Do not go gentle...
by
Howard Schumann
Set in Western Australia in 1931, Rabbit-Proof Fence,
a new film by Australian director Phillip Noyce, is a scathing attack
on the Australian government's "eugenics" policy toward aboriginal half-castes.
For six decades, continuing policies begun by the British, the government
of Australia forcibly removed all half-caste (mixed race) aborigines
from their families "for their own good" and sent them to government
camps where they were raised as servants, converted to Christianity,
and eventually assimilated into white society.
The
film tells the true story of three aboriginal girls, 14-year old Molly
Kelley, her 8-year old sister Daisy, and their 10-year old cousin Gracie,
who escaped from confinement in a government camp and set off for home
across the vast and lonely Australian Outback. It is a simple story
of indomitable courage, told with honest emotion. Abducted by police
in 1931 from their families at Jigalong, an aboriginal settlement on
the edge of the Little Sandy Desert in northwest Australia, the three
girls are sent to the Moore River Native Settlement near Perth. Here
the children must endure wretched conditions. Herded into mass dormitories,
they are not allowed to speak their native language, are subject to
strict discipline, and, if they break the rules, are put into solitary
confinement for 14 days.
The
rabbit-proof fence was a strip of barbed-wire netting that cut across
half of the continent and was designed to protect farmer's crops by
keeping the rabbits away. Following this fence, the girls walk for nine
weeks across the parched desert, depending mostly on scraps offered
by people they meet along the way. Molly uses great ingenuity and intelligence
to help them escape their pursuers - one of them an aboriginal tracker
named Moodoo (in a great performance by David Gulpilil).
The
stunning Australian landscape is magnificently photographed by Christopher
Doyle, and a haunting score by Peter Gabriel translates natural sounds
of birds, animals, wind and rain into music that adds feeling and "dreamtime"
to the journey. The performances by amateur actors Everlyn Sampi, Tianna
Sansbury, and Laura Monaghan are authentic and heartbreakingly affecting.
Though the white officials and police are characterized as smug and
unfeeling, they are more like bureaucrats carrying out official policies
than true villains. Kenneth Branagh gives a strong but restrained performance
as Mr. Neville, the minister in charge of half-castes.
Based on the 1996 book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence
by Doris Pilkington Garimara (Molly Kelly’s daughter), Rabbit-Proof
Fence is an honest film that avoids sentimentality and lets the
courage and natural wisdom of the girls shine through. This is one of
the best films I've seen this year and has struck a responsive chord
in Australia and all over the world. Hopefully, it will become a vehicle
for justice and reconciliation.
The
Orphan of Anyang, an uncompromising debut film by Wang Chao,
conveys a powerful impression of a rotting urban center with its outdoor
food stands, dingy industrial buildings, rancid-looking waterways, and
people whose lives mirror the grimness of the physical space. Its portrayal
of the struggle for survival in Anyang might seem strange to Western
eyes accustomed to more glamorous Chinese films, but its bleakness only
reflects the daily experience of a large percentage of the world's population.
Based
on a short story by the director, the film focuses on the lives of three
people - a criminal, a prostitute, and an unemployed industrial worker
- and how their lives intersect when a baby is abandoned at an outdoor
food stand. As the film begins, Yu Dagang (Sun Guilin) has just lost
his job as an industrial worker. Strapped for money, he must barter
with his former co-workers, exchanging meal coupons for cash. While
eating at an outdoor noodle stand, Dagang finds an abandoned baby with
a note asking for the baby's care in exchange for 200 yuan each month.
Desperate, Dagang takes the child home and awkwardly begins to care
for him. He soon discovers that the mother Yanli (Yue Sengli) is a prostitute
and the girlfriend of Boss Side, a small-time triad boss always surrounded
by a gang of hoodlums. Dagang then invites Yanli to live with him if
she promises to give up her life of prostitution.
The
social background of the picture reflects the swift change from collectivization
to individual enterprise in modern China. With little dialogue or cinematic
embellishments such as background music or stylish cinematography, Wang
delivers filmmaking stripped to its bare essentials with only the clatter
of urban street sounds left to penetrate the dreariness. His use of
a fixed camera and long takes is reminiscent of Taiwanese director Hou
Hsiao-Hsien, but unlike Hou's work, Wang's film lacks rhythm and energy,
and its extremely slow pace doesn't create tension or help to illuminate
the characters. Orphan of Anyang is an important glimpse of a
China that is rarely seen, and its ultra-realism is sometimes involving,
but ultimately I found the film to be strangely distancing, and the
ambiguous ending left me unsatisfied.
And on video:
How
often do we awake from our dreams in a sweat, not knowing what is real
and what is illusion? Especially if we are feverish, our dreams can
turn our close friends or family members into ogres and hateful creatures
(or possibly werewolves) who are bent on our destruction. Such is the
case with novelist Clive Langham (John Gielgud), a dying 78-year-old
writer who is working on his final novel, in Alain Resnais' playfully
bizarre 1977 film, Providence. The film depicts how physical
and mental anguish can distort our view of reality. A poetic screenplay
by playwright David Mercer, and powerful performances from Gielgud,
Ellen Burstyn, Dirk Bogarde, Elaine Strich, and David Warner provide
strong support.
Clive
does not go gentle into that good night. During one horrific night,
all the pain of his life and disturbing family relationships boil to
the surface. In the novel being played out in the author's mind, his
family members, sons Claude (Dirk Bogarde) and Kevin (David Warner),
and Claude's wife Sonia (Ellen Burstyn), mysteriously become the main
protagonists, assuming roles as prosecutors and defendants, feuding
spouses, and extra-marital lovers. As Clive goes deeper into the maelstrom,
images become more and more hallucinatory. The denouement is witty,
baffling, irritating, and then finally transcendent. To say that the
ending is surprising is an understatement.
Providence
may exasperate you but, if you have patience, it can be a richly rewarding
experience. As with all thought provoking and multi-layered films, multiple
viewing may be required for full appreciation. Providence was
voted the greatest film of the '70s by an international jury of critics
and, at Telluride, Norman Mailer called it "the greatest film ever made
on the creative process."
©2002 Howard Schumann
CineScene
