child actors often overplay, but Sampi's performance is a masterpiece of understatement, free from gratuitous cuteness. Molly is no motherless waif, but a tough, solemn, implacable fighter - an action heroine, in effect, who outsmarts her pursuers with sheer single-minded determination. It's Branagh's Neville, however, who is the most ambiguous and interesting character - monstrously misguided, perhaps, but apparently genuine in his desire to "protect" his country's indigenous people. Having concluded that Aboriginal racial characteristics will always limit achievement and inclusion, he designs a policy intended to breed out the Aboriginal bloodline, via enforced miscegenation. "In spite of himself, the native must be helped," he insists, frustrated by the hysteria that greets his well-meaning attempts to separate children from their mothers. "If only they would understand what we are trying to do for them." Unfortunately, Noyce and his cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, can't seem to give Branagh's office-bound scenes the resonance of the outdoor sequences. While the outback is shot with astounding artistry - a swooping camera taking in parched vistas, skeletal trees, and rich colours, against a brooding score by Peter Gabriel - Branagh's scenes feel stagey and constricted. Perhaps Noyce wanted to contrast the repression of the white Europeans with the Aboriginal affinity for nature and space; but the effect is an uneven tone. Flawed, then; but profoundly and unusually affecting. Source: Glasgow Evening Herald FilmFour 5 November 2002 - A profound, moving tale about Aboriginal displacement from the man who brought you The Saint and The Bone Collector. Yes, really! In the 1930s, in an attempt to get a grip on the Aboriginal 'problem', the Australian government developed a policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families and training them to work in domestic service in white households. The policy tore families apart and created a gulf between white and black Australians that remain to this day. Rabbit-Proof Fence concentrates on the extraordinary real-life case of three Aboriginal girls who escaped from the government camp and walked 1,500 miles home across the unforgiving Australian outback. For some film-goers, the incredible feat will almost be matched by the fact that this sensitive drama is the creation of Hollywood hack Philip Noyce. Audiences shouldn't be so surprised, however. Before he was churning out twaddle like Sliver, the New South Wales native was making intelligent Aboriginal dramas and it is clearly the Phillip Noyce who made Backroads rather than Clear And Present Danger who is at the helm here. Noyce is not the only one doing an excellent job, either. The performances from the abductees are sterling, proving that Noyce's lengthy scouring of Aboriginal camps for his cast-members was worthwhile. Branagh is also excellent as Neville, the creator of the resettlement plan, playing his character as the well-intentioned and woefully misguided man he was, rather than an arch-racist. Hats should also be tipped to cinematographer Chris Doyle (best known for his work with Wong Kar-Wai, shooting such films as In The Mood For Love) and composer Peter Gabriel, the later exhibiting form he hasn't shown since the late 80s. As good as Rabbit-Proof Fence is, you get the impression that Noyce was hoping to capture something truly epic here. That he hasn't isn't for lack of trying, however. And while the film can't rival the sweep of, say, David Lean, it deserves an immense amount of credit for dragging Aboriginal issues back into the open - rightly pointing out that while this is a problem of Britain's making, Australia's failure to right this wrong is equally shameful. Verdict Source: FilmFour Empire Magazine Jo Berry
Issue 162 December 2002 - Australia in the 1930s: a law exists stating that ‘half-caste’ children must be separated from their Aborigine families. But when three young girls are snatched by the government and taken to an institution 1,500 miles away from home, they escape and begin a dangerous journey by foot across the outback. Phillip Noyce — best known for thrillers Dead Calm, Patriot Games and The Bone Collector — returns to his Australian roots for this captivating tale that could have ended up as a soppy Sunday-afternoon-on-Channel-Five film in the hands of another director. Noyce, however, while obviously moved by the plight of these Aboriginal children, wisely decides not to wring every moment for maximum weepie effect. Instead he simply illustrates the true story with stunning locations and subtle performances that themselves are enough to break your heart by the end credits. As the three girls make their way across the unrelenting countryside, using the wire fence that cross-sections Western Australia as a guide, the young actresses — all making movie debuts — relate the anguish, determination and fear of their characters with performances that would make any experienced, adult actor proud. The real surprise, though, is Branagh. His character — A. O. Neville, the government’s Chief Protector of the Aborigines — was the man responsible for taking ‘half-caste’ Aborginal children away from their parents to train as domestic servants and labourers (he believed that preventing children of mixed marriages from marrying Aborigines would eventually wipe out the Aboriginal race). Neville could have been depicted as an evil caricature for easy effect, but instead Branagh gives him some humanity so that, while we hate his point of view and methods, he still comes across as a man (albeit a very misguided one) rather than a pantomime villain. In the end, though, the achingly sad story really belongs to the girls, and especially to Everlyn Sampi, who plays Molly, the most determined of them all. And when Noyce shows us the real Molly and her sister, now both in their eighties and living on the land they were so desperate to return to, you realise the most inspirational movies don’t have to have swirling music and Hollywood stars to bring a real tear to your eye. Low on schmaltz and with three terrific performances from the girls, this is a moving and fascinating look at a piece of recent history that most Australians would probably prefer to forget. Source: Empire Magazine Coventry News By David Freak
7 November 2002 - The Story: Western Australia 1931, in a small hamlet on the edge of the Gibson Desert, mixed-race Aborginal girls Molly, her sister Daisy and their cousin Gracie are ripped away from their family under the orders of Perth based Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, Mr AO Neville (Branagh). Neville - nicknamed 'The Devil' by the children - believes that the answer to the "coloured problem" is to breed out Aborginal race by taking "half-caste" children - such as Molly, Gracie and Daisy, who were fathered by long gone white fence workers by turning them into domestic servants and farm hands for white households, and preventing them from marrying Aborginal men. Removed from their remote home, alongside a mammoth rabbit-proof fence which divides the region, the girls are re-housed in the grim Moore River Native Settlement where they are forbidden to speak their native tongue and re-educated by strict nuns who punish any rebellion. But homesick Molly decides they must escape, and leads the youngsters out into the wild to begin a 1,200 mile journey home. Meanwhile Neville has his top tracker and the police out looking for the runaways... The Verdict: The girl's incredible trek is a remarkable episode from a grim period in Australia's recent history (Aboriginal children continued to be removed from their families under government policy until 1971). Avoiding sentimentality, the film could do with a little more tension or drama, but the three girls give convincing and honest performances which belie their lack of professional acting training. And the film is given extra weight due to the fact that it's based on Molly's own story (written by her daughter). Rabbit Proof Fence is a sad, tragic tale which draws you slowly in, and keeps you watching. Note: The first Rabbit Proof Fence was completed in Australia in 1907 to attempt to stem the destructive path of wild rabbits. It was the longest unbroken fence in the world. Source: Coventry News Alistair Harkness 17 August 2002 - Rabbit-Proof Fence explores a disturbing part of Australian history: the government-sanctioned practice of removing half-caste Aboriginal children from their families and forcibly integrating them into white society. Set in 1931, it is based on the true story of three young girls, removed from their family by the director of the programme AO Neville (Kenneth Branagh), who managed to escape from a specialised mission and journey 1,200 miles back home following the rabbit-proof fence that streches the length of the country. It’s a remarkable story, but sadly an unremarkable film. The script never illuminates anything because virtually every line of dialogue is exposition. Thus every time we cut to Neville, all we get is Branagh updating us on how long the girls have been missing. We learn nothing about Neville, the man. He’s a monstrous figure but the film conveys this by having the kids refer to him as The Devil. But he comes across as little more than a plot device. Only David Gulpilil is more than one-dimentional, playing Moodo, the Aboroginal tracker hired to find the girls. You can sense his reluctance to help, but Neville has him in a bind since his daughter is interned at the institution from which the girls have just escaped. He is fantastic and so are the young leads (Everlyn Sampi, Laura Monaghan and Tianna Sansbury). The problems are mainly down to Noyce’s direction. For a film about such a daring and dangerous journey there is a surprising lack of tension, which is odd given that his break-through film, Dead Calm was such a nerve-shredder. But then you remember that he’s spent the last few years in Hollywood churning out asinine blockbusters like Patriot Games and The Saint. He’s a bit too reverential towards his subject matter, a little afraid to take any dramatic licence, and it does a disservice to this movie because the real trauma is never efectively conveyed. The film’s most moving sequence is not actually part of the film but some video footage of the 84-year-old Molly that Noyce tacks on to the end. When Molly’s voice-over reveals that her own three-year-old daughter was snatched by Neville, never to be seen again, it sums up the sad, horrific nature of the story far more eloquently than anything in the previous 90 minutes. Dominion, tomorrow 7:15pm, Glasgow Film Theatre, 21 August, 6:30pm Source: The Scotsman kamera.co.uk Reviewed by Nicci Tucker "This is a true story - the story of me..." Thus starts the voiceover in Rabbit-Proof Fence. This is the story of the journey of Molly, her younger sister Daisy and her cousin Gracie, three Aboriginal 'half-caste' children, forcibly removed from their tribal home by Western Australian authorities during the 1930s to a holding centre for integration into white society 'for their own good'. The films tells the story of the girls' 12,000-mile walk back to their mothers. Based on the biography Follow The Rabbit-Proof Fence by Molly's daughter, Doris Pilkington Garimara, the film's director, Phillip Noyce, has described the film's subject matter as spiritual genocide. For this is a representative story of the Stolen Generations, a human-rights violation that only came to light in the mid-1990s, acknowledgement of which is still being denied by some. The fact that Molly, now in her 80s, on viewing the film suggested that this was not her story has added fuel to the deniers' fire down under (they are, of course, ignoring Aboriginal distrust of reproductive images). But around the world, people want to know about these missing years - in the UK, for example, since winning the Audience Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival, the film is being released on a wider print run than originally intended. The titular fence is the longest in the world - 15,000 miles long, running the length of Australia from North to South, built to keep rabbits on one side and pastureland on the other. The biggest irony lies in this central motif, because it was the fence's construction that brought the childrens' white fathers to the previous isolated Aboriginal communities in the first place. Throughout the film, the girls are pictured as frightened rabbits trapped on the wrong side of the fence - wide-eyed as if caught in headlights, caged in a hutch transporting them away to the settlement, huddled like baby rabbits on the Bush floor. An interesting observation, no doubt to reflect Aboriginal history, is how the rabbit-proof fence is so effective in banishing rabbits that the only sight of one is a dead one. Screenwriter Christine Olsen says, "the fence has always been such an amazing symbol for the Europeans' attempt to tame the land: to draw a line … it's such a magnificent symbol for a lot of what's happened to Australia." Cultural dichotomies abound - black vs. white, women vs. men, Aboriginal 'jabba' vs. the English language, tradition vs. modernisation - but for the student of post-colonial landscapes, there is reassurance in the girls' attempts to manipulate the borders. They use the fence to get home - "just because people use Neolithic tools, Inspector, does not mean they have Neolithic minds" says Mr. Neville (Kenneth Branagh), the misguided bureaucrat responsible for the 'resettlement' program. In a particularly moving movement, the fence is touched by mother and child simultaneously, as a means of calling each other. In spite of all his strategic planning, 'white man' has not counted on this natural instinct. In outwitting the authorities, for example when Molly knows to make their escape in the rain as it will cover their tracks, the Aboriginal girls temporarily reclaim their land. Australian-born director Noyce understands his land, helped by expert cinematographer Christopher Doyle (In The Mood For Love, 2000), and uses it to great effect in mirroring the emotional storyline. Sounds of the Bush and the freshness of water-soaked trees offer hope when the girls first escape, severely contrasted with the subsequent arid desert when it seems they are too tired to finish their journey. The vastness of the outback and the girls' daunting trip is highlighted by the opening aerial shots, and additional overhead shots confirm their tininess against the fence. Most effective is the sense of drama in accompanying the girls on their journey, albeit in a conventional narrative format of highs and lows. We follow the girls' progress along the rabbit-proof fence intercut with Neville looking at his maps, we feel as trapped as Molly does in point-of-view shots at the camp, and we consider the miles to travel as the camera lingers for a while on the terrain ahead. In these ways, the film has a very epic feel, not only in its production values - the Peter Gabriel soundtrack combined with Aboriginal spirituals seems deliberately emotive - but also understood in the classic sense of a hero overcoming the odds on a grand scale. It is perhaps for this universality, undeniably strong in the prevalent mother-daughter bond - "They told us we had no mothers. I knew they were wrong" - that a Hollywood director came home to tell an indigenous tale. Something barely known outside Australia has now touched an international audience. The shocking revelation at the end of the film that re-education continued into the 1970s can only begin to explain the dislocation that Aborigines still feel today, reflected in their high levels of unemployment and alcohol abuse. Doris is pleased that her mother's/Mothers' story has finally been told (made more poignant knowing that she, too, was taken away). The global interest in the film has helped finance her new project in Molly's home town of Jigalong, next to the rabbit-proof fence - a Stolen Generations research centre, where tourists and indigenous people can journey for a different re-education. Source: kamera.co.uk Glasgow Evening News Angus Wolfe Murray
Aussie director Philip Noyce who made must-miss thrillers The Saint and The Bone Collector, goes back to basics with this examination of white Australia’s shameful attitude towards its native population. And it’s as if Hollywood had never dazzled lights in his eyes. Based on a true story, the film has a simplicity that burns through the sole of cynicism. This is cruelty, tied to high-minded ideals - the worst kind. In the Thirties, the government passed a law for the protection of Aboriginess, which meant that half-caste children could be forcefully taken from their mothers and given to white families, who would provide a "better" life. Although racist to its core, the law was designed to "protect the natives against themselves" and offer a privileged alternative to those who would otherwise have had to live like bush rats. There was also the matter of "the unwanted third race", which, it was believed, could be bred out in three generations. The unwanted third race was the half-caste and what needed to be bred out was "black blood". Molly and little Daisy and their cousin Gracie were taken and transported in a cage on a train 1200 miles to the Moore River Native Settlement, where they would live in bare dormitories and be assessed for future adoption. It was more like a concentration camp than a boarding school, far out in the country, administered by matrons in starched white uniforms. The film tells of the children’s escape and how they follow the rabbit-proof fence across a blistering desert, pursued by men on horseback and a native tracker, to where they hope is home. If it wasn’t true, this would be unimaginable. The tenacity and courage required to survive such an impossible journey, without food or water or geographical knowledge, is beyond belief. Miracles happen, but this required a greater magic, if magic it was. The look is bleached and untouched. Christopher Doyle’s cinematography has a rawness that belies the romance of the outback. The performances of the children, untrained in acting, have an honesty and dignity that breaks your heart. Noyce tells their story. He doesn’t elaborate. He stands back to allow the girls room to be together. Of course, he was there, helping them, but the way he films it, you would have sworn they were on their own. Source:Glasgow Evening News The Herald Rabbitt-Proof Fence has already swept the board of Australian film awards, scooped the Standard Life Audience Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and attracted global press attention. By packaging a human rights outrage - the government-sponsored removal of Australian Aborigine children from their families between 1910 and 1970 - inside a stirring adventure story, and adding ample big-screen gloss, director Phillip Noyce has made a shamelessly rabble-rousing issue movie, as emotional as it is political. Films that claim to be true are always problematic - especially when they tug this insistently at the heart strings - but this is a powerful and important work, as well as a technically impressive one. Based on Doris Pilkington's memoir of her own mother, Molly, Rabbit-Proof Fence follows three Aboriginal girls who are taken from their families in the 1930s and put in a Christian mission far from home. Molly (Everlyn Sampi), her sister Daisy (Tianna Sanbury), and their cousin, Gracie (Laura Monaghan), flee their captors and walk the 1,500 miles back to their outback village, guided by the rabbit-proof fence that bisects the continent. Meanwhile, the government's chief protector of Aboriginies, A.O. Neville (Kenneth Branagh), strives to track the girls down and bring them back into custody. Noyce has drawn remarkable work from his youngest performers, Sampi in particular. Molly is no motherless waif, but a tough, solemn, implacable fighter - an action heroine, in effect, who out-smarts her pursuers with sheer single-minded determination. It's Branagh's Neville, however, who is the most ambiguous and interesting character - monstrously misguided, perhaps, but apparently genuine in his desire to protect his country's indigenous people. Having concluded that Aboriginal racial characteristics will always limit achievement and inclusion, he designs a policy intended to breed out the Aboriginal bloodline, via enforced miscegenation. Unfortunately, Noyce and his cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, can't seem to give Branagh's office-bound scenes the resonance of the outdoor sequences. While the outback is shot with astounding artistry - a swooping camera taking in parched vistas, skeletal trees, and rich colours, against a brooding score by Peter Gabriel - Branagh's scenes feel stagey and constricted. Perhaps Noyce wanted to contrast the repression of the white Europeans with the Aboriginal affinity for nature and space; but the effect is an uneven tone. Flawed; but profoundly and unusually affecting. Evening Times The great American broadcaster Edward R. Murrow once said that if television did not educate as well as entertain then it was nothing more than a box of tubes and wires. So it is with cinema. The greatest art form of the 20th century is designed for mass entertainment but it also has a responsibility, where appropriate, to educate as well. Rabbit-Proof Fence fulfils both functions admirably. This is a story which is at once inspiring and shocking; inspiring because of what it says about sheer determination, shocking because it is absolutely true. In the 1920s the Australian government passed a law which effectively made all aborigines wards of the state. They could do nothing - not even buy a pair shoes - without permission of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. This department relentlessly and remorselessly carried out a policy of effective ethnic cleansing. It believed that the way to deal with increasing numbers of mixed race children was simply to breed the Aboriginal blood out of them. Children were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to settlement camps where they would be trained as domestic servants. This film is the story of three such children. In 1931 three young girls were torn away from their mother and transported 1200 miles to a settlement camp at Moore River. The oldest girl, Molly, was determined not to conform and quickly organised the other two girls into an escape party and headed for home. Their only guide was a rabbit-proof fence - an ambitious project to protect Australian farmland from rodents - which ran from Moore River to their home at Jigalong. For nine weeks the girls followed the fence in the hope that it would reunite them with their family. It is a staggering story of determination and human endeavour. But what is so effective is the way in which the story is told. Director Phillip Noyce refuses to be sentimental. The film unfolds in an unadorned manner, throwing the attention where it belongs, on the courage involved. The performances are very good. Kenneth Branagh is fine as Neville the ultimate detached bureaucrat while young Everlyn Sampi is remarkable in her debut performance as Molly. Well worth seeing, but take a hankie. The Sun Now I’m the first to admit that dear old Kenneth Branagh deserved to be punished after inflicting some decidedly dodgy movies on us a while back. But surely transporting him to Australia was a bit strong?
Still, it seems to have done the trick because Rabbit-Proof Fence is not only one of the most powerful, moving dramas of recent months but Ken’s best big screen role for years. The movie is a true story set in 1931 in Western Australia, a period when young half-caste children were taken from their Aborigine mothers and sent to prison-like camps to be trained as servants for the whites. Three little girls are among those snatched by the authorities and transported to a camp 1,500 miles from their families. But they break out and begin an epic journey on foot back towards their home, following the line of a vast fence that stretches across the wilderness and is designed to keep rabbits off farm land. The girls must not only survive the harsh terrain but avoid capture by the Chief Protector of Aborigines, Mr Neville (Branagh) – the man behind the shocking policy. Rabbit-Proof Fence is an emotional story that will have the most world-weary eye blinking back a tear. The three girls (Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury and Laura Monaghan) give wonderfully touching, natural performances. The excellent Branagh makes a tough role look easy. It’s the character’s normality that makes his views so chilling. The chase between the girls and the Aborigine tracker who is put on their trail by Neville makes gripping cinema. This is quality film-making. And anyone who tells you otherwise is hare-brained. HOT OR ROT: A moving tale - and it's the s-truth, mate. Source: The Sun Newcastle Evening Chronicle At a time when scenes of racial disharmony and hatred continue to clutter our televisions and newspapers, Rabbit-Proof Fence is a stark reminder of one of the most shameful periods in Australia's recent history. The film is set during the 30s, an era of political and social unrest when Aborigine children were forcibly taken from their parents and placed with white families who could apparently give the little ones a life and a future beyond their wildest dreams. Mixed-race children, so-called "half-castes", were not so fortunate. They were moved to remote detention centres where they could be monitored and assessed, and hopefully "purified" so as to be suitable for re-introduction to Australian society. Rabbit-Proof Fence tells the harrowing yet life-affirming true story of Molly (Sampi), Daisy (Sansbury) and Gracie (Monaghan), three little girls who were wrenched from their mothers, then taken some 1,500 miles away to the Moore River Native Settlement. There, the children were scrutinised by nurses and doctors, and by the founder of the scheme, the infamous AO Neville (Branagh), who believed segregation was the only way to ensure the survival of Australian society. In the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, Molly, Daisy and Gracie escaped from their captors and walked all the way home, through the hundreds of miles of desert with only their love for their mothers to keep them going. The rabbit-proof fence, which stretched throughout the Outback, provided the girls with a useful guide from one state to the next. Director Phillip Noyce has no need to embellish the story with flashy visuals or camerawork: Molly, Daisy and Gracie's astonishing journey speaks for itself. Inhospitable as they may be, the arid Australian desertscapes provide the film with a picturesque backdrop. The young cast are eminently watchable, particularly Sampi as the eldest of the girls, who tries to keep the trio together in the face of terrible dangers and personal sacrifice. The ending packs an almighty emotional punch, likely to inspire anger and tears in equal measure. One hour 33 mins Drama. Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan, Kenneth Branagh, David Gulpililk, Ningali Lawford, Myarn Lawford, Roy Billing. No swearing, No sex, Violence Source: Newcastle Evening Chronicle Eastern Daily Press Trevor Heaton, EDP What's On Editor 8 November, 2002 - Rabbit-Proof Fence is a critically-acclaimed true story set in the Australian outback in the 1930s, and which stars Kevin Branagh. Incredible as it may seem nowadays, there were actually laws in those days ordering “half-caste” Aboriginal children to be forcibly taken from their families and trained as servants or labourers. Three youngsters – played by Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury and Laura Monaghan – escape from one of these institutions and head 1500 miles back home. Branagh plays the strangely-named Chief Protector of the Aborigines, whose mission seems exactly the opposite. The story has been hailed as a well-made and very moving account of a hidden chapter in Australia's history. All this and a Peter Gabriel soundtrack too. Source: Eastern Daily Press Jigsaw Lounge Rating: 5/10 by Neil Young 20 October, 2002 - “Why is Peter Gabriel always following us?” asked Mark E Smith on The Fall’s ‘A Past Gone Mad’ (from 1992’s The Infotainment Scan LP.) It’s a sentiment which the three young heroines of Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence would be forgiven for sharing: not only must they trek 1,500 miles across the merciless Australian outback – escaping a harsh detention-camp in search of the relatives from whom they’ve been so cruelly snatched by the government – but their every weary step is accompanied by Gabriel’s grating, incessantly “ethnic” instrumental soundtrack. It’s typical of a film which isn’t content simply to tell its remarkable story straight, instead preferring to slightly amp up the sentiment in a manipulative fashion that’s as coarsening as it is counterproductive. Anyone prone to over-estimating the impact of a cinematographer upon a movie, for instance, should contrast the work done by Christopher Doyle here with his radical, eye-popping work for Asian directors like Wong Kar-Wai. Noyce channels Doyle’s protean skills into a depressingly familiar series of images – culminating in a gloopy slow-motion climax in which the characters are reduced to silhouettes against the achingly picturesque down-under sunset and Gabriel goes into overdrive. Underneath it all, however, lies a fine, professional script (Christine Olsen adapted the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara, daughter of one of the trekking trio) which dramatises, in brisk, no-nonsense terms, a shameful episode of Australian history that encapsulates decades of prejudicial treatment endured by the Aboriginal peoples. Until 1970 it was official government policy to remove fair-skinned ‘half-caste’ children from Aboriginal homes and transplant them to white families, with the intention of ‘breeding out’ Aboriginal characteristics and thus preventing the creation of what the operation’s supervisor A O Neville (a clipped Kenneth Branagh, sans upper lip) refers to as “an unwanted third race.” This is the fate suffered in 1931 by sisters Molly (Everlyn Sampi) and Daisy Craig (Tianna Sansbury) and their cousin Gracie Fields (Laura Monaghan). Almost immediately absconding from the strict camp where they’re held in preparation for their new ‘homes’, they follow the continent-straddling rabbit-proof fence that will eventually lead them all the way back to their family. But expert tracker Moodoo (David Gulpilil) is soon dispatched in hot pursuit… In its attempts to please as wide an audience as possible, Rabbit-Proof Fence takes some dubious decisions – not least having the three girls converse among themselves in English, when it’s been established early on that the aborigines universally prefer to speak in their own (government-repressed) tongue. This results in some occasional awkwardness in the youngsters’ line-delivery, but Sampi and co nevertheless manage to convincingly convey the girls’ spirit and resourcefulness – even if at times the film is rathe too happy to present them as mournful moppets in physical extremis. Just as Molly is careful to avoid leaving any sign of the girls’ progress, meanwhile, Noyce is equally punctilious to erase any directorial imprint on his movie – this is a slick, old-fashioned filming of material which could perhaps have benefited from a few rougher edges. (Rabbit-Proof Fence seen 13th October, Ster Century Leeds: Leeds Film Festival closing gala. The Quiet American seen 4th October, Odeon Mansfield) The Daily Mirror
Jonathan Ross 11 August 2002 - I'LL own up to the fact that when I was told I was going review an Australian film based on a true story about kidnapped aborigine children starring Kenneth Branagh, I felt a little sorry for myself. All the fun things I could be doing with that time - like playing tennis, tidying up my CD collection or dealing with the build up of hard skin on my big toes - seemed more attractive than usual. But I duly went along... and was delighted. Rabbit-Proof Fence is the story of Molly Craig, a young aborigine who leads her sister and cousin in a remarkable escape from a mission station - a government institution set up as part of a policy to train Aboriginal children as domestic workers and integrate them into white society. Showing determination and courage, Molly guides the other girls on their 1,500-mile journey, staying one step ahead of the authorities as they follow the fence - a remarkable barrier set up to protect farmland from the indigenous rabbit population - through the Outback in the hope that it will lead them home. Spectacular photography, excellent performances and a powerful story make this one of the year's best films. The kids - Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan and especially Everlyn Sampi as Molly - are superb, as is Branagh as Neville, the Chief Protector of Aborigines. The actor wonderfully captures the fanaticism behind Neville's beliefs. But the real star is director Phillip Noyce, who not only brings out such moving performances from his young actors but manages the tone of the film with such skill that you never feel you are being manipulated and can respond to the moving story and beautiful images as you wish. Marvellous and memorable. Source: The Daily Mirror The Times By James Cristopher 7 November, 2002 - The first offerings in this year's London Film Festival send our correspondent home a worried man Phillip Noyce’s latest film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, takes the lid off a scandal that has rocked Australia to its redneck roots. Between 1910 and 1970, apparently, it was government policy to remove mixed-race Aboriginal children from their parents in order to breed the colour out of them. Few indigenous films have created such a powerful stink as this true-life epic about three mixed-race girls who walked 1,200 miles (2,000 km)home after being “stolen” from their mothers in the 1930s. According to the Chief Protector of Aborigines (Kenneth Branagh), there is no room for “an unwanted third race”. Molly (Everlyn Sampi), her younger sister Daisy (Tianna Sansbury) and their cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan) are earmarked for “purification”. The terrible wrenching departure from their homes is all over in a splash of dust and a flurry of Jeep wheels, as it must have been for thousands of Aboriginal children forcibly ripped from their families and relocated to work camps and orphanages. “In spite of himself the native must be helped,” sighs Branagh’s A.O. Neville with a wry smile and a small shrug. He is explaining official policy to a group of narcoleptic, half-dead, blue-stockinged matrons at a slide-show in Perth. Neville is that most dangerous of enthusiasts: an idealist who believes people must be bleached by careful management of their marital unions. The queasy point of this genetic insanity doesn’t need labouring. How these puny waifs find their way home after escaping the orphanage and following a rabbit-proof fence that once bisected the continent from north to south is the moving heart of the story. It’s an odyssey of Shackleton-like endurance and Fagin-like guile. Hunted by the police, state troopers and trackers, the girls manage to stay two plods ahead, staggering across the shimmering scrubland and parched deserts like victims of a Benetton ad campaign. It’s impossible not to be moved by their pluck. Chris Doyle’s fantastic camerawork conjures iconic images of vulnerability and staggering beauty from the elemental landscape. Peter Gabriel provides a rousing score. Rabbit-Proof Fence opens tomorrow Source: The Times The Daily Telegraph
26 October 2002 - A recreation of the odyssey undertaken by three of the 'stolen generation' of Aboriginal children is visually stunning - and utterly heartbreaking, says Sukhdev Sandhu Too much historical context can squeeze the life out of a film. It detracts from the action, and suggests that imagination is less important than the process of documentation. Phillip Noyce's new film threatens to start off that way when it announces: "The 1931 Aborigines Act controlled their lives in every way." But it's a false alarm. Rabbit-Proof Fence turns out to be a deeply moving and visually compelling movie that will leave you teary, outraged and emotionally drained. And so it should. The film chronicles the lives of three of Australia's "stolen generation", those mixed-race children, who, between 1910 and 1971, were seized from their Aboriginal parents and transported to resettlement camps to be trained as domestic servants. It's based on the memoirs of Doris Pilkington Garimara, daughter of Molly (played by Everlyn Sampi), a 14-year-old girl who escaped from one of the camps with her younger sister (Tianna Sansbury) and her cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan) and trekked more than 1,500 miles across the Western Australian outback to find their mother. Outlined in this way, it's hard not to see the film as a kind of colonial sci-fi, a true-life alien abduction. After a brutal and traumatic scene in which the children are wrenched from their mother in Jigalong, we see them embark upon a slave passage during which they're removed to foreign territory at Moore River, shoved in new cabin quarters, have their hair dekinked, and are forced to learn a new language and to offer up their bodies to terse inspectors. Their horror is mute and comprehensive. As their mother sings out back in Jigalong, the words of the anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass spring to mind: "The songs of the slave represent the sorrows, rather than the joys, of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears." The rabbit-proof fence of the title refers to the huge fence that bisected Australia and was meant to protect civilisation from wilderness. That's what A O Neville, the colonial administrator in charge of resettlement policy, thinks he's doing, too. He says he wants to "breed out the colour", to "help the native". Actually, he's a eugenicist wearing the cloak of Christian paternalism, but it's a credit to Kenneth Branagh's finely modulated performance that he never comes across as an ogre, and is shown as a victim as much as an agent of the malign racial taxonomies of the period. The fence also connects Moore River to Jigalong and so serves as a guide and lifeline for the children. Wandering through the wilderness for nine sweltering weeks they look like Victorian Barnardo's orphans, a three-headed hydra, juvenile Christs. Their plimsolls are worn out, their bodies as skeletal as starving cattle. All the time they are being tracked, not least by a horse-backed Aborigine called Moodoo (David Gulpilil), a fascinatingly ambiguous figure whose own daughter was housed at the resettlement camp. In a film such as this, the journey itself, rather than any altercations or fights, becomes the central drama. Landscapes, too, are important. Brilliantly shot by Christopher Doyle, best known for his work with Wong Kar-Wai and on Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho, the parched desert becomes as mutable as the changing emotions of the girls who travel across it: sometimes it looks like a lunar photo, at others a verdant paradise, a ruined ancient kingdom, a bleached-out Arctic hell. The authorities scan maps and approach it in technocratic terms, but the girls, though they often get lost, have a more tactile, instinctive understanding of its cruel logic. They're attentive to each sound, the buzzard cawings and the nocturnal hisses and rattles. Epic films such as Rabbit-Proof Fence need to be careful not to lose their political specificity while celebrating a resourcefulness and desire for freedom that is undoubtedly universal. Noyce has succeeded so powerfully that governments in Australia, still blind to the scale and depth of the suffering they have inflicted on their Aboriginal populations, have spent millions of dollars urging audiences to boycott the movie. Fortunately, their efforts have been in vain and Rabbit-Proof Fence has become a huge box-office hit in Australia. This film - like the hardy souls whose lives it honours - will not be silenced. Source: The Daily Telegraph The Guardian 8 November, 2002 - A chillingly arrogant quasi-eugenic experiment, carried out in the name of Her Majesty the Queen until the early 1970s, is what is denounced by this heartfelt, though somewhat heavy-footed movie. The scandal is appalling enough on its own terms for the movie to carry its audience along, even it didn't have exceptionally strong performances from the three young stars: Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury and Laura Monaghan. Three such children escape from the camp and walk 1,500 miles back home across featureless scrub, taking as their path the giant rabbit-proof fence which stretches from coast to coast, and followed by the Aborigine tracker, Moodoo (a great performance from David Gulpilil), the enigmatic figure of whom we will come to be afraid as much as Butch and Sundance feared their pursuers. Their epic journey is regularly intercut, slightly laboriously, with the fulminations of Mr Neville, the colonial official prosecuting this policy, played by Kenneth Branagh. He is a tight-lipped figure who does not reveal any great psychological complexity. Neville is supposed to be "well-meaning", a quality detectable in the sole fact that he is being played by Branagh, but the children's achievement in escaping does not appear to make him waver one iota. Australian-born director Phillip Noyce (responsible for big commercial work such as The Bone Collector, Patriot Games, Dead Calm and the forthcoming The Quiet American) does an honest and compassionate job, and the movie is beautifully shot by cinematographer Christopher Doyle, but perhaps partly as a result of his fidelity to the true-life source material, there is not much dramatic light and shade. It is a long, slow slog back home, and by the end, we begin to feel the exhaustion in the auditorium, too. There's no denying the power of the abduction scenes at the beginning though: unbearably cruel and fiercely affecting. Source: The Guardian The Independent By Anthony Quinn 8 November 2002 - I couldn't stop thinking of those repeated lines of Robert Frost: "And miles to go before I sleep/ And miles to go before I sleep," while the odyssey of Rabbit-Proof Fence unfolded. Set in Western Australia in 1931, the film is based on the true-life story of three part-Aboriginal girls who escaped from a resettlement mission and walked across miles and miles of wild terrain – 1,500 of them, in fact – to get back to their family. See it and you'll not moan about the daily commute ever again. The film also provides a history lesson about Australia's "stolen generations". In the first half of the 20th century, it was official policy to relocate mixed-race Aboriginal children and educate them in the ways of the white Christian. Institutionalised kidnapping, in other words, though certain government bureaucrats saw it as genetic amelioration. A O Neville (Kenneth Branagh), the appointed "Chief Protector" of Aborigines in Western Australia, believes that the solution to the "coloured problem" is to breed out the Aboriginal race altogether: "If only they could understand what we are trying to do for them," he sighs. The reality of this social engineering is harrowingly illustrated when Neville authorises the removal of three Aboriginal girls, 14-year-old Molly (Everlyn Sampi), her eight-year-old sister Daisy (Tianna Sansbury) and their 10-year-old cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan). A local constable arrives at their home in Jigalong and physically wrests the girls out of their mothers' arms, protesting over their piteous laments that he is simply carrying out the law. The girls are taken 1,200 miles south to Moore River Native Settlement, where the children are housed in dormitories and forbidden to speak their native language. Neville – "Mr Devil", as he is unaffectionately known – pays occasional visits to inspect the skin tone of various children: those of a lighter hue are considered to be more intelligent and therefore candidates for school. Molly is one of those rejected by Neville, an irony, as it turns out, for she proves to be one of the smartest and most determined charges the Moore River mission has ever taken under its wing. Pining for her mother, she decides to head back home, taking Daisy and Gracie with her – and thus begins one of the most remarkable footslogs of modern times. Dressed in a ragged shift and plimsolls, Molly has only the vaguest idea of heading north; then a kindly farmer's wife happens to mention the rabbit-proof fence not far away, and thus presents a vital clue to orientation. The fence, built to keep the rabbits off pasture land, bisects the country north to south, and Molly knows that following it will, eventually, take them home. The film is directed by Phillip Noyce, who once spearheaded the new Australian cinema with spiky, intelligent movies such as Newsfront and Heatwave. His career over the past 10 years, however, spent as a hired gun shooting Hollywood rubbish (The Saint, The Bone Collector), inclined one to think he'd given up making films that meant anything. A pleasure to be proved wrong: there is proper confidence in this picture, not least because Noyce has recruited some brilliant technicians. His cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, films the polychromatic Australian landscape quite stunningly, modulating between parched browns, grey-greens, green on black, even black on black, with a canopy of bleached denim sky stretching out to infinity. Silhouettes shimmer against a heat haze, the sun a fireball on the horizon – and miles to go before they sleep. Craig Carter's sound design also contributes vitally to the film's texture, a busily reverberant backdrop of cicadas, birdsong, animal ululations, wind and rain, which Peter Gabriel's music has synthesised into notes: I'm not sure how he did this (the soundtrack took him nine months) but the results are extraordinary. Noyce has also given his child actors room to develop naturalistic performances, determined not to let any stage-school cutes milk the pathos. Everlyn Sampi's mixture of self-possession and wit will be hard to forget. Branagh seems to save his best for villains: his thin-lipped Heydrich in the Wannsee Conference movie Conspiracy earlier this year was a revelation, and his Neville, while hardly in the same order of infamy, presents a credible combination of monster and missionary. The most interesting character of all is Moodoo (David Gulpilil), the Aborigine tracker hired by the mission to recapture fugitive children. He is a man caught between two cultures, paid by the whites to help enslave his own people yet helpless to leave their employ – his own daughter is an inmate at Moore River. On detecting Molly's latest attempt to cover her tracks, Moodoo says: "Pretty clever, that girl – she wants to go home." These are the only words he utters in the whole movie. Even those words are unnecessary: all we need to see is his ghost of a smile, acknowledging his quarry as someone wily and resourceful as himself. Moodoo's conflicted nature bears traces of Fred Schepisi's 1978 film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, about a young half-Aborigine who actually buys into the white man's promise of self-betterment: Jimmie marries a white farm girl so that, as Mr Neville ordained, his children will be only a quarter black, but, frustrated by bigotry and hatred, he eventually explodes into violence. It's a great film; much greater, I think, than Rabbit-Proof Fence, which in Christine Olsen's screenplay brings our feelings of historical indignation quickly to the boil. Jimmie dramatises the Aboriginal plight in a morally troubling way. Here, the whites' relocation of the Aborigines is instantly damned as the grotesque cultural mischief that it is, leaving us with nothing to ponder but the girls' brave walk home. But see Rabbit-Proof Fence in any event, because it has real beauty and feeling. That it is also one of few Australian films ever to deal with the Aborigines' disappearance tells its own story. Source:The Independent Vazdot blog | Rants from Japan February 09, 2003 - I saw the movie, "Rabbit Proof Fence," yesterday in Ginza and the movie is worth seeing in a movie house. The Japanese name for this movie is "???1500???" (trans. 1500 mile barefoot walk). This won't be a review of the movie (great) nor of the movie house (poor). From the Australia Web, "In 1931, three Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff and set off on a trek across the Outback." I haven't the writing talents to do the movie the justice it deserves with a review but here is a good synopsis of the movie. The story deserves an A+ and the acting by all (especially the three girls playing the lead role of the Aboriginal girls of the movie) brought tears to my eyes (that would translate to A+++++++). I will remark on the attempted (?) culture assimilation of the Australian government of the Aboriginal of Australia. Must be something in the North European blood, I know it's very prevalent in the American blood. Damn, I did it, I was trying to get more apolitical. Trying not to let this become some political blog filled with dry humorless dialog or is it too late? Ok to get away from politics and back to this great movie. I saw this movie in the theater Cine Switch which I do not recommend (uncomfortable is a word that comes to mind), it is the only theater in Tokyo playing the movie. I feel the movie was successful in portraying the strength and courage needed for independence from a system with evil intentions. Maybe we all need to learn to say no to evil systems.
Jerusalem Post By Hannah Brown 14 October, 2002 - Although its title may make Rabbit-Proof Fence sound like a Disney cartoon, it's a fascinating and moving look at a bizarre chapter of history that most of us have never heard of: the inhumane practice of kidnapping half-white Aboriginal children in Australia, separating them from their mothers for life and raising them to be farm workers and domestic servants. It avoids TV-movie-of-the-week preachiness by focusing on the awe-inspiring true story of one girl, Molly Craig (Everlyn Sampi), who, in 1931, at the age of 14, rebelled against her captors and ran away from the institution to which she had been taken, along with her younger sister and her cousin. She led them on a 2,400-kilometer journey home, using the rabbit-proof fence - which ran thousands of kilometers and was built to keep rabbits out of farmland - to guide her. This fence is a symbol throughout the movie, both of the way home, but also of the civilization that has stepped in to separate between mother and child. If this review were limited to two words, they would be: See it. There are so few movies today that are heartfelt, that deal in genuine, unforced sentiment and that examine issues that are not numbingly familiar. Yes, this film is about racism, hardly a new topic in movies today, but this is a kind of racism we've rarely seen portrayed on screen, a grotesque kind of falsely benevolent and pseudo-scientific racism. In the early 20th century, Australian authorities became concerned that more and more children were being born as the result of sexual relationships between white male workers and Aboriginal women and decided - for a complex set of reasons - that these children should be raised outside of the black community (a practice that continued until the early Seventies). No one was more enthusiastic about carrying out the policy than A.O. Neville (Kenneth Branagh, perfect as a soft-spoken bureaucrat) in Western Australia. Director Phillip Noyce, an Australian who made good with the thriller Dead Calm (1989) and moved on to big-budget Hollywood fare like Clear and Present Danger (1994) starring Harrison Ford, keeps the story from being too one-sided by allowing Neville to state his case clearly and passionately, however wrong-headed it may seem to us. And Neville develops a more-than-grudging respect for Molly as he has her pursued for months by police. "These people may have Neolithic tools, but they don't have Neolithic minds!" he exclaims at one point. The film has a freshness that is hard to put into words. One source of it is Sampi's performance. An untrained actress making her debut here, she is utterly natural and embodies Molly's spirit beautifully. You can believe she is stronger, tougher, and smarter than everyone else around her (not to mention more beautiful). Tianna Sansbury as her younger sister Daisy and Laura Monaghan as her cousin Grace are also very affecting. David Gulpilil, probably the best known Aboriginal actor, brings conviction and authority to the role of Moodoo, the master-tracker sent by the government to find the girls, who becomes increasingly conflicted about his pursuit of them. Anyone who saw him in Nicholas Roeg's haunting 1970 film Walkabout will never forget his performance there and it is good to see him again here. Another source of this vividness comes from the landscapes, which are both lush and barren. They are so beautifully photographed they really come to life, as if they are a character in the film, which was clearly Noyce's intention, because, pretentious as this may sound, in a certain way, this is a film about the soul of Australia. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle is world famous, having recently won multiple awards for his work on Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love. The people the girls meet on their travels represent a cross section of Australia, and the low-key storytelling when they are on the road is one of the pleasures of the film. The haunting score is by Peter Gabriel. The pitfall that Noyce and screenwriter Christine Olsen face here is a certain built-in predictability, but they overcome this in several ways. First, they trust their story and their cast enough to keep everything simple. Second, they bring in the real Molly Craig, now in her eighties, to narrate the story and to appear on camera at the end to tell a little about her life as an adult. Although obviously this film is a fictionalized version of her life (it was based on a book by her daughter, published in 1996), it has a near-documentary feel, and this adds to it. I hesitate to use this tired line, but if you see only one film this year, see Rabbit-Proof Fence. Source: Jerusalem Post || click to go to the top of this page
|
a new |
|
