The Nightingale

2019 bird movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A woman seeks revenge with the help of a black man named Billy who might think he's a bird.

Should I be this disappointed that this had nothing to do with any English romantic poets. This wasn't inspired by either Keats or Coleridge.

Instead, it's almost as if Jennifer Kent decided to show us what a movie experience would be like if consisted of 135 minutes with only 1 1/2 moments of anything resembling humanity. Yeesh, this is a tough watch. I mean, there are a pair of rapes within the first 20 or 25 minutes, and the bleakness doesn't really let up from there. A developing relationship has impact, and while there are those 1 1/2 moments that show something you might call a positive human interaction, for the most part, this is a drama fueled by hate, vengeance, bigotry, animal violence.

You almost have to blame the males. The movie's a real sausage fest with the exception of that protagonist and a couple of female auxiliary characters who pop in way late. Not surprisingly, decisions they make contrast sharply with almost everything else that has taken place. Of course, it contrasts with the growly, almost masculine fervor of Aisling Franciosi, too.

Aside from the revenge plot, a second conflict is between the white bastards and the black natives. One says, "Whitefella way is shit way," the sort of thing that will definitely make this movie unpopular with the religious right. This movie also features the death of children, but I assume that won't bother the religious right as much since these are children who were actually born.

The natural landscapes go a long way here, but it's unclear to me why this was shot in the 4:3 aspect ratio. I'm not sure what the boxiness contributed to anything. Kent has a few nifty perspective shots, and she throws in a pair of cool nightmare sequences. Birds become an important motif, and bird sounds creep in in the latter third of the movie. Maybe earlier--maybe I just wasn't paying attention before.

This ends with a hopeful image and a musical moment that makes me wonder if the whole thing is really about the power of song. No, I'm not talking about the musical moment where a character uses song as an act of defiance. I'm talking about the one a little later than that.