‘Warrendale’ or — Tender Care a Tough Watch?
Allan King’s ‘Warrendale’ (1967) is an extremely tough, emotionally exhausting but also an incredibly fascinating and rewarding watch. It’s a Canadian documentary following five weeks of life at a residential care home for emotionally disturbed children. Here the children (who live with the staff) are freely allowed to vent their rage and frustration whilst the staff handle these outbursts through non-violent physical contact and restraint. Effectively the children are hugged (most of them having never experienced any form of affectionate contact) whether they want it or not until they have worked through their anger and pain, all of which is directed against the staff.
The result is a very difficult experience as we witness these children scream, kick, bite, swear and struggle to accept any form of care; it’s like watching ‘The Exorcist’ except even more terrifying because this is real and these children aren’t acting. Not surprisingly, the staff themselves also have to undergo psychotherapy to ensure boundaries and approaches are being effectively maintained, as well as their own mental well-being. This was, for the time, a new way of dealing with traumatised children, children who might normally be simply medicated or inhumanely isolated. It becomes obvious that most of these kids are here through a lack of attention or discipline — i.e. neglectful parenting.
There’s a moment, roughly halfway through, where we spend an unbroken ten minutes with a teenage girl and the extremes of her emotions. We sit with her, listening to her struggle to process both her own anger and the care she is receiving. It’s extraordinary, shattering and moving especially when we consider what the alternative would be if no one had listened to her and just how important it can be when she is. The techniques of the staff are progressive and must have shocked conservatives of the day but the support on display also highlights the violence of the alternatives at that time.
It’s not just the intensity of the brutally raw emotions here but also the magnitude of the job confronting the staff, almost all of whom are young themselves. These are children the rest of society has given up on yet, as the film goes on, it becomes apparent that these two aspects — the children and society — can’t be so easily separated. It is this, showing Warrendale as a microcosm of society at large, that gives the film part of its captivating punch. It is a shock when we suddenly see these kids not as children with problems but as human beings suffering from emotions we all have to face and deal with. The only difference is that, hopefully, most of us can deal with the experience of being ourselves but could we do so if all our support machanisms, our access to physical tenderness, were removed from our lives? Would we be just as lost?
This idea of Warrendale as a reflection of society at large is emphasised by the closing shot, where Warrendale’s building is finally fully revealed in the context of the surrounding community. Plus there is no judgment passed on these kids. Likewise, there is very little judgment passed on the home’s methods, King and his cameras are simply observing life.
The one moment where filmmaking intrudes (I guess it has to at some point as this is a film, after all) is when the children are informed of the death of the home’s cook, someone all the children knew. This scene is edited into in such a way for deliberate impact and shock. It comes hot on the heels of a previous scene where we discover just how fragile these children are so we already know this will be like a unmanageable bomb going off for them. The aftermath is extended, maybe indulgently so, and is one of the most emotionally grueling and uncomfortable scenes I’ve sat through.
From here ‘Warrendale’s non-judgmental approach raises questions of power, rejection, systems and the effect these systems, no matter how well intentioned, can have. It’s a fascinating insight into child care and psychology, and its limitations, in Canada in this period of history.
‘Warrendale’ is exhausting, brutal and emotionally raw to the point of shredding your entire nervous system. It doesn’t provide answers but simply observes and what it is observing is the result of the deprivation of love. It’s called the human condition and very few movies have looked at it with such a direct and unflinching gaze.
