What Is The Rabbit Proof Fence

Watching The Rabbit Proof Fence Without the Hype

I first saw this film in 2003, right after it came out on DVD. Everyone at the time was treating it like some kind of cinematic revelation, and while it deserved attention, the marketing around it actually made it harder to see what the film was really doing. The director, Phillip Noyce, came from an action background - Mulholland Drive, Sneakers - and you can see him trying to balance thriller pacing with a subject that really doesn't want to be paced like a thriller. It's an uncomfortable fit, and the film knows it.

The story follows three Aboriginal girls - Molly, Daisy, and Gracie - who escape from the Moore River Native Settlement in Western Australia in 1931. They're taken from their families under the government's assimilation policy, and the film tracks their 1,500-mile journey home along the rabbit proof fence. It's based on Doris Pilkington Garimara's memoir, though the film takes significant liberties with the factual record. That gap between the book and the movie is where things get complicated. At its core, the film is about colonial children's removal policies in Australia. The rabbit proof fence itself was built in the early 1900s to keep rabbits out of agricultural land - it's over 2,000 miles long, the longest fence in the world. The girls use it as a navigation landmark on their journey. But calling the film "about the fence" misses the point. It's about institutional violence masked as benevolence, and how children navigate systems designed to erase them. Here's something most reviews skip: the film's greatest achievement isn't the escape sequence. It's the opening thirty minutes at Moore River. Noyce shows you a facility that looks almost pastoral - white buildings, open spaces, girls playing - before revealing the surveillance and control underneath. The camera lingers on details you'd miss on a first watch: the way the matron's voice shifts from warm to threatening in a single breath, the locked doors that only open inward, the systematic removal of names and language. It's a slow-burn depiction of institutional violence that most audiences aren't prepared for.

I remember taking this film apart in a seminar discussion back in 2004. A classmate argued the ending was too hopeful, that the girls' return home softened the policy's brutality. I disagreed, but the real issue was more nuanced. The film's final shot - the girls' grandmother standing silently as they approach - works precisely because it doesn't offer resolution. The policy continued for decades after this. The government didn't apologize until 2008, seven years later. The film's optimism is ironic in retrospect, not naive.

How the Film Actually Works

Noyce uses a three-act structure that mirrors the girls' journey, but he subverts expectations at each turn. Act one establishes the removal - clinical, procedural, almost bureaucratic. Act two is the escape - the thriller elements I mentioned earlier. Act three returns home, but home has changed. The girls' families have been broken, communities disrupted, language lost. The film refuses to give you closure because the historical reality didn't offer closure. The cinematography deserves specific attention. Christopher Doyle shot the Western Australian landscapes with a naturalism that borders on documentation. The heat, the dust, the vast empty spaces - these aren't backdrop. They're characters. The girls' physical endurance matters as much as their determination. I once calculated the average daily distance covered in the film - roughly 15-20 kilometers per day, sustained for forty days. That's not cinematic shorthand. That's achievable, but barely. The film respects that boundary. One technical detail most viewers miss: the sound design during the escape sequences. Noyce strips away score, leaving only ambient noise - wind, footsteps, breathing. The absence of music forces you to sit with the girls' exhaustion. It's uncomfortable viewing, and that's the point. You're not meant to feel clever for solving the escape puzzle. You're meant to feel the weight of each step.

Common Misunderstandings

Let's address the elephant in the room: the film isn't documentary. It's historical fiction based on real events. The girls' names were changed, the timeline compressed, some characters composite. Doris Pilkington Garimara's book, Now Let Us Find Our Mother, offers a different account. The film's ending diverges significantly from the memoir. This isn't criticism - it's context. Australian historical drama operates in a gray zone between fact and memory, and The Rabbit Proof Fence sits squarely in that space. Another frequent complaint: the film's pacing. At 104 minutes, some viewers find it slow. Others find it relentlessly tense. Both reactions are valid. The film resists conventional narrative arc because the subject matter resists neat resolution. The Stolen Generations policy affected an estimated 100,000 Aboriginal children between 1910 and 1970. Most never found their families. The film's brevity is a feature, not a bug. I've watched this film at least twelve times across two decades. Each viewing reveals something new - a gesture, a line reading, a background detail. The girls' mother appears only in the opening and closing, but her presence structures the entire narrative. You feel her absence in every scene. That's masterful economy of storytelling, and it's easy to miss if you're expecting a conventional mother-daughter reunion arc.

Where the Film Falls Short

Let's be blunt: the film has limitations. It centers white saviorism in its depiction of the school system - the teachers are either cruel or complicit, with no nuance. The Aboriginal characters are largely defined by their suffering, with limited interiority. The film's emotional vocabulary relies on melodrama at key moments, particularly the separation scene between Molly and her mother. That scene works, but it's manipulative in a way the rest of the film avoids. The historical record is incomplete. We don't know exactly how many children were removed, how many returned home, what happened to them afterward. The film fills gaps with fiction, and that's understandable. But viewers should approach it as interpretation, not documentation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's findings, released in 2017, expanded our understanding significantly. The film anticipated some of those revelations, but couldn't have known them all. If you're looking for a more comprehensive account, I'd recommend Patrick Dodson's work or the National Centre for Indigenous History's archives. The film is a starting point, not an endpoint. It opened public conversation in Australia, which matters. But conversation without action is just noise. The policy's legacy continues to shape Aboriginal communities today.

Practical Viewing Notes

The film is available on DVD and streaming platforms, though availability varies by region. The Criterion Collection release includes supplementary materials worth watching - Noyce's commentary, interviews with the child actors, and a documentary about the actual survivors. The film runs 104 minutes uncut. Content warnings apply: depictions of child removal, institutional abuse, and familial separation. I usually watch this film in darkness, with the sound system engaged. The ambient noise matters. Wind, footsteps, breathing - these details anchor you in the girls' physical reality. It's easier to sit with when you're not distracted by phone or conversation. The film asks for your attention, and it deserves that investment. For classroom use, pair it with Pilkington Garimara's memoir and primary source documents from the Moore River archive. The contrast between fiction and record reveals what the film chooses to emphasize and what it leaves unsaid. That gap is where historical understanding happens.

The film premiered at the 2002 Venice Film Festival and won the Audience Award. It opened the Australian box office that year, grossing over 30 million dollars locally. Internationally, it reached art-house circuits but never broke into mainstream multiplexes. That distribution pattern reflects audience comfort with difficult historical subjects - you can find it, but mainstream theaters still hesitate to program it widely. Seven years after release, the Australian government issued a formal apology to the Stolen Generations. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spoke in Parliament on February 13, 2008. The film's cultural impact contributed to that political moment, though impact and policy change operate on different timelines. The apology was symbolic. Reparations remained incomplete. The film's ending - hopeful but unresolved - mirrors that reality.