The Nightingale is Not For The Faint of Heart

What struck me about Jennifer Kent's The Nightingale was its often-horrifically matter-of-fact nature. In many ways, I miss the subtext and complexity of Kent's marvelous The Babadook, but rarely have I stumbled upon a movie so horrifying yet so willingly simplistic. I might even call a film like this one barbaric, yet something about it remains honest, even earnest, sometimes a far cry from barbarism. Irish ex-con Clare wants revenge against a group of British soldiers for an act too horrific for me to describe here, and her Aboriginal tracker, Billy, would all-too-happily oblige her, having himself experienced a similar travesty. I would not call a movie such as this complex, but what The Nightingale loses in layers, it gains in sheer fortitude. This movie is offensive, and it wears that label like a badge of honor until it subverts it in ways unexpectedly profound. It's also a personable movie, like if R-rated Moana and Maui were walking through a forest and ceaselessly bickering. It also remains frustratingly simplistic and repetitive, a side effect of its modest aspirations. But rarely has a movie presented such a challenging watch as The Nightingale did. It's often as if this movie is daring you to look away. Yet something in me had to see it. In the words of a favorite villain of mine, I cannot bear to watch, and yet I cannot turn away.

The Nightingale is a simplistic movie. That's the point. Its musical score is practically non-existent, and the aspect ratio is set to 1:37:1, a boxy screen configuration that was the standard cinema format before widescreen went mainstream. It's a rustic and refreshingly bare-bones approach to a classical time in history usually seen only through ye olde illustrations and carvings. This movie's lack of gimmicks does its immersion a lot of favors and might even make your stomach turn when the time is right. I won't sugarcoat this - The Nightingale is brutal, at times one of the most disgusting and hard-to-watch movies I've ever seen. It can be borderline exploitative, caught somewhere between cold honesty and potential spectacle. It contrasts jarringly with its simple subject matter. It's a basic, track-and-kill story using the trappings of Colonial Australia for a fresh backdrop. Yet, it also cares deeply about Clare's plight, even if her desire for revenge is often her only character trait.

I really like the combative tone invisibly whirling in the air between Clare and Billy. They're simple characters who are technically on the same side, but they fight with each other for much of the movie instead, and it works. Both of them understand what it's like to lose people, and they remain empathetic and even strangely likable from time to time, even if they sometimes seem to be little more than a spectacle of trauma. Nevertheless, the same cannot be said about the villains of The Nightingale. The British soldiers responsible for the atrocity that justifies this movie's existence are almost comically villainous, one-dimensional strips of paper with uniforms who are the way they are because this movie needs strong emotions, and because hatred is a quick and easy one to reach for. This story can be too simple for its own good in every way. The plotting becomes repetitive, and there's no linear way up towards Clare's goal of killing the soldiers who wronged her. This movie is a well-executed and brutal look at colonial life, yet it remains distractingly shallow.

Nevertheless, there's something to be said about a historical drama so dark that it gets classified as a horror movie when there's no real attempt made here to be anything other than gritty and grounded. The mere consideration of inclusion in the horror genre means that the tonal pursuits of The Nightingale were a runaway success. For all of its overbearing simplicity, I think it's remarkable that a film this narratively basic can land with such an impact when it wants to, and yet find such a poignant hollowness when it needs to. Atrocities are remarkably easy for a filmmaker to write and portray on-screen, even if they're difficult for an audience to stomach. I would know - the younger me once wrote a screenplay for a war film. It wasn't a very deep or well-paced screenplay, but I might as well have named it Call of Duty: Infinite War Crimes. And so, it's worth noting how void The Nightingale feels by the end of Clare and Billy's journey, by no accident of the filmmakers. You've probably seen a million revenge is futile movies, but most of them radiate purpose, something purposefully and beautifully missing from The Nightingale. Despite its incredible lack of subtlety, the fact that much of this movie means nothing is ironically what makes it truly meaningful. It's also part of what might cause you to lose your lunch.

Revenge is something baked into the darker parts of our humanity. We like to romanticize it, and one need look no further than the ultra-successful John Wick franchise to know this. It probably needn't be said that Clare gets the revenge she so desires, but what stands out to me is how unsatisfying this revenge turns out to be. There's no triumphant, epic musical cue that's simply a heroic version of the Michael Myers theme, and no real emotional release to be had, either. One shot to his heart, and it's done. Some might call The Nightingale disappointing, but I think that's the point. This movie is a back-to-the-basics revenge flick, its only cosmetic statement being an unusual aspect ratio that merely simplifies it further. Of course, a simple story with little else to supplement it can only take one so far, but The Nightingale certainly pushes its limits - mostly in good ways. I don't do this often, but I'll slap this movie with a trigger warning. Everything in this story is shaved down to a brutal minimum. This is not the little movie that could, so much as it is the little movie that dared to.

The Nightingale - 7/10

Luke 20:34-38