THE NIGHTINGALE - MIFF 2019

Back in 2014, Australian director Jennifer Kent announced herself to the filmmaking world with her superior horror film “The Babadook”. The film was met with high praise from critics and it became quite the international hit. It is fair to say that Kent probably earned enough goodwill from “The Babadook” to be blessed with the opportunity to choose whatever she wanted as her follow up. No doubt Hollywood was calling, but instead Kent chose to stay in Australia to make “The Nightingale”, a much different kind of horror film than its predecessor.

Set in 1825, Clare, a young Irish convict woman, along with her Aboriginal tracker, chases a British officer through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family.

“The Nightingale” premiered back in September of 2018 at the Venice Film Festival and was immediately thrust into controversy over the sheer brutality and unrelenting violence contained within the film. Calling the film divisive would be an understatement as some viewers, like the director herself, felt the violence was justified to be true to the climate of when the film is set and to Clare's experiences, whilst other people felt that Kent revelled in the violence and that after awhile it became gratuitous. Walk outs were a regular occurrence whenever “The Nightingale” screened, so going into seeing the film I knew that I was in for a harrowing and uncomfortable cinema experience, but off the back of her work on “The Babadook”, I trusted Kent to deliver. Once the film was over, I sat there stunned for a bit. It was the exhausting, harrowing experience I had heard, and while the film did have its good moments, what I was most surprised about was just how mediocre “The Nightingale” turned out to be.

The biggest flaw of the film is the characterisations of the villains which border on caricature. This is due to a combination of poor performances and average writing. The character of Hawkins, the British officer Clare is chasing, is terrible. He is the quintessential villain and never once comes across as a real person. There are no shades of grey to this guy, he is just bad; constantly scowling while abusing his power, and forever doing vile things to anyone who may cross his path. He wouldn't feel out of place as the villain in a bad James Bond knock off, which is bad enough, but when your film is meant to reflect a reality of the past, as opposed to a cinematic fantasy, it almost kills the film. Sam Calflin's performance in the role is not great, but upon reflection I feel like the poor guy hasn't been given a hell of a lot to work with, thanks to Kent's banal and stereotypical dialogue. Damon Herriman, who plays the secondary bad guy Ruse, fares just as poorly, which is a surprise because he is quite a good actor.

The other aspect of the film that I was really disappointed in was the visual style of the film. While I was not expecting a repeat of the stylised world of “The Babadook”, I feel that Kent actually struggled with the gritty “real world” aesthetics in her latest film. At times the images had a very amateur feel to them, almost a point and shoot type look, which was puzzling because at other times the images had an almost poetic feel to them. Also her decision to shoot the film in the square aspect ration was an odd one. I normally love it when directors go against the grain and compose their images for the 1:33 frame, but I just do not feel Kent did anything interesting or meaningful with it.

I guess it is now time to talk about my own opinions on the violence and brutality within “The Nightingale” and to be honest, I am a little on the fence with it, because once again, some of it works very well, whilst other times the violence has no weight to it at all. That is what makes this film so frustrating. I must admit that I did think that Jennifer Kent ended up going overboard with the unrelenting violence throughout the film and by the end, I was actually getting quite angry with it. Now I am not someone who is easily offended by anything in cinema, particularly violence but this is a film with at least four different rapes in it, and eventually you have to say enough is enough. We get it; times were tough on women and the Aboriginals. However, what is surprising is that the rape scenes themselves are not very graphic at all. What makes these scenes harrowing to sit through are the women's sobbing and screams throughout their ordeals. It is horrific and it is in these scenes that the walkouts start to begin. One incident that I think Kent handled perfectly though is the triggering event that initiates the plot. It is quick, brutal, as shocking as can be, but is never dwelled upon. The actual moment is also shot in a way that you never truly see anything but completely feel the impact of it. It knocks the air out of you, as you sit there stunned. It is a sickening moment but a great one for the film itself. So powerful is this moment that I heard people behind me crying. But is all the violence justified in the film? I am still asking myself this question and my answer is that it is justified in the fact that it is faithful to the times and the world presented within “The Nightingale” but the fact that it is so unrelenting with almost no moments of levity to give the audience a chance to breathe, the violence ends up losing its meaning and it actually does start to feel like Kent is beginning to revel in the pain and suffering of her characters, which is obviously problematic. One decision that I will commend Kent on is the fact that “The Nightingale” has no musical score, as having these violent altercations being punctuated by music would have been right on the nose.

Where the film does work wonderfully well is in its depiction of the colonisation of Australia and the harsh reality that the foundations of this beautiful country we love are built on. Kent does not shy away from the fact that this country was taken away from the indigenous people of the land in the most violent manners, raping and murdering the locals to make way for the incoming white folk. This is the second film I have seen at MIFF this year dealing with these issues (the other was the documentary “The Australian Dream”) and both films do so with complete care to the truth. Scenes like the chain gang of Aboriginal men or the hanging corpses from the trees are very powerful and an indictment on the treatment of the original custodians of this land. Kent is also successful at exposing the power dynamics created via class, gender or race during this time.

The other big asset this film has is Aisling Franciosi, who plays Clare, and her powerful performance that sees her begin the film as a sweet, innocent girl just wanting to be home with her husband in Ireland who then transforms into a powder keg of revenge who could at any moment explode. Whilst the transformation is quick, it is very believable and Franciosi becomes almost unrecognisable from the girl previous within seconds. She then has to keep this heightened emotion up for the entirety of the film and does so with ease. It is not only that that makes Franciosi's performance so impressive, she also has to speak and sing in multiple languages throughout the film, and does so beautifully. Kent has also confirmed that the singing voice heard in the film is indeed that of Franciosi, and the song she sings at the end of the film is heartbreakingly powerful. Until now I have barely mentioned the character of Billy, who is Clare's Aboriginal tracker. I actually have some misgivings about the character as he comes across as far too modern in the film. Mainly due to the clothes Billy wears, I never believe that he is from the 1800's, rather he is an actor from today plopped into a film set in those times. I also wasn't a huge fan of Baykali Ganambarr's performance in the role either, at least initially as by the end of the film I ended up liking it quite a bit. He has a fantastic moment when Billy breaks down crying “This is my home! This is my country”, bewildered by the way he is currently treated as a lesser person in his own backyard. I also liked the juxtapositions between the journeys both Billy and Clare take which also highlight the similarities the two have lived through.

Overall, while there are elements with “The Nightingale” that do work well, at the end of the day, it was quite the disappointment. The film is bound to be divisive due to the violence and never ending bleakness of the story. While I personally thought that the violence within the film ended up being problematic, Kent's honest depiction of the colonisation of Australia makes the film at least worth watching, but I still cannot help feeling that it is sadly a mediocre film. What cannot be denied though is that “The Nightingale” is an exhausting and harrowing cinema experience, so prepare for that before watching the film.

2.5 Stars.