The Nightingale

SWITCH.

June 14, 2019

6/10

Even with its flaws, this feminist Western is too violent, too dirty, too bloody, and too barbaric to be forgotten easily. When the lights in the cinema came on, the woman next to me was crying and, a few rows over, someone murmured that they had now had PTSD. 'The Nightingale’ is not an easy film to watch and certainly not one to expect to come out of laughing or feeling terrific. But it will make you will feel something, which is a rare thing for a film to be able to do today. - Jake Watt …

Stephen Campbell

December 14, 2019

8/10

**_A superb, albeit harrowing drama about colonial violence, misogyny, and racism_** >_Whether the Blacks deserve any mercy at the hands of the pioneering squatters is an open question, but that they get none is certain. They are a doomed race, and before many years they will be completely wiped out of the land._ - Harold Finch-Hatton; _Advance Australia! An Account of Eight Year's Work, Wandering and Amusement in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria_ (1885) >_If Judas Chamberlain c…

Jennifer Kent delivered one of the best horror movies of the decade, The Babadook. With The Nightingale, only her second feature film, she offers one of the most visually brutal, shocking, jaw-dropping, violent revenge stories ever. This movie is the definition of “not for everyone.” Rating: A-

**The Nightingale** (2018) *Directed by Jennifer Kent* Jennifer Kent's *The Nightingale* is a cold, hard look at colonialism, unflinching in its depiction of the brutality that empires are built upon. Set in 1825 Tasmania, it follows Clare (Aisling Franciosi), a young Irish convict, and Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), an Aboriginal tracker, through the wilderness as they pursue a British officer who has committed unspeakable atrocities. This is not entertainment; this is witness, testimony, a r…