Oranges and Sunshine (2010)
Certified: 14
Duration: 105 minutes
Directed by: Jim Loach
Starring: Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving, David Wenham, Tara Morice, Kate Rutter, Helejn Grayson, Ruth Rickman, Harvey Scrimshaw, Molly Windsor, Neil Pigot
KRS release
Director Jim Loach’s film will wring quite a few tears and shock, yet he does it all in a very constrained and disciplined manner. Mr Loach never resorts to showing the events described in the film by going to the past; instead he lets the words of the scarred men and women inhabiting the screen describe their ordeals.
Oranges and Sunshine tells the true story of British social worker Margaret Humphreys (Emily Watson) and the scandal she uncovered. The case of the “home children” – which revealed how thousands of children were deported illegally from Britain to Australia – was brought into the open in the 1990s and shocked everyone.
The film tells the stories of these children who are now adults, how they tried and needed to find out who their parents were and how they came to terms with their past to be able to live their present.
At the start we find Margaret, who worked as a social worker for the Nottingham council, being confronted by Charlotte (Federay Holmes), an Australian who simply wanted to know who she was.
Helped by her social worker husband Merv (Richard Dillane), Margaret finds out about the children who were sent to Australia since their mothers had been “unfit”, meaning they were unwed. Being sent to Australia was “for their own good” besides being even cheaper for the government to raise a child there. Margaret finds opposition both from British and Australian officials. So she travels to Australia and helps Nicky (Lorraine Ashbourne) find her brother Jack (Hugo Weaving) who had been deported. Soon she has hundreds of cases to solve.
The story has several aspects to it. On one hand these children are growing up in far away Australia, being told their parents are dead, that they have no relatives and that they seem to have no identity. On the other there are the hardships these children endured, the forced labour and the sexual abuse. To Mr Loach’s merit, he does not over-dramatise the events. The shocking fact is that these events and deportations continued well into the 1970s. This is not some forgotten age we are talking about but recent history.
The film has beautiful performances. Emily Watson holds our emotions in the palm of her hand and does not overplay her performance, while Hugo Weaving garners sympathy.
The scripting by veteran Rona Munro has to be singled out as one of the film’s assets as it takes on a very structured and articulate style.
The film left me with a sense of yearning for closure and the coda that apologies have been sent as recent as the Gordon Brown government left me with a sense of bitter sweet tang. Let alone what the young ones who have lived through this ordeal and still dwell under the shadow of the whole affair must feel.