HARKING BACK TO AN AGE WHERE children were "seen but not heard", this Australian-UK co-production opts to tackle a subject that, until recently, was lost to the sands of time. Its focus: the forced deportation of 130,000 orphaned children from the UK to Commonwealth countries, including Australia - and the horrific conditions the kids faced when they arrived Down Under.
England's Emily Watson leads the charge, playing real-life justice fighter Margaret Humphreys: a social worker from Nottingham who stumbles across a shameful secret while helping those in need. Almost immediately, Humphreys dedicates herself to reuniting orphans with their families - many of whom have been told they were dead - while facing a wall of opposition from the authorities and the so-called care agencies that welcomed the kids in.
Watson (pictured, above) was seemingly born to play the role of Humphreys who is still reuniting families, some 20 years on infusing a motherly awareness with a deft blend of gravitas and conviction. Likewise, Australia's David Wenham and Hugo Weaving do well to tackle roles that debunk the myth of the Aussie male. These are troubled men in dire need of support and nurturing and no amount of bravado can hide the fact.
Weaving has given us glimpses of troubled souls before (most recently, via last year's impressive but little-seen Last Ride). Wenham, as Len, is in fresher waters, masterfully straddling an awkwardly fine line between the tough-exterior male and the deeply wounded lost soul with nowhere left to go. His "coming out" as he takes Humphreys to the scene of the childhood torture is a revelation, in every sense.
Jim Loach's feature debut (his dad is the acclaimed English filmmaker Ken Loach) presents the horrific injustice of forced child migration in a calm, measured manner. It begins much like a kitchen-sink drama, in drab 1980s England, as Humphreys is wrapping up at work. As soon as she enters the foreign, decidedly unwelcome territory of the perpetrators in the Australian outback, the horror swiftly sinks in.
More shocking still for this vital film and its real-life victims, the "official apologies" that eventually emerged from red-faced governments both in Australia and the UK were largely overlooked by the media at large here. In light of this, and given the tower of strength that Humphreys continues to provide for the children and their families today, Loach's film takes on an even greater poignancy.
For Australia, where the forced migration of these forgotten children reached its peak in the mid 1960s, this sordid tale forms an integral, overlooked part of a dark chapter in the nation's history that's otherwise known as the White Australia Policy. (The UK was all-too eager to empty its orphanages as well, mind.)
The detail of what went on within these closed halls of power repeated assaults, slave labour, torrid conditions are all bravely addressed by Loach. It's a subject that so few know of, yet begs to be heard by a wider audience. Whether this film can bring it into the public domain per se is debatable, but it presents this challenging slice of recent history in a moving, succinct way.
Not surprisingly, the church and the various children's charities involved do not come off in a good light, but then that's hardly the point. These kids were deemed worthless by both sides of the Commonwealth, and left to rot in the most appalling conditions imaginable (the juxtaposition of grey England with bright and spacious Australia couldn't be more stark or misleading, for the children). That Loach has so evocatively brought this tale of injustice to the fore is praise enough. That he's done so with such an impressive cast, and slight of dramatic hand, elevates it far beyond the status of a sympathy feature.
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