Ralph has this great movie review that I want you to read, so I have copied it all. If you like the review go visit Ralph and let him know (and read the comment from Colorado Luis).
When a really great movie comes along, one that really grabs you, you think: “With all the dough the big shots in Hollywood spend, why can’t they make a movie like that.” Such is the case with Rabbit Proof Fence.
In what is very arguably the best directing job I’ve ever seen, Phillip Noyce took three young amateur actors and made a film that is starkly believable.
In 1931, three aboriginal children were taken from their home and transported to a boarding school to further the Eugenic policies of the Australian government. They aren’t in the school long when the oldest, Molly, takes her sister and her cousin and says, simply, “C’mon, we’re leaving.” So begins one of the most incredible (yet true) chase scenes on the big screen.
The young actors are incredibly good, and Noyce deserves the highest praise for getting this work out of them. The strength and determination the young women display is incredible. Kenneth Branaugh is actually so good I didn’t realize it was him until the movie was almost over.
The screenplay and cinematography are first rate and quite frankly this is a film everyone should see. I was left with two questions: 1972? Did it really take until 1972 before the Australian government abandoned this hideous policy? and Why can’t Hollywood make a movie about America’s experience with boarding schools?
I saw this movie and it really was heart-wrenching. For the record, though, 1972 wasn’t really all that much later than when we stopped sending our American Indian children to boarding schools. I know several people who were forced to leave home and go to boarding schools, and it played hell with their identities. There is another film about this topic that takes place in Canada–Where the Spirit Lives. It’s pretty intense. Still not exactly Hollywood, though.
I saw Rabbit-Proof Fence in the theatre when it was released and I too was impressed. It’s a very good film about a very troubling experience. Many of my relatives are Australian and most of them have articulated the difference in education between the Australian school system and the U.S. school system. Over there, they learned of these atrocities. In America, we don’t speak of similar things that occur on our soil.
To answer Ralph’s perhaps-rhetorical question, I don’t think that Hollywood is all that fond of very troubling experiences that contain no elements of glamour.
This was a great movie, and I’m glad you’re highlighting it because I don’t think too many people are aware of it. It’s probably one of the three or four most powerful films I’ve ever seen. As you’re watching, you just keep asking yourself, “This really happened? These girls really did this?” An incredible true story.