The Nightingale | Little White Lies

The Nightin­gale

26 Nov 2019 / Released: 29 Nov 2019

A woman wearing a green dress stands in a dimly lit room, surrounded by other people, some of whom have their hands raised, as if in conversation.
A woman wearing a green dress stands in a dimly lit room, surrounded by other people, some of whom have their hands raised, as if in conversation.
4

Anticipation.

The Babadook was a hoot, but this looks to be very different.

5

Enjoyment.

Gruelling but intensely rewarding, it repays multiple viewings.

5

In Retrospect.

A fearless, breathtaking masterpiece.

Jen­nifer Kent fol­lows up The Babadook with a gru­elling yet vital por­trait of colo­nial­ism in 19th cen­tu­ry Tasmania.

Fol­low­ing 2014’s mater­nal­ly-ori­ent­ed ghost sto­ry The Babadook, direc­tor Jen­nifer Kent’s sec­ond fea­ture The Nightin­gale has proved far more divi­sive with crit­ics, many of them decry­ing its rep­re­sen­ta­tions of sex­u­al vio­lence as gra­tu­itous. The film fea­tures scenes of rape and mur­der, cen­tres on a char­ac­ter who is not entire­ly sym­pa­thet­ic, and does not make things right by the end. But none of these ele­ments on their own are objectionable.

Cin­e­ma is not a num­bers game, and a film is not the sum of its parts. A direc­tor does not win fem­i­nist points by can­celling out a sex­ist ele­ment in their film with an engi­neered clap­back”. The Nightin­gale is a refresh­ing, nec­es­sary reminder that sex­u­al vio­lence isn’t just a trendy top­ic that exists sole­ly in the abstract, but is pri­mar­i­ly some­thing expe­ri­enced which can­not be reduced to a film trope or eas­i­ly pre­vent­ed in real life.

Set in Tas­ma­nia cir­ca 1825, the film cen­tres on Clare (Ais­ling Fran­ciosi), an Irish con­vict liv­ing in a British penal colony with her hus­band and infant child. When her fam­i­ly is killed by a rogue band of British sol­diers (led by Sam Claflin’s short-tem­pered and vicious Hawkins) who rape her and leave her for dead, Clare sets off on a dan­ger­ous jour­ney across the Aus­tralian bush to find and kill her attackers.

But this is not a rape-revenge movie. It does not take the famil­iar nar­ra­tive turns which allow view­ers to take refuge from the hor­ror as it plays out on screen. And it isn’t an alle­go­ry like Coralie Fargeat’s stylised and emo­tion­al­ly height­ened 2017 film, Revenge. Rather, the film cen­tres on the expe­ri­ence of sex­u­al vio­lence on a pure­ly indi­vid­ual level.

A young woman with a pained expression, her face bloodied and bruised, staring directly at the camera against a dark background.

Kent empha­sis­es the speci­fici­ty of Clare’s sto­ry through­out, most clear­ly when she shows us the assault in a long, unin­ter­rupt­ed sequence, ren­der­ing both its moment-to-moment ter­ror and the details which make it unique. As such, the direc­tor does not reduce Clare’s rape to a mere nar­ra­tive device – a break, a demar­ca­tion with­out con­sis­ten­cy. But per­haps more impor­tant­ly, the length and speci­fici­ty of that sequence also chal­lenge our desire to relate”: though we cer­tain­ly feel bad for Clare, her assault and sto­ry are hers alone.

Kent fur­ther obstructs the impulse to find some­one to iden­ti­fy with, root for and hold on to in this world of pain by por­tray­ing Clare as a racist through her inter­ac­tions with indige­nous track­er Bil­ly (Baykali Ganam­barr). Though Clare even­tu­al­ly comes to like him, their bond is not sym­bol­ic of some wider, ahis­tor­i­cal break­through, and the film nev­er tries to equate her expe­ri­ence of sex­ism with his deal­ings of racism. These are two char­ac­ters on par­al­lel paths, deal­ing with par­al­lel demons. They can­not begin to ful­ly under­stand each other’s trau­ma. All they can do is act based on what they gath­er from their own spe­cif­ic, unique perspective.

In Kent’s beau­ti­ful­ly bal­anced and exquis­ite­ly shot film, this is the best you can do for some­one with­out negat­ing their expe­ri­ence or agency. The Nightin­gale sim­i­lar­ly does not ask its audi­ence to iden­ti­fy with, root for, or relate to any of its char­ac­ters. It only tells us to watch and to listen.

You might like