I rarely have the opportunity to watch Australian films. Some of the actors and directors from the antipodes continent made brilliant careers in Hollywood, but Australian films rarely enjoy international distribution. Maybe unfairly, because the ones I managed to see were almost without exception interesting films, belonging to different genres, but each reflecting in its own way the landscape, the history, and the mentalities of this distant part of the world. To these has now been added Jennifer Kent‘s ‘The Nightingale‘, a well-made film, but also one conceived to stir controversy and which has been able to provoke extreme discussions and reactions, and has left indifferent nobody anyplace it was screened.
If we were to put the film in a particular category, it would be the one called ‘Australian Westerns’. Australia’s history of colonization has many points in common with the conquest of the American West, and its reflection in cinematography has also gone through stages similar to those of Western American films, from heroic stories and spectacular action films, to modern versions that try to be more faithful to historical truth. I do not know the political atmosphere and the history of Australian society well, but my impression is that the violent aspects of the colonization, the conflicts between the newcomers (part criminals deported by the English justice to the penitentiary colonies, another part their guardians) and the local Aboriginal population are still largely a skeleton waiting to be exposed out of the closet Australian history. Clare, the main heroine of the film, has to survive in a lawless world, where violence is the natural way of conflict resolution. It is also an extremely stratified world, in which Clare is a multiple victim – as an Irish woman belonging to the people recently defeated by the English, as a woman, as a convict and deportee. Paradoxically, there is one class below her in the hierarchy of this world – the Tasmanian aborigines, who are waging a hopeless war against the white colonists. A war that they will lose and their nation will be exterminated.
Director Jennifer Kent wanted to highlight two important political messages, and she did not save the means and did not hesitate to shock her viewers to make those as clear as possible. One is a powerful feminist message, which makes the story of the film join the genre of films in which women who have gone through terrible traumas (rape, murder of the dearest family members) seek revenge. The other is the exposure of the atrocities up to the genocide committed by white settlers in the first century of the conquest of Australia. The latter message questions the legitimacy and morality of one of today’s most peaceful and civilized democratic societies, at least as long as these nightmares of history are not known and assumed. But there is also a human message that becomes more and more clear when Clare finds solidarity and support precisely from Billy, the Aboriginal tracker. The interaction between them starts as a relationship of social and racial subordination to become a beautiful friendship story.
Even if it does nothing to avoid shocking, the film never slips into commercial exhibitionism. Unlike Tarantino’s films, for example, there is nothing aesthetic in the violence we see displayed on screen, which has the clear purpose of arousing rejection and repulsion. The story is captivating and very well filmed, with most of the scenes taking place in the Tasmanian jungle. The actors’ interpretation is exceptional. Irish actress Aisling Franciosi realizes a beautiful and vulnerable Clare, finding in her desire for revenge the strength to survive the terrible events she goes through. Baykali Ganambarr manages to overcome the conceptual weaknesses of Billy’s role and brings a memorable character to the screen. The main problem of the film is the excess of explicit rhetoric, to the detriment of authentic experiences. The separation between the good and the bad is far too Manichean, especially when it is done in most cases along nationality lines. ‘The Nightingale’ could have benefited from a more nuanced approach and a less explicit promotion of the film’s messages. Even so, it’s a movie that’s hard to forget.