With his first feature film, 'Oranges and Sunshine', Jim Loach – son of Ken – sets himself apart as a conscientious and moving film-maker, writes DONALD CLARKE
IT'S BEEN less than a fortnight since we carried an interview with Ken Loach on these pages. When I met Loach, director of Kes, The Wind that Shakes the Barleyand Route Irish, I was fresh from talking to his son, Jim Loach, about a fine new film, Oranges and Sunshine. I was happy to report he seemed like a well brought-up lad.
“Oh good. I’m pleased to hear that,” his father said with a laugh. “He wasn’t always like that. It is difficult for him to enter this business with a dad who already has a reputation.”
Jim, now 41, is indeed a little cautious about discussing his distinguished parent. When he was young he and his sister, already aware of the looming heritage, vowed to have nothing to do with film-making. Jim’s father seems to have been careful not to push him in one direction or the other. Even now, when the two men speak on the phone they rarely dwell on problems with gaffers or the best use of Steadicam.
“No, that doesn’t happen too often,” Jim says. “To be honest, we are far more likely to talk about football or politics. He would never tell me what to do in that way. He did look at the film and offer some advice though.”
There have been instances where the sons and daughters of film-makers (no names) have, with few discernable gifts, piggybacked their way towards brief, undistinguished directorial careers. No such accusation could be levelled at Jim Loach.
After studying philosophy at university, he embarked on a career as a print journalist. He found himself working on Granada's World in Action– the ITV news show that also gave us Paul Greengrass – and eventually secured work directing episodes of Coronation Street.
“My dad had given me some advice,” he says. “But that didn’t prove too useful. I tried to get the cast to improvise and was quickly summoned to the producer’s office. They don’t do improvisation on Coronation Street. But it was great training and very daunting.”
He has belatedly graduated to feature films with a moving study of an appalling, deeply peculiar British scandal. Oranges and Sunshinefocuses on the efforts of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham, to uncover the details of a scheme put in place from the late 1940s to the 1970s to transport the occupants of British orphanages – many not actually orphans – to Australia. It's a weird tale. Decades later, grown-up Australian citizens, some raised in a harsh Christian Brothers institution, discovered that, contrary to what they had been told, their mothers – often single parents – had been alive all this time.
Played by Emily Watson in the film, Humphreys comes across as a formidable woman. She is compassionate, but she takes no prisoners. “We did have to convince her that we were going to be responsible,” Loach says. “We wanted to make sure she knew we weren’t doing anything mawkish. I was unbelievably nervous about showing the film to her. But she liked it very much. That was a great relief.”
There are endless sinister undercurrents to the story. Loach says the plan was tied up with a desire, prevalent among conservatives in Australia at the time, to deliver fresh influxes of white, English-speaking immigrants. The usual tripe about the nation being “swamped by people of colour” was much bandied about. Offered the titular promise of oranges and sunshine, a staggering number of children – some estimates are as high as 100,000 – agreed to make the trip.
When Humphreys, who had initially done the research in her spare time before being commissioned by sympathetic superiors, finally made her way to Australia, she uncovered another, related scandal. Conditions at the Bindoon Boys Town, a Christian Brothers institution in remote Western Australia, were often appalling. Abuse was rife. The imposing structure, a gothic mansion sitting in sparse desert, was largely built by the unfortunate young immigrants.
Oranges and Sunshinemakes a brave attempt to address both the larger issue of the unethical migration and the specific outrages in Bindoon. In the film, Humpreys and a former inmate visit the building in the 1980s, but Loach was refused permission to film inside the structure.
“We did actually visit the place though,” he says. “We basically climbed over the fence,” he says. “It is so remote and so grandiose. I can remember the guy that took us there, who’d been in the camp, touching the bricks and pointing out the bits that he’d made. You got a sense of the ego behind it. This was not a place for kids.”
The younger Loach, even more quietly spoken than his dad, comes across as a decent, conscientious fellow. Every effort was made to keep the grown-up inmates in touch with the production. The piece never gives in to sensationalism. The result is a film that bristles with quiet indignation.
Oranges and Sunshineis out Friday
