1/10/2024 0 Comments The nightingale movie![]() ![]() Kent’s respect for the culture, along with her brave decision to concentrate on the period’s vicious (and casual) sadism, pays off. The credits for the production are filled with the names of locals. The dialogue is delivered in English, Gaelic, and the native tongue of Palawi Kani, (which translates as ‘Tasmanian Aborigines speak’). The Irish songs “Nightingale” and “Siuil A Run” (Walk my Love) are sung in both English and Gaelic - both feature plaintive lyrics. Kent not only carefully recreates the period’s clothing and interiors, but shot the film on locations around Tasmania with an aboriginal advisor. The treatment of the Aborigine people and of women in general is conveyed through deeply haunting images. The pace is relentless and the chaos of life on the island is recreated with careful attention to detail. Retribution drives the narrative, but there is a broader political point being made. In Tasmania during the early nineteenth century, rape, murder, and enslavement are part of a strategy to eradicate its native people. Cruelty towards powerless inmates is exceeded only by the horrors heaped upon the indigenous tribes. The Nightingale is - at times - a self-consciously punishing film. Bent on revenge, and seeking justice, Clair conscripts an Aboriginal tracker Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) and, with a single horse, she doggedly sets off in pursuit of the lieutenant.Īs she did with her horror thriller The Babadook, director Jennifer Kent knows how to get under the viewer’s skin. Meanwhile, Hawkins’ expected promotion to captain is threatened and he is forced to make his way through the jungle town of Launceston to plead for his commission. Flush with power and liquor, the cowardly Hawkins seems to enjoy brutalizing the family. Hawkins, Clare’s abuser, refuses to release the woman from servitude, despite pleas from her husband. Her angelic voice barely stifles their lechery, the loudest lout being Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), the reprobate who is in charge of these bedraggled troops. We first see her paraded out to sing before a drunken group of soldiers. She resides, as a sort of indentured servant, on the island with her husband and infant daughter. Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale is set in the geographical cul-de-sac of Tasmania in 1825, where 21-year-old Clare (Aisling Franciosi) has completed a 7-year sentence for an unnamed petty crime. Now screening at the Kendall and Coolidge Corner Theaters A scene featuring Aisling Franciosi in “The Nightingale.” The Nightingale, directed by Jennifer Kent. The Nightingale is in cinemas from August 29.The Nightingale delivers an indelible vision of inhumanity perpetuated by colonialism and white privilege. However, if The Nightingale falls short of its lofty ideals, that doesn't stymie its significance as an affecting cinematic reckoning with the unremitting ugliness of Australia's colonial history. Ganambarr is magnetic as the canny tracker, but the fact that Kent contrives to have Billy and Clare develop an alliance that verges on romance has a touch of white-guilt-fuelled fantasy to it. Well, yes and no.Īs a white Australian, I'm not quite sure how to feel about the genocide of the Aboriginal Tasmanians being framed as a black character's motivation for bonding with a white one, even if she's "Irish convict scum". "You know what it's like to have a white fella take everything you have," Billy tells Clare after they establish their mutual hatred of the English. That said, the graphic content doesn't feel gratuitous - at least, not in the sense of the term that applies to Gaspar Noé, for instance, or Quentin Tarantino, as directors who revel in depicting various bodily violations.įranciosi secured the role of Clare after sending Kent an audition tape of herself singing Irish folk song Siúil Á Run. Its depiction of sexual violence, in particular, has been a source of controversy, with a number of patrons walking out of screenings at this year's Sydney Film Festival.Ĭertainly, The Nightingale warrants a trigger warning. It is the Lieutenant's need to control Clare - to bend her mind and body to his will, by whatever cruelly performative means he deems necessary - that results in her family being killed as she looks on, no more able to intervene than those in the audience.Ĭoming early in the film, this scene is highly confronting. Hawkins has refused to set her free since she completed her sentence some months back - too enamoured is he with her sweet singing voice, and with the masochistic thrill he clearly gets from owning human property (especially such a fine-looking piece). Kent says she wanted the film to tell a story of violence from a female perspective.
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