Film Review: The Nightingale

At first glance seemingly far different from the psychodramatic horrors of the contemporary Babadook, this nevertheless offers another study of a woman on the verge of totally losing her mind, and features a searing performance from the Italian-Irish Aisling Franciosi, who powerfully acts, sings, speaks fluent Scottish Gaelic and braves the Tasmanian wilderness like a champion.

Her 21-year-old Irish convict Claire is imprisoned by the loathsome British officer Hawkins (Sam Claflin, the best-known actor here as the most monstrous character) in Van Diemen’s Land back in 1825. Her freedom is three years overdue but he forces her to sing (she’s the nightingale of the title) for his leering men, cruelly belittles her often and rapes her in a prolonged sequence that isn’t particularly graphic in detail but still proves a gruelling experience to endure.

When the inevitable happens, Claire understandably swears revenge, and as Hawkins, Sergeant Ruse (Adelaidean Damon Herriman) and a small party are now on their way to Launceston, she must recruit guide Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) to help pursue them across some forbidding countryside. In his first film, Ganambarr brings just the faintest glimmer of humour to the dark proceedings and speaks the reconstructed dialect Palawa Kani for the first time ever onscreen. When he converses with other “blacks” and they repeatedly talk of being massacred, we should remember that Tasmania’s Aboriginal population was indeed almost completely wiped out. A shocking realisation in an already shocking film.

A movie guaranteed to make few friends and certainly too long (at 136 minutes), Kent’s disturbing epic is worth persevering with for audiences who can handle the rape scenes and the bloodily impactful violence, and anyone who properly understands that this country back in those bad old days was not exactly a nice place. At all.

The Nightingale (MA) is in cinemas from August 29