`Rabbit-Proof Fence' neglects vital issues
Chris Bannister
Cinema Manifestos
"Rabbit-Proof Fence" has received glowing reviews from a wide variety of critics and was recently named one of the 10 best films of the year by the National Board of Review. It has also been hailed as the "feel-good film of the year." While the distinction is apt as the film chronicles the inspiring struggle of three Aborigine girls to return to their homes across Australia, it is precisely the fact that the film allows the audience to leave the theater feeling so good that makes it hard to see the film as anything more than a rehashing of the same "inspiring true story" format that has been a standby of movie studios for years.
The film follows the trials of Molly (Everlyn Sampi) to lead her younger sister and cousin home after they have run away from a government camp set up as part of the Australian government's official program from 1910 until 1970 that took mixed-race Aboriginal children away from their homes to train and integrate them into "civilized" white society as factory workers and domestic servants. The program amounted to 60 years of government-sponsored kidnapping and enslavement, and the 100,000 victims are referred to in Australia as the "Stolen Generations." The current Australian government still refuses to apologize to the Aboriginal people for its actions.
Molly and her companions' story occurs in 1931, after the three girls are snatched and taken 1,500 miles away from their home. Molly defiantly decides to leave the camp and walk the distance back home using the rabbit-proof fence as their guide. The titular fence was built to divide the Australian continent and keep rabbits out of the farmlands of Western Australia.
The girls' story is heart-wrenching as they endure the brutal conditions of the outback and the ever-present danger of their pursuers. Sampi and the other child actors who play her partners are all first-time actors, and all put on performances that seem to defy the traditional logic that putting the weight of a film on child actors is a kiss of death.
These girls capture the imagination of audience better than most professional adult actors.
The journey across the outback is captured in notable cinematography. The shots capture the stark beauty of the outback and allow the landscape to become almost an extra character in the film's struggle. The camerawork also makes some interesting stabs at expressionistic altering of images to reflect the distorted reality that the girls encounter at their camp.
These praises for the film have been part of what have made it such a critical darling. Looking beyond these aspects, however, most critics go on to praise director Phillip Noyce for a sublime handling of the story and his hands-off approach that supposedly lets the story tell itself. It seems that sublime and hands-off are terms critics use to praise Noyce for having little critical vision about the reality of the situation that he is handling.
The fact is that the story is not simply one of a singular triumph. There is a larger reality of a country's institutionalized racism. It is not a system that can be treated so lightly in a simple "it was bad, this person triumphed, eventually it ended, and now we all know it is bad" format. The film's portrayal of the whole system of racism is very far off.
Only in a few end title cards does the film deal with the much more damaging realities that Molly was abducted again and lost her daughter to the system and that the mistreatment of Aboriginal people, which officially ended 39 years after the film takes place yet still continues until this day. Noyce makes little effort at probing further into reasons why the system existed or why racist tendencies persist to this day in regards to the Aboriginal people.
Kenneth Branagh's portrayal of A.O. Neville, the head of the agency that organized the system and coordinator of the pursuit of the girls in the film, is also flaccid. Other critics have showered praise on the actor for the supposed subtlety of the performance, admiring the fact that Branagh avoids playing Neville as a caricature of a villain. However, in lieu of a caricature, he resorts to a canned performance that is two steps shy of human. Neville is generally reduced to shadow of an actual character that deadpans extraordinarily racist logic and phrases to let the audience know just how bad the system was. What is really needed is a more human character to bring home the racism that creates such systems.
The work fails to shake the audience into any self-reflexive probing for answers about the sources of racism. It replaces elevated social consciousness with our soaring hearts as we leave the theater. Somewhere it is solidifying some college student into his self-assured feeling that he "isn't a racist, he just likes to hang out with only people who are like him." As long as we make racism into something that is just about the 1960's South or dull bureaucrats in 1931 Australia, we only perpetuate sublimated forms of racism today.
Noyce took on a two-part story that is one part inspiration, but also needs unveil real problems of racism instead of soft and simple answers. In "Rabbit-Proof Fence," he executes the first part brilliantly, but balks at his second task. This failure, at best, greatly undermines the work; at worst, it makes the film simply dangerous.
One critic, in his praise of "Rabbit-Proof Fence," suggested that only the leftists pretending to be critics could fault the film for its portrayal of racism. Call me whatever you want. I think this film can do better. If we do not probe the real arguments or lack thereof in every film, even heartwarming ones, we might as well just tell every story at the level of a cheap MTV documentary.
The views represented in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Observer.
Contact Chris Bannister at cbannist@nd.edu.
All Scene Stories for Thursday, February 6, 2003
