Every week that it was in theater, I debated about whether or not to see The Nightingale in theaters. Jennifer Kent directed this film, and her directorial feature film debut was The Babadook, which I am one of the few people who was not a fan. At a two hour sixteen minute runtime, it was a big commitment, especially going in knowing that it would be filled with rape on the big screen. Also I am familiar enough with Australian films that even without the rape, they tend to be brutal, bleak and violent for me, and I have an unusually high threshold for graphic content. Are they masterpieces? Yes, but disturbing, fact-based, haunting portraits of a fundamentally fallen world, and those are the films not set in the past.
On the other hand, by financially supporting The Nightingale, I would be supporting a woman director and Aboriginal actors, people who do not get a lot of representation in the film industry. Ultimately I decided against seeing the film in theaters. I just did not want to traumatize myself during my free time and have the images seared in my brain. At least if I watched it at home, I would not be completely immersed in a dark theater with no other surrounding stimulus to dilute the impact so while it definitely deserves the big screen treatment, I would never recommend going through such an unremittingly punishing film under those conditions.
Set in 1825, The Nightingale’s protagonist is Claire, an Irish convict woman who has served her time, but Hawkins, a British officer, whom Sam Claflin plays, refuses to release her. If the movie ever strained my suspension of disbelief, it is that this British officer ever allowed Claire to be happy long enough to get married and have a child. I have been watching Claflin for awhile, and he is more memorable as a villain than an affable guy. After Claire experiences yet another series of unredeemable losses, she enlists Billy, an Aboriginal tracker, to guide her under false pretenses, and during their journey, they both begin to see each other as people and abandon preconceptions of the other based on race. Her journey with her tracker is compared and contrasted with the journey of the British officer who is trying to get a promotion. Will they overcome the dangers of their journey, reach their destination and achieve their goals?
If reading The Nightingale’s description makes you think it is just an earlier period Walking Ms. Daisy, then please let me reassure you that it is not although there was an inherent danger of it, which Kent deftly avoided because she is not American. If an American made this film, Kent would have them exchange some ridiculous platitudes about their friendship or be determined to make the point that the Irish were slaves too. Kent has the characters find a Venn diagram of shared pain and a common enemy as a foundation for their relationship, but she never engages in oppression Olympics to create a hierarchy of suffering to suggest that either’s experience is worse than the other’s. Her film is incredibly intersectional as she constantly shifts by showing the levels of privilege and what inhumane conditions exist for privilege to exist. Claire basically has an insensitive reset button that must get pressed every night with respect to Billy. When they eventually ally themselves to the other, they are still apart and separate, but visually Kent reflects their unity when Claire literally gets down from her high horse, or in the particular scene that I am thinking of, a carriage and decides to walk with Billy. It is one of the most beautiful moments in the film because it finally signifies that Claire is willing to give up her privilege or use it to protect him and take on an additional burden when she is already severely weighed down with her own troubles.
People complain about the graphic nature of The Nightingale. To those people, I say fuck you. I am a Black woman, and I think Kent nailed the horror of a white supremacist, occupied nation and how wretched life would be for natives, women, children and other men. If Claire and Billy’s journey is rough, but eventually leads to unity after gradually abandoning privilege, Hawkins’ journey is a nightmarish journey which always requires a dehumanizing hierarchy for privilege to be asserted over everyone even those near the top of the mountain. The scariest moment is how Eddie, a young convict, is eagerly trying to impress Hawkins. He is not innately a bad kid, but by deciding the wrong person to emulate, just like this society chooses the wrong person to reward, he is embracing toxic masculinity. He would eventually become a monster.
I have to applaud Kent for basically engaging in a little bait and switch with The Nightingale. Audiences going to see a period film generally do not expect to get confronted with the unpleasant realities of history or at least expected it to be limited to the mistreatment of women, but Kent is unflinching in her depiction of the genocide of the Aboriginal people and gradually those characters’ suffering take center stage, which was not apparent in the marketing of this film and probably further enraged audiences. Kent really understands how the hate tree works. If a person is willing to rape and kill other white people whom he sees as less than because of their criminal status or country of origin, then black people do not stand a chance. I do not know a lot about Australian history, but if it shares any similarities with American history, they probably are not confronted with seeing revered ancestors as agents of genocide. She is not afraid to make her protagonist ahistorical and fearlessly makes her just as biased as her tormentors. If Claire can barely take a step without crossing the path of a rapist, Billy only meets one person who is not an Aboriginal person that treats him like a human being, and it is not a woman. I love that Kent does not adhere to the gender bias belief that all women are good and perfect.
Kent made The Nightingale after experiencing a loss herself, and I know that it is not my business, but I am curious what it is. It sounded like this film was a way of confronting that loss and the idea of how one retains humanity and exploring an alternative to the traditional rape revenge story. I appreciate that she did not ever suggest that violence against the violent was an inappropriate reaction or calls for nonviolence. The denouement carves out room by creating a spectrum of responses: the truth and violence, but also shows that regardless of the victim’s reaction to the offender, there really is nowhere to go, no sufficient remedy or hope of rest when the system that made the offender possible is still in place. It is a poetically, beautiful desolation. Civilization is the wilderness, and the wilderness is civilization.
The Nightingale is a great movie, but it is depressing in its embrace of an honest look backwards in order for us to move forward, abandon the promotion of the Hawkins and protect the Claires and Billys of our world.