’The Nightingale’ sings a violent song

Among other things, “The Nightingale” might motivate you to check out the history of Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony on what is now Tasmania — the conflict between English settlers and native peoples makes for one of the darkest encyclopedia entries you’ll ever read, centered around “The Black War,” a conflict that could be termed guerrilla warfare or outright genocide on aboriginals.

What the film drives home is that it wasn’t easy living for the white folks sent to the penal colony either — one such unfortunate is Irish servant Clare Carroll (Aisling Franciosi), who does a variety of menial labor at a shabby military outpost with an infant strapped to her back. She also gives singing performances for the highly irregular troops —the men call her the nightingale while groping and demeaning her. This enrages Clare’s husband Aidan (Michael Sheasby) but, to their dismay, Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin) has no desire to let them go — without his letter of recommendation, he can use their labor in perpetuity. Aidan shouts, “She’s my wife!” and Hawkins retorts, “She’s my property.”

What follows from that conversation is — even for those accustomed to films featuring severe violence and sexual assault — hard to watch. Along with his ugly, violent, and stupid cronies Ruse (Damon Herriman) and Jago (Harry Greenwood), Hawkins rapes Clare, shoots Aidan, and kills the baby. Throughout the film, every person in a redcoat proves to be an outright monster, earning our instant, roiling disgust for their merciless treatment of Clare’s family and any aboriginals they meet.

Clare understandably sets her mind on vengeance and vows to hunt down the men while they trek through the bush on their way to distant military outpost. To do catch them up, she must secure the services of an Aboriginal tracker named Mangana (Baykali Ganambarr) who goes by “Billy” for the sake of the colonizers (though they are just as likely to refer to him as “black bastard” as anything else). Revealing her own prejudice, Clare initially gripes about “traveling with a black” while passing through a horrifying landscape punctuated by burning farmhouses, slaughtered sheep and Aboriginals hanging from trees.

Mangana has an almost supernatural penchant for cutting sign, able not only follow the debauched soldiers but say exactly what they’ve been doing. In time, Clare and Billy find commonalities beyond wanting to kill Hawkins — they are fine singers and feel most comfortable speaking in a language other than English (Irish for her and Palawa kani for him). And both yearn for a reunion with family and friends that we sense will never happen.

In places, director Jennifer Kent reaches levels of violence reminiscent of a Cormac McCarthy novel (indeed, in “Blood Meridian” one of the marauders is said to be a Vandiemenlander). This is still the pre-revolver era, so all rifles and pistols must be laboriously reloaded before another shot can go off, leading to some excruciating scenes — we get lots of pleading from men with blood-spattered faces. At a certain point, we think proceedings are coming to a natural conclusion as Clare and Billy close in on Hawkins in the forest, but there are still a few more bends in the road and twists of the knife. The ruthlessly terrible travails of Clare and Billy match the awful period in history being depicted.

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