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Orphans

Threat advisory: Elevated - Significant risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

Are your parents a burden?

Glasgow's a tough town with a strong sense of community, where wit and compassion are as essential as knowing pub etiquette, especially for four siblings who must deal with their mother's (Ann Swan) death. Through their mourning, Michael (Douglas Henshall), Thomas (Gary Lewis) and John (Stephen McCole), the three egocentric brothers create chaos for themselves and their fragile sister, Sheila (Rosemarie Stevenson), who finds herself alone amongst her family as they all explore the limits of sin and forgiveness.

Theatrical propaganda posters

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

Film Scotland drama

Persons of interest

Douglas Henshall .... Michael
Gary Lewis .... Thomas
Rosemarie Stevenson .... Sheila
Stephen McCole .... John
Ann Swan .... Mother of Family
Gilbert Martin .... Frank
Jan Wilson .... Sandra
Lenny Mullan .... Julian
Malcolm Shields .... Duncan
June Brogan .... Mona
Paul Doonan .... Lenny
Linda Cuthbert .... Evelyn
Lex Keith .... Himself
Hugh Ferris .... Himself
Joel Strachan .... Neil
Tam White .... Alistair
Vanya Eadie .... Maria
Dorothy Jane Stewart .... Margaret
Peter Mullan .... Screenwriter
Peter Mullan .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Awards and film festivals:

Paris Film Festival 1999: New directors/new films
Venice Film Festival 1998: "Cult network italia" prize, lsvema award, Kodak award, Prix Pierrot

Studios and distributors:

Beyond

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Bloody hell.

Orphans has the thickest Scottish accents that I have ever heard, so thick that even I couldn't always understand what they were saying. At times it didn't sound like English at all; a linguistic anthropologist could have a field day tracing the mutations from Braveheart to The big tease to My name is Joe to Orphans.

Och.

Mind now, I have always been of the opinion that dialogue and subtitles are not necessary if a film has a good enough script. The trouble that Orphans has is that it's written in English but continually dips into dialect which is familiar enough that you can figure out what's going on but strange enough that you feel that you've missed something. This wasn't a problem in Snatch because the gypsies always spoke that way while everyone else always spoke the Queen's own. Even if you couldn't understand Brad Pitt you could still figure out what was going on by the reactions to what he said. Orphans doesn't give you that out, which makes it more of a mental challenge, which makes it harder to willingly suspend your disbelief (that what you're seeing is really happening) because you're too busy concentrating.

Anyhoo, Orphans is not about children but adults who stopped growing on the inside when they were still children. Now they are faced with all the responsibilities of grown-ups but have none of the experience to handle them. It's called arrested development. And they've all gone off the rails. The best part of Orphans is watching all these damaged people trying to relate to each other in the moment of their greatest grief, and then they have to interact with people who have their own problems. It's a good idea but it's dragged out too much. Chopping 11 minutes out of the script would've helped.

I realise that Orphans is a comedy but the drama gets in the way. However, the Madonna-smashing scene is hilarious.

Security censorship classification

MA 15+ (Medium level violence, medium level coarse language, sexual references)

Surveillance time

102 minutes (1:42 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

Film: 15 August 2001