Following her impressive debut with The Babadook back in 2014, writer-director, Jennifer Kent is back with her new film, The Nightingale. Taking a sharp turn away from the supernatural thrills of her first film, the story here is tapped into the very real ugliness of man. It takes place in the early 19th century in the British colony of Van Diemen’s Land (today referred to as Tasmania), where we follow an Irish convict, Clare (Aisling Franciosi), who is hoping to get a long overdue letter of recommendation from Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), which would grant her and her family freedom.
And within mere minutes into the film, it becomes clear why some audience members were not having it during the film’s festival run. Because Clare is very quickly raped by Hawkins, and moments later, in the following night, Clare and her family are attacked by Hawkins and two of his men as they were attempting to run away, and Clare is raped again by multiple assailants, and nit only that, she witnesses the murder of her husband, and her baby. She survives a blow to the head, and wakes up in a desperate need for justice and revenge. However, the men are gone, so she reluctantly enlists the help of an Aboriginal tracker named Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) to help her find them, so she can kill them.
If that sounds rough just by the description, the experience of actually seeing it all unfold is something else entirely. It is relentlessly bleak and brutal, and despite the numerous acts of rape not being super explicit, and the violence not being all that gory, there’s still a dour, oppressive quality to the filmmaking here that is enhanced by its claustrophobic 1.37 : 1 aspect ratio, and an eerie soundscape mostly devoid of a musical score aside from a couple sequences where composer, Jed Kurzel, does his thing. Everything about the filmmaking is designed to keep you on edge, and feeling a profound sense of unease and discomfort and frustration, all while managing to keep things from feeling one-note.
The film is also one that is full of a pointed sense of rage, and it’s not subtle about where it’s aiming its fury. Hawkins is a character that represents the absolute worst of the worst when it comes to the white, male entitlement that informed colonialist attitudes. When he wants something, he stops at nothing to get it because in his own twisted mindset and worldview, he deserves everything. It’s a thoroughly detestable character, perhaps the most easily hateable character I’ve encountered all year, but given the…let’s just say unsubtle state of things in the world right now, especially when it comes to the casual cruelty orchestrated by people in power, it just feels appropriate for Hawkins to be the way he is. I can’t fathom how Sam Claflin, playing very much against type, prepared for this, but his usual quiet charm and swagger is nowhere to be found here. It’s astonishing work.
Colonialism as a concept is more or less the true villain of the film. It’s all about how these sorts of conquests ravaged lands and exploited the people the conquerors considered to be their lesser. It covers a lot of ground with this, but it hones in on two particular areas – the dehumanization of women and people of color. This is first seen in the way Clare is treated by the British soldiers, even being referred to as property at one point. Hawkins could have her released at any time, but because he has the power to keep her, and do whatever, that’s what he chooses to do, and Clare has no way to fight back because the systems in place do very little to help convicts like her.
Once Billy enters the picture, the colonialist themes are expanded into exploring the way the British Empire sought out land that did not belong to them, and strong armed their way through indigenous cultures in order to seize control. Billy gets into his backstory at one point, and it’s been a lifelong struggle for him, one that has led to some understandable resentment toward the white invaders, even including Clare among them. Similarly, she hardly talks to him with dignity for a good chunk of their travel, like the way she constantly addresses him as “boy.” But over the course of their journey, they begin to realize they share more in common than they might initially realize.
This particular aspect was the one concern I had going into the film. That it would somehow morph into a story that equated the experiences of its white female lead with its black, Aboriginal co-lead, or turn into yet another story about a white person who learns that – actually – racism is bad. The film occasionally flirts with these regressive storytelling tropes, but I think it manages to do a good job at exploring the complexity of their individual situations, along with how their experiences connect. Kent shows a lot of empathy towards the lives of these two people, and what they had to go through to survive. It helps that Billy is able to stand out as a strong, compelling character in his own right, and not just in relation to Clare. Both actors work wonders together, each bringing something different to the table. Franciosi brings an intense vulnerability and strong-willed sense of vengeance and deep rooted pain after putting up with so much traumatic material. Ganambarr brings a rascally quality that provides the film some precious few moments of slight levity, while also keeping a fire inside that seems to be the one thing that motivates him to keep going after losing so much in his life. He is actually making his film debut here, and it’s damn good work.
The Nightingale is bound to be one of those movies that people might connect with, but will only tolerate a single viewing. It’s not the kind of film you want to watch over and over, and that’s fine. In fact, it wouldn’t even be necessary because there are so many images, moments, and sequences from the film that I cannot get out of my head since seeing them. I’m so happy to see that The Babadook wasn’t a fluke, and that Jennifer Kent is the real deal. It expands beyond what I would’ve ever imagined her follow up to be, and it’s fascinating to see her build on her style while also tapping into some of those horror elements that she excelled at in The Babadook. Not everyone will be able to stomach the relentless brutality of The Nightingale, but if you can, it’s a film I found to be very challenging and rewarding in the ways it explores colonialism and trauma. It’s easily one of the best films I’ve seen this year, and I can’t wait to see what Kent does next.