Movie review: Rabbit-Proof Fence -- and commentary on racial fear

The 1930s, the time of Hitler's rise, was a time when racial fears were common.

"Rabbit-Proof Fence" is an amazing true story. Follows the 1,500-mile trek of 3 little girls who escape on foot, without food or water, from an abusive orphanage. It's set in the 1930s in Australia, where England ruled back then. Astonishingly, the girls succeed not only in evading for months the urgent and persistent efforts of their captors to find them and bring them back but also in surviving this horrendously tough crossing of the desert to find their homes again. They showed pictures of old women who were actually two of these girls.

Here's another astonishing part. The English government was very upset that white English workers who'd gone to jobs in Australia were intermarrying with Aboriginal people. It decided that it must remedy this situation at all costs. It decided to set up a magistrate as sole judge and jury to locate half-caste children, steal them from their families, and put them in controlled settings where they would teach them "how to be white." The idea was that they would teach them to follow white culture and then to marry white men (they all seemed to be girls in the movie) and thus breed the "blackness" out of them after a couple of generations.
This pure racial purging occurred years before Hitler rose to power and began his reign of horror to create the perfect Aryan (white) race. Wonder if he got some ideas from the English? But as my daughter said when I told her about it, I guess because they weren't killing the children, it didn't seem so bad to the world. The Aboriginal people refer to the children of that time as The Stolen Generation.

Almost as amazing--I was in luck because my DVD player is screwy and I can't control what it does very well--I accidentally found myself first watching the documentary section of the DVD, "following the making of Rabbit-Proof Fence." The director made a film of how he went among the Australian people to find the right three girls to play these difficult roles. He couldn't find them in the big cities and had to go out into the regions where the Aboriginal people still live. A grueling process of finding the girls with the right qualities, the courage to undertake the touch job, and the stamina to see it through. Imagine--finding a 7-year-old to play a part like this. If you see this movie, do not fail to watch the documentary. In fact, I recommend watching it first. It made the whole movie seem even more poignant and intense.

And it would be nice to think our world is finished with racial discrimination and hatred and murders, but since we all know that's not yet the case, let us hope we will still be alive when the end is in sight.