The Nightingale is a rare attempt to depict the brutal reality of
British imperial rule. The industry must do more to tell it like it was
Jennifer Kent’s new thriller The Nightingale is a tough watch. The setting is lawless, early 19th-century Tasmania, and the opening half hour, especially, is a catalogue of violence: rape, murder, beatings, senseless slaughter, even ecological violence. The victims are chiefly women and indigenous people; the principal perpetrators are uniformed British soldiers. The Nightingale reminds us that Britain’s colonisation of Australia involved the killing of tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians, with at least 270 documented massacres and many more untold tales of cruelty. The film’s violence prompted walkouts when it screened in
Sydney earlier this year, but Kent has maintained that it is historically accurate. “I couldn’t go into this part of our history and water it down,” she said. “Like many other countries that have been colonised, the indigenous people of Australia were subject to horrendous treatment by the colonisers. The systems of power were brutal, and I wanted The Nightingale to reflect this.”