Another child displacement horror tale from the U.K.*, told decades after the fact, involving the forced removal of kids from ‘unacceptable’ (read single-parent) homes. Warehoused at government or church-affiliated dormitories, the children (age 4 to late teens) were told the lie that Mom was either not coming back or dead. Then, by boatload, shipped to Australia where Christian Brotherhood orphanages took them in. There, far from prying eyes, they found meager amenities (clothes, food, education), rough physical labor (building roads, their own dorms, ornate monasteries), along with occasional corporal punishment or molestation by ‘caring’ cassocked clerks. Our story, beginning decades later, finds Emma Watson, very effective as the British social worker who stumbles on the story, at first not believing, then expecting a handful of cases to follow only to be overwhelmed by thousands looking for lost family connections. Structurally, it makes for a problem never quite solved since nothing in the film matches some early scenes with gathering lines of now grown men & women waiting patiently to give information they hope may unlock lost pasts. (Or can’t match until the very end when Watson’s single-minded devotion to her work over her family is made clear in devastatingly concise fashion by her young son at a Christmas party.) Director Jim Loach (son of Ken) is careful not to push too hard on sentiment or tear ducts, staying away from easy victimhood (the migrants are a tough lot in spite of still exposed psychological wounds), but neither does he show much feel for dramatic composition. It’s simple storytelling that goes a bit flat when it what it wants is to speak plainly. Mostly though, the story manages to speak for itself.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *You have to wonder how much the British idea, at least among the high, mighty & elected, of keeping their youngest out of sight at boarding school abetted policy rationales.
DOUBLE-BILL: A similar horror in Ireland is brought out in THE MAGDALENE SISTERS/’02. OR: High-minded self-righteous Ladies Society types grabbing children from poor but decent homes goes all the way back to D. W. Griffith’s INTOLERANCE/’16 where a short glass of beer is enough to speak against Mae Marsh. (Later reedited into a stand-alone feature as THE MOTHER AND THE LAW/’19.)
No comments:
Post a Comment