Post by Magill on Apr 1, 2004 11:48:00 GMT -5
I just saw this last night. Briefly, it's 1931, and the Australian government is taking any mixed-blood (Aborigne + white Australian) children away from their families to be trained as factory workers and domestic servants. Kenneth Branagh plays the so-called "protector of Aborigines" who is directing such actions. His goal seems to be to try to breed out their "blackness" (at one point he is especially concerned when one of the "half-caste" girls is promised to be married to a full-blooded Aborigine). 3 girls, Molly, her sister Daisy, and their cousin Gracie, are forcibly taken from their mothers and transported to a camp 1200 miles south. Molly decides to lead the 3 of them home, and they follow the continent long rabbit-proof fence (built to keep rabbits from destroying pasture land) home.
I thought it was a very powerful film. I thought that it was going to have a standard, happy Hollywood ending, but the closing narration made it clear that wasn't going to happen. I must say that I had no idea Australia had such a policy. I knew that Aborigines weren't treated well, but I had no idea that things like this happened, and continued until 1970.
In the closing narration,
spoiler
We find out that Gracie is dead, having never returned home. Molly, Daisy, and some of her family retreated to the desert after they returned home. Molly had 2 girls, and she and her children were captured and returned to the camp. She made the walk again, carrying her youngest daughter the whole way. But then when the youngest was 3, she was taken away from Molly and Molly hasn't seen her since.
Has anyone else seen this movie? It could make an interesting double-bill with Whale Rider, though the 2 films have very different feelings and outcomes. But both are about societies struggling to maintain their cultural identity in the face of modernization.
I thought it was a very powerful film. I thought that it was going to have a standard, happy Hollywood ending, but the closing narration made it clear that wasn't going to happen. I must say that I had no idea Australia had such a policy. I knew that Aborigines weren't treated well, but I had no idea that things like this happened, and continued until 1970.
In the closing narration,
spoiler
We find out that Gracie is dead, having never returned home. Molly, Daisy, and some of her family retreated to the desert after they returned home. Molly had 2 girls, and she and her children were captured and returned to the camp. She made the walk again, carrying her youngest daughter the whole way. But then when the youngest was 3, she was taken away from Molly and Molly hasn't seen her since.
Has anyone else seen this movie? It could make an interesting double-bill with Whale Rider, though the 2 films have very different feelings and outcomes. But both are about societies struggling to maintain their cultural identity in the face of modernization.