A true story this horrific deserves a better script. “Oranges and Sunshine,” starring Emily Watson and Hugo Weaving, is a sluggish film that tells the true story of approximately 130,000 British children, wards of the state in the 40s and 50s, who were told their parents had died and that ‘oranges and sunshine’ awaited them in Australia. Unfortunately, when they arrived, they found themselves in orphanages where they suffered sexual abuse and were forced into years of hard labor. Decades later, in 1986, social worker Margaret Humphreys (Watson) uncovered and exposed this dirty little secret. And, finally, in 2010, the British Prime Minister apologized to the thousands of children who had been treated so cruelly.
Director Jim Loach has his heart in the right place, but he seems overly concerned with handling the material as it happened, which is not a compelling way to tell the story. Once Margaret discovers that children were sent to Australia by the British government and she discovers this early on, there’s little drama in the narrative. And it’s hard to create tension when the villain is a faceless bureaucracy. “Oranges and Sunshine” is a well-intentioned but uninspired effort. 11/19/11
1 comment:
I don't know how the British government could justify the taking away of children from their families and telling the children that their parents were dead? There has to be more to this story. Someone must have had an axe to grind or some money to be made.......it makes no sense!
what were they thinking??
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