RABBIT-PROOF FENCE
Australia, 2002, 95 minutes, Colour.
Kenneth Branagh, David Gulpilil, Jason Clarke,
Deborah Mailman, Roy Billing, Garry McDonald?, Lorna Lesley, Andrew S. Gilbert.
Directed by Philip Noyce.
One of the ways of growing in understanding of Australian aborigines is to look at aboriginal stories on screen. In 2002, four films telling aboriginal stories were released. The most high profile was Phillip Noyce's Rabbit Proof Fence. Rolf De Heer made The Tracker. Paul Goldman made Australian Rules and indigenous director, Ivan Sen, won awards at the Berlin Film Festival with Beneath the Clouds.
Rabbit Proof Fence is a story of the Stolen Generation. In 1930, three young girls (two of whom, by now in their 80s, appear at the end of the film to add some heart-rending detail of how their story happened all over again with the next generation) escaped from a settlement presided over by a government official who had 'protective' rights over all aborigines in Western Australia. They returned home in a months' long trek along the fence erected to keep out rabbits.
The context of the film is that the white culture exhibited a more extraverted involvement in the management of empire. The aboriginal culture was more interior, more focussed on tradition, myths and lore. The white culture was action-oriented and governed by bureaucratic detail while the aboriginal culture was more perceptive, in some ways more live and let live, although Molly, the young leader of the three girls, was also action-oriented and quite decisive in her ways.
The world of Mr Neville, the official 'Protector', played with earnest righteousness that manifested itself in an unswerving paternalism by Kenneth Branagh, is one of clear (and unquestioned) principles. These 'objective' criteria included such policies as the lighter the skin, the more clever the child, which he alone could authoritatively determine. He quotes mathematical statistics to explain how their aboriginal blood can be 'bred out of them'. This is the logic of supremacy. Mr Neville (whom the children nickname 'Mr Devil') does appreciate that he does not understand the aboriginal mind: 'they may have neolithic tools but they do not have neolithic minds'. "The natives must be helped.' He is outwitted by Molly's combination of doggedness and ingenuity as she takes the children on their epic walk, surviving off the land, making friends along the way and good luck. Mr Neville laments, 'If only they would understand', 'My plans are in jeopardy'.
For the girls, the shock of their being abducted from their desert home, separated from their mothers and their families, highlights the more subjective world in which they live. It is a world of love and relationships that can make no sense of their being taken to the custody of the institution, let alone the minutiae of the rubrics for orderly living there. Their language is referred to by the nurses as 'That Jabber'. The only reality for them is HOME. This is the reality expressed in the voiceover comments and in the statements by the two surviving sisters at the end of the film.
All the characters live in a strongly concrete world. Mr Neville, his secretary and the home officials live in a world of rules and regulations, of forms, of budget and cost preoccupations. The externals of Mr Neville's office are neat and tidy. Everything is orderly as the criteria are scrupulously applied. Duty means responsibility.
This contrasts with the world of Molly and the girls. Their senses of seeing and hearing are acute. They are able to elude the aboriginal tracker pursuing them by moving into the water, by disguising their tracks. Their sense of traditional lore helps them to food, to follow the sun, to work out where the rabbit proof fence might be so that they can follow it home.
The apology to the Stolen Generation issue that has dogged Australian society and politics since the early 90s emerges as an echo of the differences between the protectors who knew they were doing the right thing and the people whose lives were often destroyed by the separation of children from parents and families. Rabbit Proof Fence is a proof for the Australian late-comers to the land to be (and to express) sorry.
1. The significance of a film about the Stolen Generations? At the beginning of the 21st century in Australia? Cultures around the world examining the 19th and 20th century past?
2. The Western Australian locations, the sense of the Australian vastness and the desert, the rabbit-proof fence, the range of deserts, the settlements, the towns? The centre for the children? The glimpses of Perth? The re-creation of Australia in 1931? Musical score?
3. The focus on the rabbit-proof fence, the explanations given for it, its length, significance? The importance of the girls knowing it, following it, the three different fences and their being helped to find their way home?
4. The film contrasting Aboriginal culture with its focus on the land, surviving, away from the cities, community of family and tribe? The acute use of the senses for seeing and hearing? For surviving on the land? The contrast with Australian culture, new, superior, paternal at best, protective, exploiting at worst? The aim for the breeding-out of the Aborigines in the half-caste generations? The explanation of the half-caste problem?
5. The 1930s, A.O. Neville and his role for 25 years until 1940 as Governor and Protector of all Aborigines in Western Australia? His background, his policies, the inherent racism, yet attempts at paternalism, his not understanding Aboriginal culture, his references to it as Neolithic? Yet his admiration for the girls and their being clever and shrewd? His office in Perth, his businesslike filling in of documents, concern about costs and the department, using the police, visiting the settlements, making judgments about people's education because of the colour of their skin and assumptions about their cleverness or not? His practical decisions about marriages, about pairs of shoes? His visit to the station, listening to 'Old Folks at Home'? The escape and the girl returning, his judgments about the tracker? The effect of the escape of the three girls, his wanting to keep it out of the press, his attempts to find them?
6. The postscript to the film with the story of the three women? Seeing Molly and Daisy in their eighties? Their story, their memories? The aftermath and their going back to Moore River, escaping again, marriage, Molly's daughter being taken and her never seeing her again? Their wanting to stay on the land?
7. The voice-over and Molly telling the story? Molly as a strong young girl, at the opening of the film, with her mother and grandmother and the other women, the hawk and its symbolism, chasing the goanna, native food, survival? Their being at home? Her relationship to Daisy and looking after her? Gracie, their cousin?
8. Mr Neville and his rounding up the children? His document for the taking of the three girls? The supervisor of Jigalong giving the information, warning the women that the men would come? Their arrival, the police, forcibly taking the children, putting them in the car, their looking back, the grief of the women on the ground in the dust, with the stones? The hardships of the travel to Moore River by train and by truck?
9. The children arriving, the kindliness of the nurse? Their not being used to dormitories? Their fears in the morning, the other girls helping them? Roll-call, everything neat and tidy, making the beds? The breakfast and the Aborigine demanding that they eat what was put before them? Their saying Grace - and the sweetness of the world referred to? The staff, kindly and paternal and maternal? Their having to line up, do their chores? Training for being maids? The girl who ran away and her return, in the box, her being beaten, solitary? Molly and her looking into the box? The church parade? Emptying the lavatory pail?
10. The people at the station, Mr Neville's visit and the song, the other officials and their treatment of the girls? Molly and her saying how she hated them all and visualising them?
11. The decision to go, the three girls, Gracie's reluctance? Molly's shrewdness, covering her tracks? Going into the water, along the river? Food, the adventure along their journey, such a long journey in different terrains? The chance meeting with people, getting food? Surviving by themselves? Going to the household and trying to steal the chook, the woman giving them food and clothing? Going to the household, finding Mavis, her kindness, the owner coming to the bed in the night, his reporting the girls to the police, Mavis wanting them to stay to protect her from the owner? The girls on the way again? Finding out about the different fences? The Aborigine and his telling Gracie that her mother was at the other station - and betraying her? Molly and her having to carry Daisy? The progress along the way, Gracie going by herself, their returning and finding her at the station, seeing her being taken? The continued journey, the desert, the collapse, the hawk leading them on? The women and the women's business, Maude and her standing at the fence, knowing that her children were coming? The women confronting the soldier with his rifle? Their meeting the girls and welcoming them home? Molly's final word as "Home"?
12. How well did the film draw the characters of the three girls, Molly's leadership and its effectiveness?
13. Mr Neville defeated by the girls? The range of police that he employed, the commander and his reluctance to use his men for the search, the discussion of costs? The tracker and his being forced to stay in the south with his daughter when his family was north? His shrewdness in tracking, applauding the girls for getting so far? The other members of the police?
14. The making of this film at the beginning of the 21st century, a glimpse back into Australia's past, the importance of the re-examination and re-assessment of history?
