Dir. Jim Loach, UK/Australia, 2010, 105 mins
Cast: Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving, David Wenham,
Review by Carol Allen
This film deals with a not dissimilar theme from The Magdalene Sisters, in that it’s about a little known true life injustice wreaked on young people, in this case children. Up until as late as 1974 though particularly during the war years and the forties and fifties, children from orphanages in the UK were involuntarily deported overseas, where they were subjected to lives of virtual slavery labouring on farms with little access to education. In the eighties Nottingham social worker Margaret Humphreys, played in the film by Watson, stumbled upon a secret that the British government had kept hidden for years: one hundred and thirty thousand children in care had been sent abroad to commonwealth countries, mainly Australia. Children as young as four had been falsely told that their parents were dead, and been sent to children’s homes, often run by religious bodies, on the other side of the world. Many were subjected to appalling abuse. They were promised oranges and sunshine, they got hard labour and life in institutions. After discovering this scandal, Margaret devoted her life to helping these lost children find out who they were and where possible reuniting them with their families.
Watson gives a strong performance at the centre of what is in many ways a detective story, which skilfully and gradually reveals the full horror of the effect of those events on the lives of these now middle aged people, from the moment it kicks off with an angry woman, who accosts Margaret in Nottingham in a last, desperate attempt to find out the truth about her origins. Weaver is very moving as Jack, one of the victims, who with Margaret’s help finds his sister but is too late to find the now dead mother he still remembers. The scene where a friend of their mother shares her memories about her with the two siblings is heartbreaking, as is another, when Margaret is visiting a reunion of one of the farms in the early days of her mission is in Australia. When it is revealed why she is there, all these middle aged men and women cluster round, asking if she can help them find their mothers. The other main Australian role is taken by Wenham as the apparently tough and aggressive Len, whose exterior hides the hurt little boy inside.
The film solves the problem of having so many really upsetting stories to tell by keeping Margaret always firmly at the centre, and apart from Weaver and Wenham, just revealing parts of some of the other stories, as in the horrifying story of the victim who ran away, was caught by his tormentors, tied to a tree and raped. The terrible stories of child cruelty linger in the mind and the film is often very disturbing, while the threats that Margaret receives in Australia from the perpetrators of the abuse are genuinely frightening and convincing. This is a very good story which deserves to be told.
