ORANGES AND SUNSHINE (2010)

[agate]

This movie might have had more impact if it had been a straight documentary, but as a story based on facts it works well too. Unfortunately there were no closed captions or subtitles, and important parts of the dialogue–in British English or Australian English–were lost on me.

I hadn’t heard of the forced deportation of children from the UK to Australia (and Canada and New Zealand) after World War 2 and continuing through the 1970s, but a little Internet investigation cleared up some of the questions I had after watching this movie.

Margaret Humphreys is a UK social worker who became involved in investigating the situation and trying to reunite some of the grown children with their lost birth-mothers. One of the most appalling parts of the film shows a trip she makes with one of those grown children to a Christian Brothers facility, an impressive building in the middle of nowhere, a building that the captive children built by hauling stones themselves, under harshly abusive conditions:

John Hennessy was sent to a place called Bindoon, an institution run by the Christian Brothers, an order of Roman Catholic monks 60 miles from civilization in the sweltering bushland of Western Australia. Bindoon was a home and school for boys. But this was no Boys Town, and education was not the priority.

The priority was construction. Brother Francis Keaney, an imposing, white-haired Irishman who ran the place, was obsessed with building the largest Catholic institution in Western Australia. He used his charges as labor. From sunrise to sunset, the boys built Brother Keaney’s shrine, with no shoes, and no questions asked.

Bindoon is a real school now, an agricultural college. But it’s still run by the Christian Brothers. And old boys are not welcome, particularly not when they’re accompanied by newsmen. When Bob Simon went back with Hennessy, who helped build Bindoon, they were kicked off the premises. The Christian Brothers are not eager to showcase their past as users and abusers of child labor.

“They got us dirt cheap,” says Norman Johnston, another boy who helped build Bindoon.

[url]http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500164_162-40269.html
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The Bindoon building seems to be functioning still:

http://web.cacbindoon.wa.edu.au/content.asp?cid=2

The children seem to have been the offspring of unwed mothers, who were forced to give up their children. The children were told their mothers were dead. They were deceived repeatedly and beaten, molested, and overworked, entirely deprived of any real childhood thanks to the combined action of government and some religious organizations, while many seemingly looked the other way.

When Margaret Humphreys and the man whose childhood was spent at Bindoon are approaching the actual location, she is struck by how large and beautiful a building it is. This is the stunning moment of truth in this movie, it seems to me, followed immediately by her confrontation with the brothers, who are dining in their well-appointed surroundings, built for them by children who had no choice.

The acting seems good. I’d have liked to know more than was given at several points in the narrative though. Who was angry enough to try to attack Margaret Humphreys in her home, for instance?

A very fine movie, telling an important story.
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MS diagnosed 1980.

Avonex 2002-2005. Copaxone 2007-2010.