Bloody white people!

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Films of 2019

#48 : The Nightingale

Jennifer Kent follows up The Babadook with some real-life monsters: the men who ran Tasmania’s penal colonies in the 1820s – one of whom gets some grisly, if just, comeuppance in this gothic thriller.

I've heard this is a good but pretty hard-core revenge movie - I suspect I might find it a bit too much for my delicate sensibilities, but let's see.

Well, the first half an hour introduces us to Clare who is a convict working for the army in Tasmania and provides us with ample (and I mean AMPLE) reason for her to want revenge against some of the soldiers.  The soldiers then head off on a journey and so she decides to follow them using Billy, an Aboriginal guide, to help her - although it's fair to say he has reservations.  After that it's a bit of a road-trip movie as they meet various characters and have various "adventures".  Billy and Clare have a well constructed relationship - starting in antipathy and wallowing in self-pity (not without reason) but gradually finding they have more in common than they realise.  And does she get her revenge?  Well, I'm not going to tell you that am I, but it has a perfectly acceptable (and quite beautiful) ending.

At its most basic level, the film has a pretty straightforward tale to tell but manages to incorporate other elements of interest particularly around status and rank - both considering the groups involved (English, convict and indigenous) and also within the English army and settlers.  It also has some interesting thoughts on revenge with both Clare and Billy finding themselves driven by their desire for revenge to do things they can’t at times imagine, believe or stomach.

Given the core nature of Clare and Billy's relationship to the film, it's all going to live or die based upon those actors - and in Aisling Franciosi and Baykali Ganambarr they really struck gold.  Aisling in particular goes on quite a horrific journey and you follow her all the way - I'd be interested to check out some more of her stuff.  Sam Claflin is the other name I feel the need to mention - he really is an excellent baddie (and he gets to do some VERY BAD things!).  Everyone else is fine, but their roles aren't exactly huge.

It's extremely beautiful scenery throughout, which is very well shot and the retro details are impressive, particularly in the town at the end.  There are also some pretty unpleasant scenes in the film, but they're pretty believable unpleasant scenes - it wasn't exactly the most civilised of times.  And it does get a bit fever-dreamy in places but not unreasonably - and I suspect there would have been uproar if there hadn't been some horror-ish elements from the director of The Babadook (which I haven't seen, but heard is very good).  I also have to say the 4:3 aspect ratio films are starting early this year - Rolling Thunder Revue used it, but they didn't really have a choice, whereas it's very much an active choice here.

There can't be too many films that feature English, Gaelic and Aboriginal languages.  And yes, I know there's no one "Aboriginal" language, so out of respect, I actually did some research and found out it was Palawa Kani.  Which is, obviously, a dialect reconstructed from near-extinct Indigenous Tasmanian languages and this claims to be the first film to use it (and I'm not going to argue with them).

And finally, surprisingly, I think this is the c-wordiest film I've ever seen - I lost count (or maybe I was just so shocked I forgot to count).  It doesn't come across as gratuitous - you just believe the language would have been harsh back then (of course, I have no way of knowing how accurate this is).  As a random Wikipedia rabbit hole aside, Nil By Mouth (a film I'd quite like to see, but I suspect it might be a bit too grim for me)  holds the record with 82 c-word instances.

All in all - this is an impressive piece of work.  It's not necessarily what you'd expect as a follow-up to a highly regarded horror film but you get the feeling it was something she wanted to make - and so she did!  Whether you'd "enjoy" it depends entirely upon your tolerance for the various levels of unpleasantness on display - there's really something to make everyone squirm here, so maybe you wouldn't want to sit down with your gran to watch it.  Having said that, I can be pretty squeamish at times but I didn't feel it was gratuitous and I really enjoyed the story, the depiction and the acting throughout.

At the time of writing, it's available to watch on All-4 (what - it's free?!) but if you want to pay for it, then it's available in all the usual places as well.

#49 - One you've seen, or you ain't gonna see
#47 - A nice bit of Wolof