RABBIT-PROOF FENCE
Released: February 4, 2002
Australian director Phillip Noyce started out with low budget but good Aussie productions before moving to Hollywood and making "Dead Calm" with Sam Neill, Billy Zane and Nicole Kidman in 1989. That was a pretty good movie. What followed were just plain silly formula pics like "Patriot Games" and the just plain gawd-awful "Sliver", starring Sharon Stone. Thankfully, Noyce "pulled a Peter Jackson" and returned to his homeland to create a work of strong quality and redeeming himself in the process. Showing just another one of the horrible things white people have done to other cultures, "Rabbit-Proof Fence" is the true story of what actually went on in Australia from the earliest parts of the last century well into my own lifetime. Ironically enough, the movie is about seeking to break the spirits of native Aboriginals due to something white men in fact propagated in the first place. The year is 1931, and new Australian law mandates that all "half-caste" - half Caucasian, half Aboriginal - children were to be forcibly removed from their families, and sent, under strict orders from the chief "protector" of the Aborigines, A.O. Neville (Kenneth Branagh), to far away settlements in order to keep the land white and proud. For 14 year-old Molly Craig (Everlyn Sampi), and her two younger sisters Daisy (Tianna Sansbury) and Gracie (Laura Mongahan), this new way of life will not do. The three escape from their western Australian settlement, and make an arduous 2,400 kilometer journey, on foot, back to their home to reunite with their mother. Their guide is a rabbit-proof fence, the longest in the world. The fence is meant to keep the rabbits out of the farmlands of the country, but now it serves as a wire mesh compass for Molly as she tries to navigate the way back. The film ends with a glimpse of two of the real life survivors, smiling at the camera. But you can see the look in their eyes, that of scarred and still healing little girls... It's a truly touching and heartbreaking tale that serves to remind us of how ugly humans as a species can be to one another. Branagh is great as the literal personification of evil but the stars of this movie are the three girls, Sampi, Sansbury and Mongahan. Easily one of the best films of 2002, this is a movie that shows both the worst and the best of people. It's also Phillip Noyce doing the kind of film he should have been doing instead of stupid Sharon Stone / Billy Baldwin thrillers like "Sliver". Rent "Dead Calm" and "Rabbit-Proof Fence" - two good films by a talented director made over a decade apart, separated by some of the least memorable pap you will ever (hopefully not) see.
94 Minutes
Miramax/Buena Vista