Mark Reviews Movies: THE NIGHTINGALE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 15, 2019

"Welcome to the world, boy," the woman says, "full of misery from top to bottom." She knows this as the truth. She never knew her father. Her mother died from being overworked. Reduced to thievery as a teenager, she was caught, tried, and convicted to a sentence of exile on a penal colony on Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, off the southern coast of Australia. All of that misery has happened before the story of The Nightingale begins. It certainly does not end there.

The "boy," a grown man who's part of the indigenous peoples of Australia, knows it, too. The woman doesn't really care about his story at this moment. She still sees this man as a "boy"—to be ordered around and seen as less-than, even by an Irish convict on an English colony—and has other pressing matters at hand. If she would listen, the woman, seeking revenge for the destruction of the only chance at a happy life she has ever known, might learn that she and the man, guiding her through the harsh terrain of this land, have much more in common than she or he could imagine.

Writer/director Jennifer Kent's film is about a lot of things—revenge, survival in the wilderness, dehumanization through racism, the effects of colonization on a land and a people, the cruelty of men and the apathy of the world (Characters repeatedly look up to sky, searching for help, because none is coming from anyone or anything on the ground). It is also about communication and the lack thereof.

Clare (Aisling Franciosi) could hear what her guide has to say and understand something about him, herself, and her situation. She does eventually, and so, too, does Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), the aboriginal guide, to Clare's story. In the mere act of listening and trying to understand is some semblance of hope and salvation in this world, seemingly drained of such good things.

It takes a long time—filled with misery upon misery, indeed, from start to finish—for Kent to arrive at this minimal glimmer of optimism. Even then, the little chance we see for some hope is dashed by logic and history. After what Clare does, there likely is no happy ending for her. This is Australia in 1825, and knowing what will happen to the indigenous people of Australia, following this first assault by a now-official colonizing force, there is no solace in store for Billy, either.

Make no mistake about it: This is a devastating film, which depicts horrible acts of violence, perpetrated by pitiless men and our desperate, wounded protagonists. Kent is unapologetic in her approach to these cruel acts, because they need to be seen that way.

The story opens with the first and, perhaps, final images of genuine happiness, with Clare lying in bed next to her slumbering baby daughter, as her husband Aidan (Michael Sheasby) awakens her with words of love. The two work at a British military base a horse ride away from their hut. One night, Clare sings for the soldiers at the behest of Leftenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin, in an intimidating performance).

After, Hawkins calls Clare to his quarters, where he gives her jewelry, reminds her that her future freedom is at his discretion, and proceeds to rape her. Kent presents this and two other scenes of sexual violence as just that—terrible violence (It does not make the scenes any easier, but the approach evades any possibility of exploiting the crimes in any other way or for any other purpose).

Aidan tries to convince Hawkins to give Clare her freedom. A fight erupts. Later, the officer and two other soldiers, Ruse (Damon Herriman) and Jago (Harry Greenwood), arrive at the couple's hut. By the end of the horrific episode, Aidan and the baby are dead, and Clare is unconscious. She awakens and enlists Billy as her tracker with a sole purpose: to hunt down the murderers, who have gone north through the wild so Hawkins can argue for a promotion at another outpost, and avenge her family.

At a foundational level, the plot is little more than a revenge tale. The story follows Clare and Billy, as they search for the soldiers and, along the way, encounter assorted horrors—from lynched indigenous men to a family watching as their home burns—and obstacles—assorted farmers and hunters want Billy dead, simply because of the color of his skin, and suspect that Clare would be an easy target. It also follows the soldiers, as Hawkins and his underlings—led by Uncle Charlie (Charlie Jampijinpa Brown), also demeaned as "boy," and accompanied by a trio of convict servants, including a young boy (played by Charlie Shotwell), whom Hawkins teaches to hate and use a pistol—cause even more suffering.

This simple plot, though, is merely the backbone of a much larger, much more nuanced examination of various levels of cruelty and horror, as well as grief and trauma. Here, on full and dreadful display, is the merciless behavior of men who only know how to communicate through violence, because they were raised that way, trained that way, or, perhaps in the case of Hawkins, born that way. They hear the pleas of other human beings—men, women, and children—and continue with their brutality anyway.

It's not that they don't understand. No one could mistake the cries of a mother, trying to protect her child, or the pleas of a husband, begging for the life of his wife, in any language. These men understand. They simply refuse to acknowledge, care, or, for the guilt-ridden Jago, attempt to stop what's happening.

These acts, as Clare and Billy find her targets, are also those of our hopeless protagonists. They have had everything taken from them and who, helpless, perceive that doing the taking for once is the only response.

Unlike the men, though, Clare is haunted by her actions, both in the moment (She lets out a spontaneous sob of anguish when her first victim lets out a single word of childlike innocence) and through nightmarish sequences that put a tangible quality to legitimate guilt. A dream of dancing with Aidan becomes a twisted waltz with his murderers, including the battered face of the man she recently has killed. Franciosi's performance is an ever-evolving astonishment in how she portrays Clare existing in this oftentimes conflicted state of pain, resentment, remorse, defeat, and resilience.

The real achievement of The Nightingale, though, is how Kent evolves this tale, from one of single-minded vengeance to the realization that an entire country and people need to be avenged. It may be Clare's story at first and, through her, the story of men's targeted violence toward women. Later, it's also Billy's story and, through him, the story of an empire's destructive violence toward indigenous people. By the end, it is simply but profoundly the story of how violence, casually enacted for no reason or seemingly justified for good reason, serves as its own fuel.

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