The Nightingale (2018)

 

"A Modern Classic"

Writer-director Jennifer Kent's follow-up to 2014's THE BABADOOK, and one of House of Mortal Cinema's Top 20 Films of 2019, THE NIGHTINGALE is now getting the whistles and bells treatment from Second Sight in the UK, with a Blu-ray release that includes a rigid slipcase housing the disc, a 40 page booklet featuring new writing on the film from Elena Lazic and Alexandra Heller-Nichols, and three art collectors cards.

Van Dieman's Land (which will eventually become Tasmania) in 1825. Clare Carroll (Aisling Franciosi) is an Irish prisoner working as a servant in the Van Dieman's penal colony. When she is brutally raped and her husband and baby are murdered by colonial officers, Clare sets off into the bush in pursuit of the perpetrator.

She teams up with Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), an Aboriginal tracker and together the two travel deep into the Australian wilderness in search of bloody revenge.

Causing something of a controversy at various festivals including Venice and Cannes because of its unflinching depictions of rape and violence, Kent's film plays out as a cross between the brutal westerns of the early 1970s like Don Medford's THE HUNTING PARTY and Ralph Nelson's SOLDIER BLUE, and Australian equivalents like THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH. THE NIGHTINGALE has been described as a 'hard watch' but only in that it succeeds in portraying its atrocities with the same unflinching realise as those early 1970s pictures, and is a much more effective picture for it.

Second Sight have done their usual excellent job with their Blu-ray release. Extras include a whole host of interviews with Aisling Franciosi and actors Michael Sheasby, Damon Herriman, and Harry Greenwood. There are also interviews with prodcuer Kristina Ceyton, editor Simon Njoo, production designer Alexander Holmes and composer Jed Kurzel.

There's also a making of, a video essay by Alexandra Heller-Nichols, a trailer, and a featurette contextualising the film, as well as all the lovely physical extras listed at the top there.

Jennifer Kent's THE NIGHTINGALE is out from Second Sight Films in a limited edition Blu-ray release on Monday 8th February 2021