There are an alarming number of mediocre movies that have grand designs on educating moviegoers about important historical events.  As a critic, I'm put in a weird situation in which I'm obligated to point out a picture's weaknesses, but do so at the risk of incurring the wrath of readers to whom whatever real-life event depicted in the film holds a special place.  Take We Were Soldiers, for example.  It was a dull flick, but it was also the first one to depict the Landing Zone X-Ray Operation.  'Nam vets took me to task for not gushing over the film, simply because it was the first to tell "their story."

Call me crazy, but I'd rather see a historically erroneous yet excitingly made film than one that's completely accurate but boring as all get-out.  I'm not sure I'd put Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence into the latter category, but it's much closer to that than it is the former.  Fence is set in 1931 Australia, which was about 30 years into an odd policy that allowed the government to take half-caste children (meaning Aboriginal youngsters who weren't of pure descent) away from their families and assimilate them into the white community. In other words, the kids would be educated just enough to become servants to wealthy white families.  The government claimed to be doing this for the protection of the children.  Like the Armenian genocide depicted in Ararat, the Australian government still pretty much shrugs their cumulative shoulders when approached about this strange procedure, which continued into the late '60s.

Fence is told through the eyes of 14-year-old Molly (Everlyn Sampi), who, along with sister Daisy (Tianna Sansbury) and cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan), was yanked out of her mother's arms and transported 1,500 miles across the country into a near-barbaric minimum-security school.  The bulk of the film is about the three young ladies escaping from the school and walking across the outback to get home.  The only way Molly et al. were able to find their way was to follow the enormous and eponymous fence that was constructed across the country lengthwise to keep bunnies away from farms. They walk, and they walk, and they walk, and then they walk some more.  Meanwhile, the cartoonish, calculating overseer of the whole half-caste kidnapping program (Kenneth Branagh) spares no expense in trying to track down and capture the girls, just to make an example of them.

Is Fence an amazing story?  Yes.  Is it an important story?  You bet.  Is the film beautiful?  Absolutely.  Is it tedious?  You ain't kidding.  Maybe it would have been more enjoyable as a documentary, like Daughter From Danang, which told a similarly unknown story about kids being pried away from their bawling mothers to live with white families.  Maybe it would have been better if the three little leads had a background in acting, sothey could have, you know, had dialogue or something (the loooong walk takes place in near silence).

Despite the slagging, I have my fingers crossed that Fence will be an Oscar contender.  Not for Best Picture or anything, though – the score, written and performed by Peter Gabriel, is a keeper, and the always reliable Christopher Doyle's photography is among the year's best (he also worked with Noyce on The Quiet American). Honestly, if it weren't for those two aspects of the film, I would have been out like a light.  Does that make me a bad person?  I wanted to like Fence more, especially when I found out the film was based on a book written by Doris Pilkington, who turns out to be Molly's daughter in real life, but I just couldn't get past the tedium.  

Angry Aboriginals, please feel free to send your venomous diatribes to the address below.

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for emotional thematic material