Rabbit-Proof Fence

"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.

Reviewed by Nicci Tucker