Movie Review: The Nightingale

The Nightingale **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Jennifer Kent.

Written by: Jennifer Kent.

Starring: Aisling Franciosi (Clare), Sam Claflin (Hawkins), Baykali Ganambarr (Billy), Damon Herriman (Ruse), Harry Greenwood (Jago), Ewen Leslie (Goodwin), Charlie Shotwell (Eddie), Michael Sheasby (Aidan), Matthew Sunderland (Davey), Magnolia Maymuru (Lowanna), Christopher Stollery (Major Bexley), Nathaniel Dean (Stoakes), Claire Jones (Harriet), Luke Carroll (Archie), Dallas Mugarra (Lowanna's Husband).

 

Jennifer Kent’s debut film, The Babadook, was one of the best debut films of the decade – and one of the best horror films of the decade as well – the story of parental terror where the main character is a mother who has to come to terms with the fact that she may hate her son – and keep that monster at bay. Her follow-up film, The Nightingale, isn’t a horror film at all really – although it certainly is as horrifying and unrelenting as any horror film could be. It is a film set in 1825 Australia and it is a film about colonialization and exploitation made extremely personal, as it becomes a slow moving game of cat and a mouse. It is a difficult film to watch – the first act in particular is unrelenting – but it’s a brilliant one in many ways, as Kent fully establishes herself as an artist with a lot to say, and no fear of saying it all.

 

Clare (Aisling Franciosi) is a young, Irish woman sent to Australia to serve out an absurdly long prison stretch for some petty teenage crimes. She has served her time however – married another Irish convict, and given birth to a beautiful baby girl. All she wants is her freedom – and Hawkins (Sam Clafin) can give it to her simply by writing a letter. He keeps promising, but never does it. Hawkins, a British Military Officer, doesn’t like where he’s been stationed – in the middle of nowhere – or the men under him, all losers he thinks – and he was only supposed to be there for a year, and now it been three. When another officer arrives, apparently to rubber stamp his transfer, Hawkins is frustrated once again. When Hawkins gets frustrated, those around him suffer – in particular Clare who he been raping for years, but she just has to suck it up and move on. What happens this time however is not something she can just suck up and move on from. When she finds that Hawkins and a few of his men have fled in the middle of the night – apparently going to get that job that may not be his – she gets her own Aboriginal guide, Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) and heads out into the woods hell-bent on revenge.

 

The Nightingale is a long film at 136 minutes. After the harrowing opening 30 minutes, the film settles down, slow down, a little as it establishes the slow growing relationship between Clare and Billy. Both are treated as nothing by the ruling British class – but at first, Clare looks at Billy with the same racism as the other white people do – she may be Irish, but she’s not a “black one”. In turn, Billy looks at Claire with the same eyes he looks at every white person – the people who have victimized him and his people, killing them, stealing their land, their way of life, etc. As the journey continues, of course, they find that as a woman with no power and an aboriginal with no power, they have a lot more in common with each other than they think. They are slowing making their way to Hawkins – whose group moves slowly, and commits other horrible crimes along the way.

 

I do think if there is a flaw in the film, it’s that Kent doesn’t quite know where to end it. After the long middle stretch of the film in the forest, the distance between Clare and Hawkins closes, as they are both in town. From there, Kent keeps bringing them together, and tearing them apart – one, two, three times – and certainly too often. The individual scenes work wonderfully – in particular a scene where Clare sings to Hawkins in front of the other officers, bookending a scene near the beginning where he exploited her singing, this time taking the power back. It’s just that there are a few too many of the scenes that do essentially the same thing – each separated by another retreat by Clare and Billy, who will of course come back again.

 

But that is a minor flaw in a major film by Kent – who lays it all out on the lines with The Nightingale, and doesn’t back down. She has a lot of big ideas – too many perhaps to cram into one film, and perhaps some will complain it’s another story of a white filmmaker telling an aboriginal story she doesn’t fully understand. But it’s the kind of brutal and unrelenting film that shocks you with violence, but has a hell of lot more to say than that. It’s not a film you’d probably want to watch more than once – but it’s one you won’t soon forget.

Movie Review: The Babadook

The Babadook
Directed by: Jennifer Kent.
Written by: Jennifer Kent.
Starring: Essie Davis (Amelia), Noah Wiseman (Samuel), Daniel Henshall (Robbie), Tim Purcell (The Babadook), Hayley McElhinney (Claire), Barbara West (Mrs. Roach), Chloe Hurn (Ruby).

The best horror movies do not just scare you, but tap into some sort of primal deep-seeded fear inside of you. The Babadook, which is among the best horror movies in recent years, taps into that kind of fear – it’s a movie that will be scary to everyone, but will be downright terrifying for parents. The Babadook is classically structured, and Kent directs it with precision and skill – stripping it down to its core elements, and making a claustrophobic horror film in the Roman Polanski vein (think 1965’s Repulsion of 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby). The film is scary, without ever resorting to cheap jump scares or gore, but when it’s all over, is perhaps even more disturbing than we realize. This is a new horror movie classic.

The film stars Essie Davis (in a performance that deserves to be placed along those by Catherine Denueve’s and Mia Farrow’s in those two Polanski movies mentioned earlier) as Amelia – a tired, weary, single mother. Her husband died in a car accident taking her to the hospital to have their son. That’s Samuel (Noah Wiseman), now 6, who is more than a handful. He’s convinced that any number of monsters are under his bed, in his closet, etc. – and spends much of his time crafting crude, but effective, weapons to protect him and his mother from them. The problem is that the weapons cause damage to their small house – and when he brings them to school, it causes concern for the principal and the teacher. They think Samuel is disturbed, and needs special help – and they just may be right. If he isn’t battling monsters, he’s constantly bugging Amelia – and the pair of them are getting almost no sleep. It’s a testament to young Wiseman’s performance as Samuel that we at once feel sympathy for the clearly distressed child – and yet understand completely why he is driving his mother slowly insane.

Things go from bad to worse with the appearance of strange, new children’s book – entitled Mister Babadook. This book isn’t dark in the way of some great kid’s books – but truly, completely dark and horrifying – pretty much threatening the lives of the reader. The drawings are in black and white – they look kind of like Tim Burton drawings – and the title character is some sort of demon, with long, sharp finger nails, wild eyes and a top hat. Samuel becomes convinced that Mister Babadook is real – and is coming for them. And Amelia slowly starts to expect as much herself – she cannot seem to destroy the book, and she starts seeing flashes that may just be him. Then at some point, you start to feel that Amelia herself is the real danger here.

The movie is somewhat ambiguous as to what precisely the Babadook is – and remains so right up until the end of the movie, leaving it to the viewers to decide if he is a shared delusion or a real, malevolent presence (the movie provides enough hints to support either reading, really). What the movie does brilliantly is offer the audience a shifting perspective. In the first half of the movie, you feel sympathy for Amelia, as her son is a handful, she has a tough job, an uncaring sister, and pretty much nothing going right. Samuel really is that annoying – especially when, like Amelia, you have no way to escape from him (when she is given an afternoon off work to go take care of him, tellingly the movie shows us her walking around the mall and eating ice cream, instead of going to get him). But at a certain point, the movie switches gear a little – we stop feeling sorry of Amelia, and start fearing her – and feeling sorry for Samuel, who is now in an even bigger nightmare than even felt was possible.

The Babadook works as a straight ahead horror movie. Writer/director Jennifer Kent knows how to make an audience jump, but does so with more skill and intelligence than most do. The Babadook himself is a scary figure – seen in glimpses, flashes, shadows, but always disturbing and creepy. As the film progresses, Kent traps her two main characters in their small house – a mini-masterwork in creepy art direction, and uses off-kilter cinematography to increase the strangeness of the house. The film is a low budget, Australian horror film – but is more effective as movie with much more money to spend.

But what makes The Babadook is great is how it taps into something greater than just scaring the audience. The movie is an unsettling and disturbing appearance for far more reasons than just the scares in it. This is a portrait of parenting that calls to mind We Need to Talk About Kevin – both the book and the movie – and will be all the more chilling to parents, who will undoubtedly recognize a little of themselves in Amelia.