The Rabbit-Proof Fence's forced removal scene

by Constanza Catrilef

While I was watching the "Rabbit-Proof Fence" movie, there were many scenes that were extremely shocking and took my breath away (almost made me cry actually). Among them I can recall the escape scene, when the girls left Moore River after being there for just 2 nights. I can also remember when Gracie was waiting for the train at the station so she can go to Wiluna to see her mother, but Constable Riggs took her away once again.

In this written reflection I could have mentioned the many sad and breathtaking moments, but something else caught my eye, so instead I decided to focus on one particular part of the film, the instant when the three defenseless girls, Molly, Gracie and Daisy were abducted, forcibly removed from their mothers, and the actors and filming crew´s emotional reaction to that moment of the shooting.

Once I decided to start my reflection, I looked for information about this moment on the internet for a long time, but I could only find a YouTube video, part of a documentary about the movie and an interview. At first I thought of changing the subject, but later, when I watched the video, I decided to continue writing about this, because I realized that the crew reaction to the filming process was so strong that writing about it was worth it.

Before they started to shoot this scene, the director, Phillip Noyce, explained to the actors the context of the event, the part when Constable Riggs arrives to the village and said to Maude that the girls’ legal guardian was Mr. Neville, so he was going to take the children away. 

They started shooting the first half of the scene, from where the girls and their mothers see Riggs' car and starts running until Riggs gets out of the car.  Following this, there is a girl named Rachel, who is part of the filming crew, that prepares the little girls emotionally for the next frame, when Riggs takes the girls, put them in his car and starts driving away.

Noyce shouts action for the second part of this scene, they start shooting, it’s awfully quiet, except for the actresses who are screaming and crying on the scene. I could see in the YouTube video, as a result of this, how the whole crew was feeling the same heartache that the real Maude probably felt about eighty-two years ago, they were all crying inconsolably. It’s very intense and heartbreaking.

         We can see on the clip how the actresses are very affected by what they just filmed, the girls are crying and Ningali Lawford (Maude) says “These are girls that, you know, just started learning about the Stolen Generation now, you know, and here they are, actually reenacting that whole thing(…)and it’s great because they come in with this innocence and at the end of the film this innocence is gone”.

           On 2002 Phillip Noyce was interviewed by Wilson Morales from Blackfilm.com. The Cornell University graduate’s first question to Noyce was “What drew you to make this film?” and he answered “I had read many scripts in my long career as a filmmaker but I don’t think I had read one that was so emotionally compelling as this(…)It has three heroines who you immediately sympathize and empathize with.”         

If you just take the time to watch this beautiful movie, and the YoutTube video after that, you can see for yourself how emotional this movie is, and how hard it was to the whole filming crew to revive such sad and unfair period of time this people lived.

It’s impossible not to feel the pain and desperation Australian aborigines, especially the one that Maude as a mother felt, decades ago.