IFC Films
The last time I saw a movie about the brutal colonialist regime of the UK in Australia it was called Thor: Ragnarok and I had a much more fun time than this one. Of course, I also think that that Marvel movie didn’t really stick the landing on its theme of colonialism, but that’s to be expected. For a smaller movie, expectations are quite different.
The Nightingale comes from writer/director Jennifer Kent, who previously did popular horror movie The Babadook. Jennifer Kent is Australian, which certainly informs this movie. The movie takes place in 1825 Tasmania, which was then a British penal colony. We follow young Clare (Aisling Franciosi), an Irish convict (seemingly for some sort of mild theft crime, although it’s never explained) and thus an indentured servant to local British officer and Leftenant Hawkins (Sam Clafilin).
But Clare is married with a young infant, and she desperately just wants to be free and maybe to go back home to Ireland. Hawkins is unusually cruel, but with the friendly face of a sociopath. He promises Clare will be released soon, but keeps pushing back on his word. Instead he frequently sexually assaults her, including some scenes shown in harsh, non-exploitative brutality. But she just tries to live with it so she can eventually be free again.
Unfortunately this is a revenge story, and that means people she cares about will die. After Hawkins, along with his fellow soldiers, brutally murders Clare’s husband and child, leaving her for dead, she lives only for revenge. Of course, the soldiers have headed up north with their local indigenous guide ‘Uncle Charlie’, and she doesn’t know how to get through the bush on her own.
So she enlists Billy (Aboriginal actor Baykali Ganambarr), a local indigenous tracker and nephew to Charlie, to help. She’s just as racist as everyone else there, to start with, but things may change as they witness the brutality of the British colonists. There is a connection potentially there, a humanity shared between two peoples oppressed — while Irish and British may both seem white to the local Tasmanians, at the time the Irish were violently pushed down by the Brits.
There is a sort of horror-style feel at times in this movie, which makes sense given the director’s background. But because this is all based on reality, the brutality hits harder and the white men crueler than any supernatural monster. Aisling Franciosi does a beautiful job here, and fellow newcomer Baykali Ganambarr hits hard with the empathetic look at the survivor in a world on fire. Even Sam Claflin is a success as a sociopath that’s still simply another of his sort in the world.
In typical contrasting fashion, one of his soldiers is similarly immoral, and one is more concerned about their actions. They even bring along a young boy (also a convict) to really drive home the theme about inherited oppression.
Yet in the end, there is a sense that the revenge plot revealed something good and pure amongst all the horror. Although the story is a terrible one, the ultimate truth of the movie is also a great one: We’re all in this together.
The Nightingale has a run time of 2 hours 17 minute and is rated R for strong violent and disturbing content including rape, language throughout, and brief sexuality.
IFC Films
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