Phillip Noyce’s 2002 biographical story explores the shameful Aborigine Acts in Australia through the story of Molly Craig, a bi-racial early-teen age girl in the 1930’s. This series of Parliamentary acts over the 19th and much of the 20th century were racially motivated legislation intended to strip the rights and segregate the population of the Aboriginal population in Australia. Specifically, the film deals with “half-caste” children (it’s Australian for racist!), and the government policy that separated them from their Aboriginal homes in an effort to assimilate them into white society (in the form of varying degrees of servitude and educational assimilation dependent upon the lightness or darkness of the child’s skin). This is also Molly Craig’s true story of escape from one of these camps/schools and a 1500 mile journey by foot across the farmlands and deserts of Australia, following the rabbit-proof fence line to return home.
Having known very little about this piece of Australian history, I found the film managed to illuminate the subject without getting bogged down in too much of a civics lesson. The production feels modest, given that this was filmed in one of the most brutal climates on earth, and gives the film a personal feel. Noyce is able to avoid making a cloying message film as well as navigating through a story centered on an unlikely child(ren)’s journey without dipping into the tone of a Disney adventure film. It doesn’t rise to the level of Carroll Ballard’s Black Stallion, Peter Collinson’s sadly overlooked The Earthling or Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, three films that also deal with the isolation and journey of children, but this is still a fine film (and to be fair, two out of three of those films left their initial and deep impressions on me at a very early age). Through this film, I have found my interests piqued on the topic of Australia’s political history and treatment of their indigenous population. Given my own country’s regrettable position and treatment of our own indigenous population, not to mention our inequitable civil rights issues both past and present, I found the film interesting and further illuminating on the darker side of the human condition as it manifests outside of these borders. (That deeply conservative streak in Australia is starting to make more sense to me now.) I think Noyce found an interesting story through which to explore his own feelings about the issue and did an admirable job in telling it. I am on the lookout for some good texts and films on the subject if anyone has any recommendations.
