On The Screen Review: The Nightingale

Con’s Score: 3.5 Blackbirds

The only real conflict experienced on Australian soil was “The Black Wars” against the Indigenous Australians. I don’t have to tell you the black fellas lost. In Tasmania they were wiped out. But the brutality of the times extended to women and to convicts. Writer-director Jennifer Kent (The Babadook) has chosen a terrain as difficult as her characters to conquer in this bitter tale.

Clare (Aisling Franciosi) is a 21 year old convict who can sing and her English owner Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin). Clare wants to settle down with her baby and convict husband, Aiden (Michael Sheasby), but Hawkins won’t give her the freedom she’s earned.

When Aiden lets his Irish temper get the better of him, tragedy ensues. Hawkins and his Sergeant Ruse, (Damon Herriman), Ensign Jango (Harry Greenwood) and tracker, Charlie (Charlie Jampijinpa Brown) head to Launceston. Clare grabs a tracker, Billy, (Baykali Ganambarr) also known as Mangana (Blackbird) to follow them, seeking revenge. You know it’s not going to end well when such hate is in the air.

Jennifer Kent shot this in the Academy ratio (1.375:1) as she didn’t want this to become a Tasmanian travelogue. Fair enough. It took me a while to notice due to the intensity of what was happening on screen. This film also got lots of comment during the Sydney Film Festival due to the brutality of the rape scenes. Apparently there were walkouts. (Someone who was there told me it was only one loud woman, so it must have been media exaggeration.)

If there were others, it was probably due to the realistic approach Kent took that triggered some bad memories for victims. But she’s not glamourising or diminishing the violence of the times. It’s ugly, so be warned, but it’s not excessive or gratuitous in any way. No one left the audience preview I attended, and it would be a shame if people remember this film for that reason. It has a lot more to say.

The acting here is flawless. There is a developing relationship between Clare and Billy that isn’t overplayed at all, and Franciosi and newcomer Ganambarr are so spot on, it hurts to see them suffer. Sam Claflin usually plays romantic leads, and he plays a muderous narcissist very well. I felt some of his dialogue and characterisation were a bit simplistic but Damon Herriman does a better job of finding levels within an evil character.

Kent wants us to look at the harsh, bloody history of Australia. As she says, colonialisation destroys everything in its path, including the conqueror. It was during her research in Tasmania, a plaque at a solitary confinement cell revealed many convict women were serial offenders. They preferred confinement to being with their English masters. It’s when she realised the reason why that this story unfolded for her.

Maybe if we were all taught this at school, recognising Indigenous people in the Constitution would be no-brainer. It’s a pity we’ve had ‘leaders’ who refused to say sorry for a stolen generation or would call this a black armband view of history. Every last Aboriginal, bar one, was murdered in Tasmania. Try understanding that. Sometimes the anger of that injustice, and the despair of trying to tell it, is hard to contain. This lapses in a few places with its dialogue and harsh imagery, but not its heart. This story needs to be told. I hope Australians are brave enough to hear it.

Con Nats – On The Screen