The Most Dangerous Animal in Australia — The Nightingale Review
Originally posted in 2018
Trying to stay spoiler-free in this world is a challenge of Olympian proportion these days, but I was committed to go into Jennifer Kent's follow up film to 2014's Babadook, virtually ignorant. But going into a film not knowing it's triggers isn't good for my health. Among some movie aficionados all films are to be watched with the same open-mindedness. Some film snobs will affirm "you have to see this movie, if you call yourself a movie lover!", even when that movie causes the viewer distress. As though making it through a movie with no emotional or psychological resonance is the marker of a sophisticate. I don't subscribe to that. I didn't watch all of 'Irreversible', because it disgusted me and made me feel like I was watching my own sexual assault. I'm no less of a film lover because I didn't push through trauma for a movie. It's just a movie. It's not like ignoring a homeless person because of your disdain for the less fortunate, or turning off the TV when the news starts covering war crimes in a foreign country because of lack of interest to people who look nothing like you, those are things that we should shun each other for not being able to sit through. I hate rape revenge as a genre of film. I hate that rape is used by filmmakers of varying intelligence and sensitivity as a point of entertainment. As recent episodes of Game of Thrones has ascertained, many people still view rape as being "character building" and not a heinous crime that should be pursued by the law. Rape is not entertainment for me. I currently live in a country that has stock piles of untested, ignored rape cases that will never be given the time or care they need to be pushed through the justice system. I combed, as lightly as I could through summaries to try to find any information about the graphicness of the scenes in the movie. In my mission, I came across a review by the A.V. Club's A.A. Dowd that instead of warning me about the content, gave me pause about how we view violence and women in the west.
Dowd described the film as "ceaseless, numbing brutality - a Western revenge yarn of such heightened cruelty and suffering that it basically demands to be read as allegory." The use of the words 'numbing', 'yarn', 'heightened' and 'allegory' stuck with me, ringing like a bell in my head the entire way through the movie.
The 'Nightingale' is a story of Irish thief Clare, who has been sent to Australia to serve out her sentence, as many convicts were sent to help England in its pursuit of the colonization of the outback. She lives in a small shack with her husband Aiden (also a former convict), and their baby working for British officer Hawkins, that has a history of sexually assaulting her with the minimal recompense of giving her cameos in return. After drinking Aiden goes to ask Hawkins to release his wife from his servitude so that they can live as free people. Hawkins refuses and this sets off a chain of events that culminates in the brutal rape of Clare, and the death of her baby and husband. Clare then sets out on a path of revenge with the help of Aborigine tracker Billy. Each act of brutality and cruelty is based squarely in the realm of reality. Post #metoo, we have a better understanding of the depth of work-based sexual harassment and that sexual assault rarely has anything to do with sex, it's a matter of power. Hawkins comes on to Clare after she sings for the unit and he picks up on their lasciviousness towards her, he needs to prove to himself that no one has control over her body, not even herself. When Aboriginal people are brutalized, attacked, slaughtered, lynched, and raped in the film, it must be understood that it's based in documented accounts in history. These incidents are not used by the filmmaker to pad the action with falsehoods but an unflinching look at history. When Dowd uses the word 'allegory', I wonder where exactly he is looking. What is allegorical about sexual violence against women? What is allegorical about systemic violence against Aboriginal people? What exactly sets apart the violence of this movie as heightened or numbing over the immeasurable kill count of a John Wick movie? This movie pales to compare to the lives of actual native women who are among the most sexually assaulted and killed groups of women in the world. While films portraying the violence of male characters lives, including those of superheroes, it's understood as a "realistic" depiction of the world, but to put women in those spaces, spaces actual women exist in in the real world, it's somehow allegorical and heightened to unbelievability.
The film has more plausible problems than the perceived ones of the "numbing" violence of real women's lives. The relationship between Clare and Billy is little more than a woman and her pet. Throughout the film it often feels like Billy was originally written to be a ground sniffing dog, the way that Clare shouts the pejorative "boy" at him, caused my blood to boil. During the climax of the film, a white woman behind me whispered "Get him boy" in earnest. Which sums up the complicity of white women in racialized oppression. Regardless of the fact that both people are oppressed by white men, the white woman still has more power over a man of color. Their relationship moves from one side of the racist power struggle to the other side. Billy is coerced to work for her under the promise of money, that which he has limited access to and then is coerced to stay with her because "blacks" are shot on sight and she will vouch for him. In the final scenes of the movie Billy can only act with a nod from Clare, his independance fully gone. It's a tragic story of the pervasiveness of violence and that violence isn't just the kind made through blood, but can be the dehumanizing effect of having a white person invalidate your culture, heritage, spiritual practices and manhood. For much of the conversation of racism, the role of white women in the proliferation of white supremacy has been left out, which makes room for movies like this to exist. Clare's violence is both graphic and subtle, she relies on Billy fully and yet never calls him by his name until half way through the movie, she doesn't touch him until two quarters way through the movie, her violence against Billy is as toxic as the violence against the men who brutalized her.
I would also give my horse and farm for a single movie where a white person and a person of color could star in a movie together without it being a financial dynamic. Movies like The Help, Greenbook, Hidden Figures, Driving Miss Daisy suggest that the only world white people can imagine having to be around POC is when someone is being paid to be there.
The Nightingale is a haunting, graphic tale of the cost of revenge, and the role we can play in the challenge of violence systems, while trying to defy them. This movie will probably be my last rape revenge for a while (God I hope), so that I can let go of my mace canister. To any woman who has lived alone, walked down a dark street, or catcalled by men while doing your job, this movie is a realized nightmare. Director Jennifer Kent followed up The Babadook with a film more terrifying than a closeted, boogeyman with iconic fashion. She gave us the most dangerous, unrelenting, and vicious creature imaginable, she gave us Men.
