As James �Die Another Day� Bond mania exploded all around and every person for cinemas around seemed to want to see that movie and no other, we thought fuck this, we�re off to see �RABBIT-PROOF FENCE.� To be honest we had no choice in the matter because Bond was sold out and there was nothing else on for another 3 hours. I told my mates, yeah, RABBIT-PROOF FENCE is an all-action gore-fest. But I lie!! In fact, it couldn�t be more far-removed, being an historical drama set earlier this century in the Australian outback.
Interestingly, former Genesis-musician and solo singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel scored the music, while Kenneth Branagh played the evil Mr. Neville who sees no room in his selfless new world order for the native aborigine tribes and wants to �breed them out� by segregating the darkest ones and preventing them from the birds and the bees. This ambitious and low-key movie follows 3 spirited girls in particular who are callously swiped from their community and taken 1200 miles away to a strict, boarding school like set-up from which only the fairest skinned girls are �chosen� by Mr. Neville to be slipped back into a �normal a life as possible� as the other poor girls waste away. And those who try to escape are punished, painfully. But these 3 girls aren�t having it and are clever enough to run away during a storm so the rain covers their bare-footed tracks. Lucky for them once they find the rabbit-proof fence of the title (that runs across the desert for hundreds of miles to keep diseased rabbits on one side, ironically, segregated from fragile farmyard on the other) they have that to guide them straight home, but ace child-tracker Magoo is on their tail under Neville�s strict orders to retrieve the girls at all costs�
Cult director Nicolas Roeg (who�s �Man Who Fell To Earth� movie I�m obsessed with) unveiled his �Walkabout� in the 70�s which covered similar tracks, and while this is a predictable slow-mover, it is captivatingly told and an education if nothing else about how the Aborigines had no other choice than to �hide-out� from the whites who over-ran their country with no respect whatsoever for anything other than outright prejudice on their uncompromising parts. (STEVE RUDD)