Oranges and Sunshine
Jim Loach (2010)
Oranges and Sunshine is based on a book by Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker who exposed the policy of forced relocation of ‘unfortunate’ children from Britain to Australia (and, according to Wikipedia, Canada too). Humphreys first uncovered the scandal in the late 1980s and published a book, Empty Cradles, in the mid-1990s. She and her husband (also a social worker) founded the Child Migrants Trust, initially financed by Nottinghamshire County Council, their employer, and subsequently by the British and Australian governments. Margaret and Merv Humphreys still continue in their work of trying to reunite child migrants with their original families or, at least, help them find out who their parents were. Formal government apologies for the ‘home children’ scheme came as recently as late 2009 in Australia and early 2010 over here. Margaret Humphreys was awarded the CBE in the 2011 New Year Honours ‘for services to disadvantaged people’.
The conventional way of bringing this kind of fight-for-justice story to the screen would be to combine individual human stories with a description of the difficult progress of the underlying campaign, a campaign waged by a tiny number of honourable and determined people, who eventually get the better of establishment forces disposed to obscure and obstruct. Nothing wrong with ignoring convention but Jim Loach (Ken’s son, directing his first cinema feature) and the scenarist Rona Munro ignore it faute de mieux. The period they cover is only the first few years of the Humphreys’ tireless campaigning: the news that they’re still hard at work today and how recently the official government apologies came is contained in legends on the screen at the end of the film. What makes Oranges and Sunshine weak is that Loach and Munro don’t find anything to replace the one-step-forward-two-steps-back movement of the Humphreys’ crusade. They insert the odd scene of institutional stonewalling as if regretting there aren’t more opportunities to do that. These wooden, obvious sequences are especially poor and the increasing focus on the physical and sexual abuse of migrant boys by the Christian Brothers – since it’s unsurprising (and will confirm what many will see as par for the course in anything involving the Brothers) – lacks the impact of the more individual stories. But those stories still aren’t sufficient on their own.
Because Margaret Humphreys has worked long and courageously to achieve something important and is still very much around, the film-makers view her with respect and admiration and appear to regard the effects of her campaign on her own children as relatively unimportant. I guess much of the audience for Oranges and Sunshine will feel the same way too. This is understandable but if you’re primarily interested in film drama you may feel otherwise – and, given the attenuated dramatic possibilities of the material, largely turning a blind eye to what’s happening in Margaret’s own household is a luxury that Jim Loach can’t afford. There’s a short sequence early on when Margaret, in the course of her normal work and before she knows anything about the home children scheme, takes away the baby of a mother who’s regarded as not fit to be a mother. If this is supposed to have a resonance with the film’s main story it doesn’t: Margaret is firm but compassionate – we feel she’s doing the right thing. There are occasional remarks by her two children which make their point – particularly when the whole family spends Christmas in Australia, presents are exchanged, and Margaret’s son has none to offer but explains to one of his hosts, ‘I gave you my mum’ – but the impact of these is fleeting. We get no real sense that Margaret’s lengthy absences from home made any lasting difference to her kids, or that she felt any guilt about leaving them and Merv (or questioned her lack of guilt).
One of the stronger sequences of Oranges and Sunshine occurs during another Christmas – this time when Margaret returns from Australia for the festival. It’s also one of the crudest juxtapositions: she’s just been hearing from a middle-aged Australian man an indelible Christmas memory of his own. An outstanding boy soprano whose party piece was ‘Ave Maria’, he was invited to sing to a couple and a visiting male friend in their home. After the singing, he was taken to the bathroom by the husband and his friend, who sexually abused him. Cut to Margaret returning to the warmly lit and decorated family home in Nottingham. She and Merv are watching television and, sad to say, Jim Loach has a choirboy on screen singing ‘Ave Maria.’ (The fact that this is entirely possible and may indeed have happened doesn’t redeem the obviousness of the execution.) Margaret switches the set off with a vengeance and starts sweeping Christmas cards etc from the mantelpiece until Merv grabs her, and keeps holding her and eventually says, ‘Christmas back on again?’ There are other highlights: a Nottingham woman called Nicky has already made contact, before Margaret gets involved, with her long-lost brother Jack in Australia. A scene featuring these two, with Margaret, on a beach is remarkably expressive. You see how Nicky and Jack are happy to have found each other again but that they’re somehow damaged too. There are people in Australia who want to stop Margaret Humphreys’ work and a sequence in which a man tries to break into the house she’s renting, is genuinely frightening.
Richard Dillane’s best moment as Merv Humphreys comes when he’s calming Margaret down after the ‘Ave Maria’ incident but Dillane is good throughout at hinting at divided feelings inside this endlessly supportive husband (he’s less convincing in the public campaign sequence with government officials). There are persuasive supporting performances too from Kate Rutter, as a local woman whose estranged daughter first sparks Margaret’s interest in the home children, from Lorraine Ashbourne as Nicky, and, especially, from Hugo Weaving as Jack. The strongest scene in Oranges and Sunshine sees Margaret tell Jack that she’s tracked down his mother, and that she died just a year ago. The mixture of grief, exasperation and relief in Hugo Weaving’s breakdown at the news is very affecting. Tara Morice (from Strictly Ballroom) tries to make too much of her small role as one of the now fiftyish migrants, and David Wenham is very obvious at first as Len, an Aussie who Margaret can’t stand until she knows him better. Wenham’s timing is bad in his first scene when Len is deliberately riling Margaret. He gradually improves but Len always feels like a stock character – a man whose blunt insouciance masks a deep insecurity.
As Margaret, Emily Watson is in nearly every scene and the film depends heavily on her. Her bright-eyed, penetrating look seems wrong when she’s sitting with the support group she runs in Nottingham. Surely an experienced social worker would keep herself to herself more. When she’s in Australia, Watson becomes a strong, somewhat unsettling presence – always dressed in shiny suits that look slightly uncomfortable. She has some good bits and she certainly holds the screen but I never lost the sense of watching not a character but an actress seized by the worthiness of the vehicle she’s starring in.
7 April 2011