where the European settlers are engaged in a war of
extermination against the Indigenous population.
It’s a plot that has served a thousand revenge
films, and you can draw parallels with Joseph
Conrad’sHeart Of Darkness/ Francis Ford
Coppola’sApocalypse Nowfairly readily, as events
becomes more violent, more horrific, more obscene
and surreal as we proceed – which is saying
something about a film whose first act is packed
with enough nightmare material to serve any three
other movies. The key difference is that the typical
revenge flick trucks in catharsis – terrible wrongs are
wrought on the protagonist and, eventually, bloody
retribution is meted out.The Nightingalerefuses
such niceties – Clare’s quest for justice only brings
more horror and hopelessness.
Irish-Italian actor Aisling Franciosi is
absolutely mesmerising as the hellbent Clare, her
face almost constantly twisted by anger and grief.
The script asks a lot of Franciosi and she is
resolutely up to the task, her character enduring and
be receptive to such a harrowing film, and in the
current fairly conservative creative climate that’s
wholly understandable.
But there is value in testing ourselves, as
viewers, against such material.The Nightingale’s
seemingly endless litany or rape, murder, and
genocide is not staged to titillate or excite us, but to
force us to contend with our own collective past and
our identity as a colonial nation, and to do so in a
visceral rather than intellectual way. It’s one thing to
know that Australia was founded on murder and
exploitation, it’s quite another to feel it in your
bones.The Nightingalemakes us feel it, and that’s no
small cinematic achievement.TRAVIS JOHNSONdishing out all manner of awfulness over the course
of the film. By contrast, Baykali Ganambarr, a
dancer from Arnhem land making his feature film
debut here, plays Billy with a resonant sense of
downbeat, stoic misery – as an Indigenous man he is
almost inured to the injustices of the world. While
Clare’s anger is a raging fire, Billy’s smolders. The
film repeatedly parallels the duo, inviting us to
compare and contrast what they have endured, how
they have been wronged, their commonalities and
their differences as victims of the colonial patriarchy.
But to what end? To say thatThe Nightingaleis
a tough watch is almost comically understating the
situation; audience walk outs have been a fixture of
every festival screening and will no doubt continue
as the film sees wide release. Fans of Kent’s previous
filmThe Babadookare in for a shock; this is a
million miles away from that hit horror both in
intensity and intent. The long delay in release – it’s
been a year since it debuted at festivals – indicate a
certain wariness about what kind of audience mightBaykali
Ganambarr’s
tracker Billy,
Aisling Franciosi’s
pursuer Clare and
Sam Claflin’s prey
Hawkins.ON SCREEN
VERDICTA shocking, relentlessly violent
examination of the horrors of colonialism,
The Nightingaleis nonetheless a serious and
provocative piece of cinema, and easily the
best Australian film of the year.