H Is For Hawk (12A)

Jesus College academic Helen Macdonald is devastated when her father Alisdair, a celebrated press photographer who nurtured her love of natural science, dies suddenly from a heart attack. She returns home to assist with funeral arrangements but is unable to process her emotions. Cast adrift in a sea of grief, Helen reminisces about chasing goshawks during her bucolic childhood and she fixates on the idea of training a wild bird to hunt and fly.

LondonNet Film Review

H Is For Hawk (12A) Film Review from LondonNet

A grief-stricken university fellow ruffles feathers when she buys a goshawk to cope with the death of a parent in director Philippa Lowthorpe’s touching drama adapted from Helen Macdonald’s memoir. Buoyed by a tremendous lead performance from Claire Foy, H Is For Hawk is an intimate and melancholic study of loss, both of a soulmate and oneself…

In 2007 Cambridge, Jesus College academic Helen Macdonald (Claire Foy) is devastated when her father Alisdair (Brendan Gleeson), a celebrated press photographer who nurtured her love of natural science, dies suddenly from a heart attack. She returns home to assist with funeral arrangements but is unable to process her emotions alongside her mother Jane (Lindsay Duncan) and brother James (Josh Dylan). Cast adrift in a sea of grief, Helen reminisces about chasing goshawks during her bucolic childhood and she fixates on the idea of training a wild bird to hunt and fly.

Her father’s good friend Stuart (Sam Spruell), who has experience with birds of prey, urges Helen to reconsider acquiring a goshawk: “They’re a handful.” She ignores his sage advice and heads to windswept Stranraer with good friend Christina (Denise Gough) to buy a goshawk from a breeder, which she subsequently christens Mabel. Helen slowly bonds with the creature back in Cambridge, overidentifying with the bird and ignoring a heartfelt plea from her mother to remain grounded in the land of the living: “Just don’t get lost!” The academic devotes every waking moment to Mabel, retreats from family and friends, neglects her university students and completely forgets about her seminar entitled Icons Of Extinction. Rather than salve her grief, Helen risks being consumed by it.

Adapted for the screen by Emma Donoghue and director Lowthorpe, H Is For Hawk glides serenely between elegantly staged scenes of anguish, building slowly to the acknowledgement of a mental health diagnosis. Hunting sequences of a goshawk wheeling and swooping in pursuit of prey are thrillingly captured by wildlife cinematographer Mark Payne-Gill. Foy learned falconry for the role and in remarkable scenes, the camera lingers on the actor as she teaches a goshawk to trust her and tear strips of flesh from a gloved hand.

The bird flaps wildly, twisting in the air to escape its tether, but Foy sits calmly with her arm outstretched until her feathered companion submits. She wrenches out her character’s fractured heart in close-up and sparks delightful on-screen rapport with Gleeson in flashback and mournfully imagined reconciliations post-mortem. A repeated quote by 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich from Revelations Of Divine Love proves apt for both Helen’s on-screen journey towards healing and Lowthorpe’s poetic picture. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

– Jo Planter