By Alice Micheli
If I had to sum this film up in one word it would it would be: brutal. From the first thirty minutes it hits you hard. However, within this niche is where you can find Aussie filmmaker Jennifer Kent achieving her best work.
In convict Australia, a young Irish woman Claire sets off on a vengeance-fuelled hunt after a British Officer destroys all she loves in one violent night. To assist her plight, she hires a young Aboriginal tracker, Billy, who has experienced his own trauma at the hands of the British Army.
Having come off the widely successful film,The Babadook, there was curiosity as to what Kent would deliver for her next big story. Having already proven that she can handle the psychological thriller/horror genre in a new and creative way, it would be interesting to see if she could lend these talents to other kinds of stories. This is what she has managed to do in The Nightingale. Depicting an often untold part of the world’s history, she explores the convict era of early Australia. She manages to tell both the story of the British convicts, ripped from their homeland and taken to the furthest reaches of the world, and of the Aboriginal people who were invaded and killed in one of the most brutal points in the Earth’s collective memory.
This is achieved by her teaming up a symbol of each people, as they work together to take down those who have taken everything from them in every way possible. In fact it would be easy to derive deeper meaning into the world of this film, and to view it on a metaphorical level as well. This multi-layered storytelling wouldn’t work if the cast didn’t have the talent to back it up.
Papandrea holds the movie within her grasp for its entire runtime. You have to believe her for every second, for if it were to waver, it would collapse. She effortlessly moves from victim to punisher to PTSD survivor, while also managing to sprinkle in sparks of tenderness during its quiet moments. It was a task-and-a-half that she managed to achieve with flying colours. With ability like the one she’s shown in this, I’ll be very interested to see where she goes next.
Ganambar is equally captivating as the Aboriginal tracker. Sarcastic, annoyed and frustrated, you can sense the humanity seeping through even during his more callous moments. This makes it more believable when he starts to open up to Clare as they continue in their travels and begin to create a reluctant acquaintanceship.
Finally, it’s rare that the character one portrays is that of pure evil, of that sort that seems entirely unredeemable. Not only because generally these tend to be rather 2 dimensional in their delivery, but also because it’s a risky move for any young actor to make. If the villain they’re playing is charismatic, or has a heart of gold then that’s a chance to show off prowess and have fun doing it. However the role Claflin has taken on is very much a thankless one. Not only is he of the temperament identified earlier, but he has almost no redeeming qualities, making it very difficult to witness his acts of cruelty. Having said all that, Claflin manages to sell it, and boy does he sell it well. Harkening back to his earlier days as pretty-boy-good-guy in The Hunger Gamesfranchise, you can see that there’s been growth in both his ability as well as his choices.
It’s worth reiterating that this is not viewing for the faint hearted. Not only are the themes hard to swallow in their depiction, the acts that are shown on screen are so brutal that it resulted in several walkouts in the cinema I was in. It doesn’t hold back, with lots of psychological and physical violence pervading every pore of every frame. It’s not torture porn, per se, but what it does is show the limits of humanity, and its effects on those who are victims to those limits. At times, it can be said that it gets too much, even for the story its telling.
It’s a tale of change, of trials and tribulations and of the massacre of culture. It’s a story of how far a person can go when pushed, and how one vicious act can result in the shifting of worlds.
Not an easy watch, but certainly powerful in what it delivers, The Nightingaleis sure to leave audiences thinking of the world’s bloody history long after the credits roll.