Oranges and Sunshine
Take some “disadvantaged” British children in state care, tell them parents have died and ship them off to the colonies by the boatload, ostensibly saving a lot of money. Some of the colonies, especially Australia, are crying out for British stock to ensure that they retain populations that are predominantly white.
This sounds a positively Victorian idea and, when it first took hold in 1869, it was. The amazing thing was that, though the largest numbers of children left their homeland in the 1940s and 1950s, the scheme continued until 1970, by which time 130,000 children (more than the population of Dunedin) had been deported.
About 7,000 of the children were sent to Australia, and some came to New Zealand. Some inevitably ended up in situations where they were cruelly abused, but the film Oranges and Sunshine does not dwell too long on the details.
Nottingham social worker Margaret Humphreys stumbled on the story while helping an Australian woman who had been adopted to find her birth mother. Humphreys’ subsequent devotion to the cause of thousands of scarred adults who had been forcibly deported, in some cases without birth certificates (and therefore names), is at the core of the film.
The film is based on Humphreys’ 1994 book Empty Cradles and, given the breathtaking cynicism and cruelty of the deportation scheme, could not miss. It is not a total success, however.
Director Jim Loach chose to concentrate on Margaret Humphreys, rather than the deported children and the adults they became. Emily Watson (Wah-Wah, The Water-Horse, Synechdoche New York) plays Humphreys with a restraint that other critics have slated as “buttoned-down and remote”, though I was struck again and again by her understanding of the awesome power of silence in social work. Humphreys is often shown paying very close attention to what others are saying, without interrupting, directing or reacting. Smiling with her eyes seemed to be enough to encourage people - even quite damaged people - to disclose more and begin to move on.
The two victims of the scheme whose stories are at the centre of the film are Jack (Hugo Weaving, The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, V for Vendetta) and Len (David Wenham, Australia and the Lord of the Rings trilogy). The deception and cruelty inflicted on these men as children has unsurprisingly changed them forever. Weaving is sensational as the lovable, damaged, vulnerable Jack. His performance, particularly in his climactic scene, establishes the absolute centrality of a mother’s love to this film – and to life itself. Watson’s restraint works as a wonderful counterpoint to the desolation and grief of the characters, who are discovering that they have been lied to in the most brutal fashion by the state that was charged with their care.
I found Wenham’s character Len more problematic. Firstly I had to overcome my perception that Len was being played by Aussie cricketer Brett Lee. If the grumpy fast-bowler is ever portrayed on the screen, surely Wenham will get the job.
Len has done well in life, in a material sense, so his childhood abuse and the void left by the mother he was told was dead have not blighted him as obviously as the other victims. He tells Margaret that, at eight years old, he taught himself not to cry and that he has not learnt how to cry since. His brash, brittle bravado is disarming, and his generosity to the Christian Brothers whose order abused him is hard to fathom. Len’s complex response to his childhood ultimately leads to some emotional unravelling in Margaret herself, and these are powerful moments.
A very large part of my response to the film arose out of the extraordinary price paid by Humphreys herself, and by her saintly and long-suffering husband Merv (Richard Dillane) and their children. Flitting between Nottingham and Perth and taking on the might of governments is not what ordinary mothers of two are supposed to do. At a Christmas party in Australia late in the film, Humphreys’ son is asked what he has brought the guests for a present.
“I gave you my Mum,” he says.
Margaret Humphreys carried on a one-woman campaign against the British and Australian governments. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Child Migrants Trust and she continued the fight until both governments apologised to the people they had betrayed – in 2009 and 2010, 30 years after she started asking questions. She received a CBE in the 2011 Honours List and has been officially recognised in both Britain and Australia.
“Rejection and abandonment are the strongest emotions we have,” she said in a recent interview.
Oranges and Sunshine is slow-moving, especially in the first half hour, and it doesn’t examine or even discuss the reasons behind the governments’ scheme. It avoids over-sentimentalising though, so it’s very affecting: there were some damp eyes evident when the lights came up in the Village Theatre last Sunday.
Neil Wilson
