NZIFF: Irish convict seeks vengeance in 1825 Tasmania in The Nightingale

Jennifer Kent's follow-up to 2014's The Babadook, period thriller The Nightingale (2018), follows Clare (Aisling Franciosi), a young Irish convict out for revenge after she is gang-raped while her husband and young daughter are killed by a band of British soldiers, led by the sadistic Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), in 1825 Tasmania. 

What soon follows is a slow-simmering cat-and-mouse chase between the soldiers and a musket-toting Clare, aided by disillusioned Aboriginal tracker Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), as they traverse the dense Australian wilderness. Its landscape, marred with the mutilated corpses of Aboriginal locals, is unforgiving as they travel through the dense brush towards the soldiers, following the trail of cruelty and violence left in their wake.

As they travel together, Clare and Billy's shared suspicions of one another soon gives way to feelings of empathy, with both harbouring a deep-seated hatred of the English and a shared sense of loss over the livelihoods stolen from them. The longer they spend together in the wilderness, however, compounds on Clare's trauma as a woman wronged as dreams of her loving husband and toddler daughter distort themselves into nightmares in the form of ghostly apparitions deep within her unconscious.

With a runtime of two hours and 30 minutes, the film drags in part, particularly in its second act. However, the film's final confrontation is an ultimately satisfying one. 

The Nightingale is certainly ambitious as a Western revenge thriller, with the film raising questions about the breakdown of the already fraught social structure of 19th century Australia; its unforgiving treatment of women and non-white people; and whether vengeance, or redemption, is the right answer for piece – all stitched through the lens of the lawless Tasmanian wilderness. 

The film garnered criticism after it was screened at the Sydney Film Festival, with some moviegoers walking out of the cinema over what they called its gratuitous depiction of physical and sexual violence enacted by the British colonialists. Kent defended the film, writing in a statement, "Whilst The Nightingale contains historically accurate depictions of colonial violence and racism towards our indigenous people, the film is not 'about' violence. It's about the need for love, compassion and kindness in dark times."

The Nightingale is now screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival.

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