fellow prisoner Aidan (Michael Sheasby)
and mother to a newborn daughter, Clare is
compelled by Hawkins to regale the Brits
with nightly song and then repeatedly raped.
In retrospect, this cliché of the brutalized
songbird establishes a pattern of platitudes
that grows more apparent as the movie
works through the reverberations of its trau-
matic first act. I will spare you the details
that Kent does not; in a scene of unflinching
nastiness, Clare’s world is shattered, and the
story gets moving as a classical revenge saga.
Clare employs an Aboriginal guide
named Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) to help
her track down Hawkins and his goons,
and the first sign that The Nightingale
might have more on its mind than execut-
ing Clare’s retribution is the way she barks
commands at her “boy.” As they make
their way through the jungle, the shape of
the revenge epic in progress gradually
takes on the texture of something more
complex, with the sympathy we’re invited
to extend to a Woman Wronged starting to
fold back on itself. The domination of the
Irish by the British triangulates with the
indigenous people enslaved, literally or
ideologically, by both. Kent slides her
nominal protagonist into this middle posi-
tion with care, gradually subsuming the
injuries Clare suffers into the poisonous
logic of colonialism. At once victim and
perpetrator, rapt in vengeance but blind to
her own complicity, Clare is, pointedly, a
White Woman Wronged.The remainder of The Nightingale—
there’s quite a bit of it, trudging through
mud and blood and rubbing our faces in
both along the way—examines these nested
forms of colonial power. Is Clare’s mania for
revenge aimed at justice, or does it perpetu-
ate some fundamental colonial psychosis? Is
she an anti-hero or symptom, or both?
These tough-minded questions sustain a cer-
tain critical force in the face of mounting
bromides. Hawkins is a clownish villain, and
there’s something cheap in the way his acts
of brutality bid for our attention. The banal-
ity of his evil is itself a banality. Ganambarr
gives the more nimble, avid performance,
but his role is even more troubling, for if The
Nightingaleis finally a movie devoted to
anti-colonial consciousness-raising, Billy’s
central function is to serve as Clare’s
Sherpa up the mountain of Wokeness.
Lumbering through the final reel, her will
to vengeance diffused by the ordeal of her
journey and displaced by her rapport with
Billy, Clare ends up less an audience surro-
gate than an emblem of the film’s wavering
concentration. Kent is a genuine filmmaker
of ideas, but The Nightingale is clipped by
problems of form. The movie’s lack of sur-
prise and resort to cliché are part and parcel
of its faith that the more you illustrate colo-
nial violence, the closer you get to disclos-
ing its terror and denouncing its effects.Nathan Leeis a longtime contributor to
the magazine.70 |FILMCOMMENT| July-August 2019
Baykali Ganambarr gives a nimble performance, but his role is troubling: if The Nightingaleis finally a movie devoted to
anti-colonial consciousness-raising, Billy’s central function is to serve as Clare’s Sherpa up the mountain of Wokeness.
SHORT TAKE
RAY & LIZ
Director:
Richard Billingham
Country/Distributor:
UK, KimStim
Opening: July 10
A memoir in reen-
actments, Richard
Billingham’s long-
gestating feature
debut unfolds in
the Black Country
council flat (west of
Birmingham) where
he was raised, and
to which he’s
returned in his cele-
brated photogra-
phy collections and
his documentary
short Fishtank.
Named after his
parents, Ray & Liz
slides between
Billingham’s child-
hood and adoles-
cence—where the
narrative focus
comes to settle on
his little brother
Jason, a cherubic
wanderer subsisting
exclusively on
boxed bread—and
the present day,
which finds the
elderly Ray an alco-
holic shut-in paid
occasional visits by
Liz, still cantanker-
ous, obese, and
cowed by the per-
sistent elusiveness
of money.
Gorgeously pho-
tographed on 16mm
by Daniel Landin
(Under the Skin), at
times evoking the
work of Nan Goldin
in its candor, color
palette, and atten-
tion to patterns—
wallpaper, rugs, lace
curtains, tent
dresses, puzzles—
Ray & Liz counters
the grubby, quasi-
authentic tenets of
so-called British mis-
erablism with humor,
beauty, and a sensu-
ality that in no way
dilutes the hardships
and neglect at its
core. Inhabiting
cramped rooms
redolent of cigarette
smoke and stasis,
parents and siblings
are depicted here
out of a genuine
sense of curiosity,
rather than as
objects of resent-
ment. And the
soundtrack featuring
Siouxsie and the
Banshees, Dusty
Springfield, and
Musical Youth’s
immortal “Pass the
Dutchie,” dreamily
phasing in and out of
the diegesis, exalts
the culture of the era
without diffusing
Billingham’s tacit
condemnation of
Thatcherite policies.
—José Teodoro THE^NIGHTINGALE:^ COURTESY^OFIFC^FILMS