In 2014, Helen MacDonald released a memoir detailing the death of their beloved father, noted photojournalist Alisdair MacDonald, and their adoption of a goshawk as a way to at first avoid, then process, this grief. In adapting H Is for Hawk into a fictional feature film, director/writer Philippa Lowthorpe and co-writer Emma Donoghue have given themselves an extremely difficult task; the omniscient first-person narration of the written work is not available to them, denying access to the author’s innermost thoughts and various flights of fancy. Further, they have opted not to employ voiceover in the film, relying on spoken dialogue and body language to convey deep reservoirs of emotion. As a result, it’s a film of two halves, one more successful than the other.
Here, Helen is played by Claire Foy, a college professor preparing for a prestigious fellowship that will take them from England to Germany. Some brief early scenes (plus occasional flashbacks scattered throughout the film) sketch in the warm, playful relationship that Helen shares with the charming, adventurous Alisdair (Brendan Gleeson), including his interest in falconry. He seems healthy and in high spirits, so Helen is shocked when, out to dinner with best friend Christina (Denise Gough), they receive news that Alisdair has suddenly passed away while on a work trip. Helen is despondent, and almost immediately decides to adopt and train a goshawk, one of the fiercest and deadliest birds of prey.
There is of course a curious irony in adopting a predator in the immediate aftermath of a death, as if one is attempting to invite in and somehow control the Grim Reaper. But Lowthorpe, working with cinematographers Mark Payne-Gill in the wild and Charlotte Bruus Christensen in dramatic scenes, takes an almost documentary approach to detailing Helen’s burgeoning relationship with the hawk, which they name Mabel. There’s even some humor in sequences of Helen being flummoxed by the stubborn bird, or worrying that Mabel won’t return if allowed to travel too far from its keeper. A long scene of Mabel zipping through dense forest while on the hunt is absolutely thrilling, the photography emphasizing the bird’s speed and agility. Helen embracing the freedom that Mabel represents and losing themself to something primal and elemental is truly mesmerizing. Even a scene where Helen teaches Mabel to play a form of “catch,” which could elsewhere easily track as silly or treacly, instead charms.
But eventually, the film seems to remember that it has a story to tell, and moving from the carefully modulated specificity of Helen’s training with Mabel to the overly familiar dramatic territory of grieving is an unfortunate downgrade. Helen’s career is suffering as training has taken precedent over academia, their apartment a mess of freshly killed varmints and bird shit surrounded by garbage and unwashed dishes. Helen’s mother and brother are very alarmed when they come to visit, and are quickly convinced that Helen has become unstable (an extremely awkward sequence, where the filmmakers have to arrange for Helen to surreptitiously overhear their family have an exposition-laden conversation that exists solely for the benefit of the audience). Even bestie Christina gets fed up, imploring Helen to get their shit together before their life fully unravels. If MacDonald was able to make their journey toward accepting a diagnosis of depression compelling on the page, the filmmakers can’t convey that on screen. Here, it’s rendered a pat realization, a foregone conclusion that feels neither edifying nor revelatory.
Toward the end of the film, Helen delivers a speech in which they detail their journey with Mabel and emphasizes that their relationship represents a kind of “honest encounter with death.” One wishes the film was willing to go further with this sort of philosophical inquiry, embracing the metaphysical alongside the dully literal. H Is for Hawk is a nicely performed, well-meaning film, even gorgeous in its early stretch, but without the written word’s ability to plumb deeper, it winds up just lying there, flat.
DIRECTOR: Philippa Lowthorpe; CAST: Claire Foy, Brendan Gleeson, Denise Gough, Lindsay Duncan; DISTRIBUTOR: Roadside Attractions; IN THEATERS: January 23; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 55 min.
Comments are closed.