The Reel Critic

Author: Matthew Clark

The three girls are beautiful - the courageous, defiant, yet innocent beauty of youth. The Australian landscape is blistering yet sustaining. Hot, powdery dust coats faces and the camera lens. I should have loved it, this story of triumph and tragedy, but "Rabbit Proof Fence" was as slow as the girls plodding through the desert.

The rabbit proof fence literally ties the country together. Running its entire length, the fence was built to keep the "rabbits out and the cattle in." The Australian government of the 1930s likens the "problem" of "Half-castes" - people of half aboriginal half English-Australian descent - to the problem of rabbits. Something has to be done. Mr. Neville, the devil, is running a program that will breed the aboriginal blood from half-castes one generation at a time. Slowly, the inferiors will be bred out. The irony of Mr. Neville's every utterance reminds us how deeply misinformed we can be. He speaks of how he is just helping the natives, "protecting them from themselves," and we look at Mr. Neville and hope we can protect ourselves from our own ignorance. The sincerity of his misguided endeavor reminds us of how dangerous we can be to ourselves. Under the Australian policy, children are kidnapped and taken to the Moore River Native Settlement where they are instructed in the ways of civilized Australians by nuns in divine white dresses.

"Rabbit Proof Fence" tells the story of three girls, 14-year old Molly, Daisy, who is eight years old and 10-year old Gracie, yanked from their screaming mother's arms and shipped in a cage to the Settlement. Molly is the most defiant and clearly the leader of the three. Before Moore River we see her stalking and capturing huge lizards to eat. As rain clouds brew and thunder echoes she leads them into the most lush stand of trees they will see for their entire 1,200 mile return to the small village of Jigolong.

The truth of the story is what kept me engaged in this movie. It is a terrible bit of history - an amazing story of survival. There is a shot of the real Molly and Daisy, colorful women, bent over walking sticks at the end of the movie that forces the reality of the story upon the spectator.

Despite the hope and the history, "Rabbit Proof Fence" moves slowly and predictably. I was a bit disgusted by what seemed to be a few Hollywood-inspired additions, one of which we see flying overhead in the Jigolog. The "spirit bird" appears again (of course) just as we are starting to lose hope of the girls' survival. I appreciate the attempt at capturing some of the "spirit" of the aboriginal tradition, but that bird was so clichÈd that it lost all its meaning.

Following as straight a course as the rabbit proof fence, the movie had no real twists. It is a movie of close calls. The viewer knows the "calls" will only be "close" and so the fear and suspense surrounding the possibility of danger is lost. With evil always close on the heels of the three girls, they barely manage to outfox (but always do) the dark weathered face of the aboriginal tracker. Wouldn't you know that even when starvation seems eminent strangers offer fresh kangaroo leg to the women. People also offer shelter and direction, always in the nick of time. It felt very hokey and romanticized, like a movie I've seen a thousand times before.