Director: Jennifer Kent
Notable cast: Aisling Franciosi, Sam Claflin, Baykali
Ganambarr, Damon Harriman
Jennifer Kent set the horror world aflame for a moment in
2014 with The Babadook, a movie that made a children’s book beyond scary
and made parenthood seem like the most real horror show in history. In the
intervening years, it’s grown into an LGBTQ+ icon movie, and seen a second life
in that symbolic way. No matter your take on it, the movie garnered an unusual
amount of attention for a small, foreign, indie horror film. In a similar way,
I do expect The Nightingale will have an unexpected and far reach,
though as the film is less metaphorical and more about our current culture
through a mirror darkly, I won’t even guess what that reach will entail. I
certainly feel like I know what the intended effect is, and by that measure The
Nightingale is an extremely effectively made film. It’s also one that’s
impossible to properly talk about without just talking about it, so although I
will make every effort to avoid spoiling many specific story beats, it would do
the film an equal disservice to completely avoid talking about the themes and
message present here.
In The Nightingale, Aisling Franciosi (best known as Lyanna
Stark in Game of Thrones) plays Clare, an Irish indentured servant, surviving
in Tasmania during the Australian colonization, or more simply, when Australia
was a British prison colony. It’s an unfamiliar setting to American audiences but
is used to exceptionally clever effect to shine a light on several pressing
social issues, none of which are uniquely American, though I am only qualified
to present an American view on it. Lieutenant Hawkins (Hunger Games’ Sam
Cleflin), the British officer who ostensibly owns Clare, is being evaluated for
promotion and a desired post further north. Clare, who we learn has been his
servant for over three years, asks him in private to let her go so she can be
with her husband and infant child and he responds with violence both in the
forms of striking her and sexually assaulting her. Notable here is that the
rape scenes in this film are in no way salacious. They’re not revealing,
they’re not sexy and they’re not exploitative. They’re just horrible, as it
should be if it needs to be at all. This brief interaction does teach us
rapidly about Hawkins and what kind of man he is… telling her that she will
only be freed when he’s ready. Clare’s husband doesn’t take kindly to the news
that she’s been denied her freedom again and vows to speak to Hawkins, sober
and calm. When that doesn’t work, he tries drunken and angry, leading him to
start a fistfight with the lieutenant. This outburst from one of his charges
causes Hawkins to lose his recommendation, leaving him with the only option of
riding several days north to put his own name forward before the word of his
embarrassment can reach his superiors. The night before he leaves however, he
takes his sergeant and ensign to Clare’s shack to express his rage, and things
immediately go wrong. Without putting too fine a point on it, she is raped and
her husband and infant daughter murdered in front of her. This is handled,
cinematically speaking, with as much class and grace as is possible given the
scene… and it’s not much. Everything about this movie is bleak and harrowing,
but even that description is completely insufficient to express how difficult this
scene is to watch, but it’s also vital to the unifying theme of the movie,
which I see as a commentary on, frankly, the destructive tendencies of white
men and more broadly of colonialism. Colonialism is more specifically explored
within the confines of the second main character, the Aboriginal ‘Billy’ played
by newcomer Baykali Ganambarr, in an absolute powerhouse debut. Hawkins and his
band need a guide to get north fast enough, and although Billy refuses his
older Uncle he accepts the job. Clare, full of righteous rage, ends up with
Billy, telling him she needs to catch up to the soldiers, and offering all she
has as payment.
They end up discovering an amazing number of similarities to
each other, and a tenuous friendship is founded in a shared deep hatred of the
English, and of Hawkins specifically. An especially heart-wrenching scene in
the film comes a little over halfway through when the pair do find a kindly
elderly couple willing to offer them a meal. Clare and the older couple are
sitting at a table, with fine-looking dishware, while Billy is served in a
wooden bowl on the floor, spoon dropped from waist height. The old man breaks
taboo and declares that Billy should be allowed to sit at the table as well,
and looking downright magnanimous about it. When Billy is seated, however,
everyone is stunned to silence when he starts sobbing. And these aren’t the tears
of happiness the old man is expecting, and they’re not easy to digest
melodramatic tears of self-pity. There is a legitimate, soul-piercing sadness
to it. “This was my country. This was MY country,” he wails almost more to
himself than anyone.
Another very present theme is one of trauma. Now, as the
film’s primary theme is rape and rape culture, trauma seems like an obvious
thing, but not in the way this movie uses it. Again, about halfway through the
movie, Clare catches up to the first of her three targets, the younger ensign…
the one actually guilty of infanticide. Clare isn’t good with her musket and
has to slowly, brutally beat the man to death with the stock of the gun, and
this isn’t presented with the fun hyper-reality of an average horror. There
isn’t even any catharsis to the act, especially as the young man begins to beg
for his own mother, and Clare remains haunted by this act for the rest of the
movie. Ending another human being’s life, even one that had wronged her, just
adds to Clare’s (and by extension, the audiences’) burden. This is not Faster
Pussycat Kill, Kill!, and it’s not The Day Of The Woman. There is no
satisfaction to be found here, and that is further emphasized by the main theme,
as I mentioned before.
Spoilers for the end of the film below.
The aforementioned theme of rape and rape culture is
something I’m incredibly unqualified to talk about on almost any level. I can
only speak to this film, what I feel its theme is, and what it made me feel. To
wit, throughout the film, Clare tries to tell anyone who will listen about what
happened to her, in a bid for something akin to justice, and every time she’s
soundly ignored. This is an extremely difficult thing to reckon with, almost
specifically because is rings so painfully true. This film, frankly, feels less
metaphorical, and more allegorical. Holding up a looking glass to you as an
audience member, daring you to feel uncomfortable, because all of these three
themes are things that directly correlate to modern society. As a matter of
fact, if anything, this movie’s cleverest move is being set a little more than
a century in the past, because it really shines a light on how very little has
changed in any of these regards, and this movie should sicken you because it’s
accusing you. Because although Hawkins is an overt villain of the piece, the
actual antagonist is the series of societal norms that allow this story to feel
so devastatingly plausible, and the film levels it’s accusatory gaze at a
society that allows these things to happen, the people whose inaction
implicitly condones the behavior, and especially at those who exploit their
power to advantage themselves of others’ suffering.
The Nightingale is absolutely an impossible movie to
recommend, per se, but technically speaking, the film is beautiful, well shot,
with superior performances, writing and direction. It shows the power of an
auteur unwilling to comprise about anything, from message to casting, and it’s
definitely a powerful and resonating experience, if an exceptionally trying
one.
Written By Sean Caylor
The Nightingale Full free movie
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