2002

January 8, 2003
Towne Theater
Australian
English
94 minutes

1500 Miles Is A Long Way Home--Rabbit-Proof Fence.

I'm strangely disappointed in this film. I don't know what I was expecting, but it didn't seem to be there. Maybe I thought I'd be more moved. I've had the soundtrack for quite awhile and liked the dreamy Peter Gabriel score. The story is sad, to be true, but there are stories exactly like it in every country in which the white majority oppressed a native people.

Basically, the government in Australia wanted to keep the races separate. You could be Aboriginal or White, but not half and half. To make this happen, half-and-half children were taken forcibly from their homes and put in orphanages where, if they were light-skinned enough, they were allowed to marry white people and thereby 'dilute' their aboriginal blood, until the traces were no longer there. They had to change religions and weren't allowed to speak their native language. The US did the exact same thing with Indians. The Navajo language is just about extinct because of its outlaw.

Three related girls are taken away and, like many other girls, try to run away from their orphanage. We are shown that the oldest girl is something of a smarty, a good hunter and tracker. Using the cover of a rainstorm they set out on the 1500 mile journey back home. Lacking navigational tools, they follow the sea to shining sea rabbit-proof fence that was to keep rabbits on one side and farms on the other. The fence itself is never really explained. What if two rabbits happen to be on the wrong side when they build the thing. They must be eating up a storm. Anyway, they have to trust people and hide from people. The whole bit. It's obvious to the authorities where they're headed and they can simply lay in wait.

I think they made a couple storytelling errors. Since we hear the voiceover of an old woman who speaks no English, we can assume that one of them, at least, survived and is alive today. So as they're dragging themselves all over the outback, we know they'll make it home. We know that they won't be killed when they get there. We also know they'll be captured when found. There are really no questions going on here. We don't know how many times they try to escape or why the racial purity idea was belatedly put to rest in the 1970s.

The photography was great as you would expect in a film using the vast expanse of interior Australia. The music was perfect and the three girls were natural and compelling. But it is the story of three girls who took a long walk to get back to their mother. That's pretty much it.

8.0 Critical Consensus