2018 Directed by Jennifer Kent
In 1825, Claire, a 21-year-old Irish convict, chases a British soldier through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. She enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.
Aisling Franciosi Sam Claflin Baykali Ganambarr Damon Herriman Harry Greenwood Ewen Leslie Charlie Shotwell Michael Sheasby Matthew Sunderland Magnolia Maymuru Christopher Stollery Nathaniel Dean Claire Jones Dallas Mugarra Sam Smith Ben McIvor Anthony Phelan Maggie Blinco Alan Faulkner James O'Connell Luke Carroll Charlie Jampijinpa Brown Eloise Winestock Huw Higginson Breanna Geer
Bron Studios Causeway Films Made Up Stories FilmNation Entertainment Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund Screen Australia Screen Tasmania South Australian Film Corporation Creative Wealth Media Finance
나이팅게일, Slowik, Соловей, O Rouxinol, ปักษาพยาบาท, Bülbül
Politics and human rights Epic history and literature Intense violence and sexual transgression violence, shock, disturbing, brutal or graphic racism, african american, powerful, hatred or slavery cannibals, gory, gruesome, graphic or shock historical, epic, battle, historic or fought war, soldiers, combat, military or fought Show All…
Loved Jennifer Kent's The Babadook and knew her follow-up would be accomplished but I didn't expect anything like this. I don't want to spoil anything but it's important for me to mention that this film is extremely violent. It may just be the most violent film I've ever seen. And because the violence is rooted in realism and not pulp, it is extremely disturbing.
I'm sick of hearing about snubs every awards season because in the end, success at awards season is about PR... and how much money is put in to PR. But the lack of recognition of this one stings a little. The Nightingale and Jennifer Kent deserve major props.
The feature has a 1.37 : 1 aspect…
“What’s wrong, soldier boy? Did your mommy not love you?”
The most brutal and intense movie i’ve ever seen in my life.
People walked out, someone fainted. Completely unflinching and horrifying from start to finish, and many scenes made me so uncomfortable i didn’t want to watch anymore. Jennifer Kent is the only person who could have made this film, and her exploration of female trauma and colonialism’s impact on the aboriginal peoples of Australia & Tasmania was incredible. I’m gonna go throw up now.
A savvy bit of Sundance programming to show this on Australia Day... which made it that much more brutal to watch. The plot is simple, a revenge story set in 1800s Tasmania - but the history that surrounds it is anything but. At school in Australia, I was taught about the “settlement” of our country by the British and the “civilization” of the native people. It was only later that I learnt how many Aboriginies were murdered in the process. Jennifer Kent didn’t hold back, showing this dark side of our history in full force. Which means, it’s not much fun to watch! Definitely not for the faint hearted, as there’s no light to be found. But there’s also no doubt that she is a filmmaker with an unflinching voice.
I'm fully on board for the revenge film set in a time and place where its protagonists lives have literally no value to the shitty people in power, but I struggled with the bland moral handwringing over the violence here as well as the almost cartoonishly ostentatious bleakness, elements which basically cancelled each other out for me, making this mostly just a very long sit.
I really wanted this to be an epic feminist revenge story and it kind of got there but I have more than a few issues with this story.
Instead of what I wanted, it was yet another “white person learns that racism is bad actually” story. I don’t like that a white woman made a movie that so graphically shows the violent rape and murder of black aboriginal people. I don’t like that their suffering was written to support the narrative of a white woman.
I think that the history of what aboriginal people suffered is an important story to be told, I just don’t think that it needed to be told by a white person in such an exploitative…
Exceptional follow-up to The Babadook, uncompromising in its brutality yet tender in its way. Part rape-revenge Ozsploitation, part historical fiction about the evils of colonialism, the film feels rich as both a play on genre and a statement on foundational sin. Kent ain't fucking around.
Some really haunting stuff. The slow-burn and numb atmosphere it incorporates effectively connects with the background of the story. It’s nightmarish and disturbing, but the motive for this narrative is purposeful and beneficial when attempting to provide an almost tangible sense of unwelcomed dominion. It also provides this in a deeper, more rooted scale by including tragic colonization from the Tasmanian Aboriginal community (which she heavily collaborated with the community to respectfully include this into her story).
Devastating and powerful commentary on class, race, and gender with possibly the best performance of the year. It’s brutal but artistically rewarding if you can handle it.
Felt like my eyes were trying rattle out of my skull, like the worst, most performatively woke twitter feed was pulling me into the abyss with its fingers in my nostrils.
Suggests that a single woman's assault and loss (and of course - as fellow lboxd user Lucinda pointed out to me after the film - goes out of its way to suggest her lost agency is perhaps more tied into her proto nuclear family than her rape) is equivalent to an entire culture's near destruction by colonialism or, even further, suggests that her Irish discrimination is close to Australian indigenous discrimination. Then has the gall to give the female lead some (out of nowhere) hesitance about the carthrasus of…
