STACK #182 Dec 2019

FILM FEATURE

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“In this context, I maintain the violence is very responsible and ethical and we’re showing what needs to be shown. The outrage should be on the level of violence that’s in our culture that anaesthetizes us and makes us care less about humans being hurt and killed, raped and damaged. This, to me, is the great problem of modern cinema. I think there should be more honesty on that level, and I feel very uncomfortable that so much violence is used as entertainment in modern films.” Shooting the more harrowing scenes required a lot of love, care and attention to the actors, says Kent.“ We had a clinical psychologist onboard from the very beginning of script development to authenticate those characters, so they were representing – on a clinical level – true damage. And that the relationships were very realistic in terms of what would happen in that situation. “The first part was getting the script right and getting the story very

accurate. And then once I brought the actors on, it was also about giving them the opportunity to have access

A 19th century revenge tale set against the backdrop of theTasmanian wilderness, The Nightingale is the haunting new film from the director of The Babadook , Jennifer Kent. Words Scott Hocking F ollowing the success of her critically acclaimed debut feature The Babadook (2014), Australian filmmaker Jennifer Although set in colonial Tasmania in 1825, Kent wasn’t motivated by a desire to make a traditional period film. “I’m not really interested

in period films that kind of have a nostalgic effect, where we wish we were in another period and escape into that period. I’m more interested in using that distance to reflect the world now and make it universal, make it something more mythic, rather than staid historical drama,” she explains. That said, the history needed to be accurate, and Kent spent close to five years researching the period. “We also got an army historian onboard and an Irish cultural expert, and obviously collaborated very closely with the Tasmanian Aboriginal people to authenticate and develop the Aboriginal storyline and characters and what they all went through. There was a lot of attention to detail on a historical level to get it all correct, because if you’re going to tell a story like this, you need to make sure that you’re telling the truth. And

Kent was offered a lot of projects, but The Nightingale was the story she wanted to tell next. Possessing a mythic quality and packing a mighty emotional punch, The Nightingale follows a young Irish convict woman’s pursuit of a British lieutenant through the Tasmanian wilderness, to exact revenge for a horrific act of violence he committed against her family. Starring Aisling Franciosi as the vengeful Clare and a cast-against-type Sam Claflin as Lieutenant Hawkins, the film introduces talented newcomer Baykali Ganambarr as the Indigenous tracker who aids Clare in following Hawkins’ trail into the wild. “I was very influenced by what I was seeing in this crazy current world we live in, where violence is an immediate response a lot of the time to the world’s problems,” Kent tells STACK . “I felt, and feel, a sense of empathy disappearing and that we’re losing our humanity on some level. And so I really wanted to talk about that, and the logistics of where it would be set and when. All these things came up as I dreamt on the idea, and that’s how The Nightingale was born. “I just wanted to make my next film as meaningful to me as The Babadook was, and this idea was very meaningful to me.”

to all the research and the clinical psychologist. Dr. Elaine Barrett, a wonderful, compassionate woman, operated as counselor, really,

• The Nightingale is out on Dec 4

and she was also an expert in that area, so the actors could go to her at any time. She was also on set during the very difficult, sexually violent scenes. “From my perspective, I needed to make sure [the actors] were very comfortable and we

were well prepared physically for those scenes, and emotionally. So by the time we got there, there was a lot of love in the room, actually, and a lot of support for each other. You can’t recreate those kind of terrible scenes without care and concern for each other. There was a lot of love, and that’s how we got through.”

unfortunately, this is accurate.” The Nightingale ’s depictions of sexual assault and graphic violence have generated controversy – and walkouts at the Sydney Film Festival – but an unapologetic Kent says that creating an authentic representation of Tasmanian history during colonisation required these scenes be confronting.

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