"The Nightingale": review

A harrowing tale of rape, murder, racism, and revenge in 19th-century Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania), 2018's "The Nightingale," directed by talented Aussie Jennifer Kent, tells the story of young Clare Carroll (Aisling Franciosi, pronounced "ASH-ling fran-CHO-see"), a convict indentured to a cruel British lieutenant named Hawkins (Sam Claflin).  Clare is married to fellow indentured convict Aidan (Michael Sheasby), and they have a baby daughter.  The two have been hoping for release papers from Hawkins, but the lieutenant shows no sign of wanting to let go of his charges.  When a high-ranking officer comes to the homestead where Hawkins and his men are garrisoned, Hawkins sees a chance to ascend to the captaincy.  A man of cruel and base appetites, he also sets his lustful sights on Clare.  One thing leads to another, and Clare ends up raped while Aidan and her baby are killed.

That horror is the setup for the rest of the story.  Regaining consciousness after her rape, Clare wakes to the sight of her husband's and daughter's corpses.  Something curdles inside her, and she prepares to pursue Hawkins, who has left for the town of Launceston with a small detachment of men to plead his case for his hoped-for captaincy.  Unable to track the troops or survive in the bush on her own, Clare is obliged to retain an Aborigine named Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) to help her.  She initially lies to Billy, telling him that she is chasing after her husband.  She is also haughty and bigoted toward Billy, whom she addresses as "boy," in the manner of most of the other white characters in the film.

The story takes some unpredictable turns, but one predictable arc is that, as Clare and Billy get to know each other better, they also begin to fight through their respective bigotries and see each other as individuals worthy of respect and even friendship.  One thing they share is a hatred of the English:  Clare is Irish and has been oppressed by the English all her life; Billy has lost all of his family to them.  When Billy learns Clare's true purpose and then loses a favorite "uncle" named Charlie (Charlie Jampijinpa Brown), he decides to commit himself to the path of revenge alongside Clare.

Clare is the eponymous "Nightingale" in the story:  one of her duties, as a servant, was to sing to the troops—young men who all quietly lusted after her.  It was Hawkins who bestowed the nickname.  Billy, too, has an avian nickname:  Mangana, a type of Australian blackbird that Billy says can be a guide.  Birds are a recurrent trope in "The Nightingale," representing many spiritual qualities, but especially the yearning for freedom.  Much of the movie focuses on the plight of the Aboriginal people who must deal with the incursion of the white man.  Whites are portrayed—with only one or two exceptions—as universally cruel and rapacious, out of touch with nature, inhumane, and focused only on blood, pillage, murder, and rape as they participate in the irony of "civilizing" Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony just off Australia.

The movie is a strange combination of prudish and graphic.  The rape scene at the beginning is awful to behold, not to mention very hard to watch, but it's filmed—if this adverb has any place here—tastefully.  By that, I mean there's no actual nudity (cf. the horrific violation we see in "A Clockwork Orange" when Alex visits the home of Frank Alexander and rapes his wife); the raw reality of the rape is implied through the actions and emotions of the actors.  When it comes to violence, though, the movie pulls no punches.  We see a white man receive an Aboriginal spear through the throat, another man stabbed multiple times in the chest and bludgeoned in the face, and quite a few bloody shootings.  The overall effect of all this violence is depressing.  That's what I came away with, anyway:  1825-era Tasmania was a hell on earth, mainly thanks to the brutal European colonists.  Interestingly, although the film focuses so much on the depredations of the white man, there's a quiet moment in the story where Clare asks Billy whether there are, among the Aborigines, people as cruel and rapacious as Hawkins.  Billy sadly says yes.  When Clare asks how the tribe handles such people, Billy says that the elders try to talk sense to them through words and rituals.  Clare then wants to know what happens when those measures don't work.  "We kill them," Billy says matter-of-factly.

As revenge tales go, "The Nightingale" is nothing like "Kill Bill."  It's not fun; it's not flashy; it's not cartoonish; it doesn't end happily or triumphantly.  Clare is no Beatrix Kiddo; she has no talent for killing, and as it turns out, she has no real stomach for it, either, her fury toward Lieutenant Hawkins notwithstanding.  Jennifer Kent crafts a taut, steady-paced yarn that is as much a character study as it is a social commentary.  Clare, as our Irish protagonist, is not particularly likable, at first, despite the horror she endures:  she begins the story just as full of racism toward Aborigines as the English troops she claims to despise.  Billy undergoes his own character arc as well; Baykali Ganambarr's portrayal is full of roiling emotion as Billy goes from hating all whites to befriending at least one of them.

Overall, I found this to be a well-made film.  If I have one complaint, it's that Jennifer Kent sometimes fails to make clear where our characters are in relation to each other, which results in a bit of spatial confusion.  Aside from that, the cinematography is gorgeous, and the principals all do a marvelous job in their roles.  A special nod must go to Sam Claflin for portraying the utterly evil Lieutenant Hawkins; it didn't take long for me to start rooting for Hawkins's death.  From what I understand, early screenings of "The Nightingale" resulted in walkouts because people couldn't get past the horrific rape scene that opens the story.  The director is on record as standing by her artistic choices; she made "The Nightingale" while consulting with Aboriginal tribal elders who saw this as a chance to tell the harrowing tale of a brutal period in Australian history.  For that reason, Kent felt she had to hew as close to the truth as possible in depicting that era.  I don't know enough about Australian history to judge the historical accuracy of this film, but I can say that, as a story, it makes for a compelling, wrenching, memorable watch.  I recommend "The Nightingale" for the powerful performances, the beautiful cinematography, and the frank exploration of some thorny historical issues, but I know that anyone who watches this film will probably never want to watch it again.  While there is a quietly uplifting message to be had at the very end, the path to that ending is a deeply depressing via dolorosa.

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SPECIAL NOTE:  this marks the final movie in my iTunes queue.  I have a ton of movies in my Amazon Prime queue, so I guess I'll start watching those soon.  I certainly have no shortage of films to plow through; once I finish my Amazon Prime queue, I've got a slew of films on my iTunes wish list to purchase and then watch—especially now that I'm in a better financial position to do so!  I also have, on iTunes, several already-purchased TV series to binge-watch.  Which reminds me:  I need to buy "Psych" and Season 3 of "American Gods."