H Is For Hawk

Claire Foy processes her grief over the death of her father through an obsessive commitment to a Eurasian goshawk in this middlebrow but emotionally affecting riff on Ken Loach’s Kes, which dramatises the popular 2014 memoir of nature writer Helen Macdonald.

Director Philippa Lowthorpe wisely tells the story of Helen’s suffering less through clunky dialogue, and more through a well-balanced combination of more subtle elements: a shift in the lighting scheme from steady overcast slate grey to a cruelly ironic but perhaps hopeful warm yellow; a chaotic cadence in the string quartet on the soundtrack; and of course Foy’s superbly controlled reactions.

The editor inserts flashbacks of happier times with Dad that provide some welcome respite from the pain, especially as he’s portrayed by that fierce yet cuddly bear of a screen presence Brendan Gleeson. These interjections somewhat dilute the initial impact of Foy’s multi-layered performance, but overall the script places most of these scenelets with the care and delicacy of a flower arranger.

Foy herself relishes the opportunity to play multiple chords, both major and minor, on the fragile instrument of her character. She’s direct, witty, commanding and truculent, her enviable life as a research fellow at Cambridge torn apart by that one devastating phone call. But what’s interesting about her is that she doesn’t immediately dissolve into a puddle of tears. She allows us to follow her journey through the cauterising emotional shock every step of the way, just as the titular hawk Mabel allows her to follow its hunting expeditions.

After a magnificently cinematic sequence, worthy of the very best wildlife documentaries, where she chases down a rabbit in a viciously beautiful rush of nature, we can see the attraction. Indeed, Helen even starts to take on some of Mabel’s twitchy, watchful mannerisms during this peculiar catharsis. The supporting bird herself is fetishised from the outset as a symbol of the nobility of grief, her proud beak and unruffled feathers defying gravity, wind and human morality alike. But, clamped to Helen’s gauntlet, she also embodies a frustrated kind of freedom. An unusual scene partner then, but she and Foy share a genuine and often amusing chemistry.

H Is For Hawk is at its best when it lets its leading lady truly lead the audience in a raw and difficult seminar on grief and loss. But it faces those feelings head on, even when the protagonist refuses to, and demonstrates that you can’t predict the route by which you negotiate those seven tricky stages.

-Stew Mott-