THE NIGHTINGAlE
Revengers’ tragedy…
With her debut The Babadook, Australian director Jennifer Kent conjured a fantastical creature who knocked at the doors of our nightmares for weeks after the credits rolled. The monster in her follow-up feature is taken not from a child’s imagination but from blood-soaked history: it is white colonialism, a prospect far more horrifying.
Set in Tasmania in the 1820s, The Nightingale begins in a settlement where British soldiers rule over convicts who have been shipped in from England and Ireland. Clare (Aisling Franciosi) has served her seven years for a petty crime. But Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin) procrastinates on signing off her release papers, preferring to have her at hand to sing for the troops in the local tavern. When Clare dares to beseech Hawkins to set her free, he rapes her. And when her husband (Michael Sheasby) confronts Hawkins, a scene of all-too-plausible violence unblinkingly unfolds, so distressing it met with walkouts at the screening Total Film attended.
From here, The Nightingale turns into a revenge western, as Clare grabs a rifle and saddles up a steed to pursue Hawkins across hostile country as he heads for Launceston in pursuit of a promotion. She begrudgingly enlists the aid of Aboriginal guide Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), who has his own grievances against the colonists. She initially addresses him as “boy”, viewing him as her inferior. But their common disgust for the white Englishman brings them together as they close the distance on their prey.
Though engaging with the tropes of the western, the Victorian Gothic and even that oft-reviled horror sub-genre rape-revenge, The Nightingale is the singular work of an enormously gifted filmmaker. Kent opts to shoot in the square Academy ratio rather than the more landscape-friendly widescreen, resulting in a claustrophobic drama, taking us on a gruelling journey through territory bruised and beautiful, painted as it is in an earth-murk palette. Meanwhile, frequent close-ups of strained, pained faces offer landscapes that demand exploring.
At two-and-a-quarter hours, and with a climactic showdown that is persistently held off to accentuate both the emotional punishment and the sense of reality (no tidy endings here), Kent’s film might be too much of a good thing for some. But it’s an achievement, superbly crafted and forcefully acted by newcomer Ganambarr, an against-type Claflin and the Irish-Italian Franciosi, who appeared in Game Of Thrones as Lyanna Stark. Don’t miss it, but steel yourself as you enter the cinema. Jamie Graham