I going to go out on a limb and guess that Rabbit-Proof Fence, the harrowing new film by Australian director Phillip Noyce, is the most emotionally absorbing film experience I've had this year. A story of children in danger, families torn asunder and a shockingly misguided governmental program designed to enslave the "half-caste" Aboriginal children of Australia, Rabbit-Proof Fence is a true story of courage and hope that rivals a film like Schindler's List in its outcry of social and human miscarriages of justice. It's that good.
Set in 1931, the film tells the terrifying true story of three half-white Aboriginal girls who were forcibly removed from their home and tribe in Jigalong, and transferred to a child slave camp some 1500 miles away at Moore River, to be re-programmed and trained as domestic servants to whites, a formal process mandated by government orders.
Molly, the oldest sister, hatches an escape with her younger sister and cousin in tow, across the dangerous and unforgiving Australian terrain, following a rabbit-proof fence along the distance of the continent. Pursued by the "Chief Protector of Aborigines," A.O. Neville (or Mr. Devil, as the children refer to him), as well as a cunning tracker named David Moodoo, they face incredible danger and odds as they make their way across a 1500-mile trek in their effort to return home.
It goes without saying that material like this - children in danger and angering racial injustice - has built-in dramatic effect. But the innovative Noyce brings his signature action film breathlessness to the film, guided by the moving-camera of ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle, the intense and electronic score by Peter Gabriel, and the harsh beauty of the Australian countryside. He also elicits heartrending performances by a group of relative unknowns who vigorously invest the Aborigines with heart and complexity. Noyce provides the film with a ferocious energy that mixes so well with the human story - this is no tame drama of injustice - that in his hands, it becomes an all-out, jarringly told suspense story.
The three young actresses are completely believable in their plight, particularly the world-wise perspective supplied by a young actress of unusual maturity, named Evelyn Sampi. As Molly, the eldest, the amateur actress bravely and unfailingly taps into a powerful instinct of responsibility for the younger girls, never once flinching or looking back on the journey. Sampi conveys an aura of matter-of-factness and cautious protectiveness in Molly that it's easy to see how the other girls would actually follow her lead for hundreds of miles, never looking back. Her release at journey's end is a special scene of subtle acting that is immensely satisfying.
Kenneth Branagh has a very difficult role, as "Mr. Devil," that could have fallen into a simple, two-dimensional villain. But his clear-headed if radically misguided intentions - that, "In spite of himself, the native must be helped," combined with some appalling notions about eliminating mixed blood through future breeding, come off as the misguided beliefs of a man who is clearly rational and intelligent, but unable to see the forest through the trees when it comes to moral truth and human decency.
In a conversation after the film, director Noyce discussed the sad politics behind the "Stolen Generations" as they've come to be known in Australia, and how the citizens of the country either didn't know or turned a blind eye to the practice for forty some odd years. Today, families who were torn apart have never reunited, many stolen children re-programmed to go on to different lives, families have generational holes and irreparable damage has been done to the Aborigines, all in an effort to "help" them.
Rabbit-Proof Fence is a film of immense power, sadness and inspiration. It's the best film of Noyce's career, and one of the very best films of 2002.
Soundtrack