H is for Hawk

Yesterday I went to a matinee of H is for Hawk, an adaptation of the best-selling memoir of the same name by Helen Macdonald, and I found it to be incredibly moving.  Macdonald (Claire Foy) is a fellow at Cambridge University who is grief-stricken over the sudden death of her beloved father Alistair (Brendan Gleeson).  She is assaulted by memories of her father, especially their bird watching excursions together, so she decides to get an Eurasian goshawk, a particularly aggressive bird of prey, in order to keep these memories alive.  She subsumes her grief into bonding with and training the bird she names Mabel which causes her to abandon her research and teaching responsibilities and avoid her worried family and friends.  However, it is when she observes Mabel hunting that she begins to understand the necessity of life and death in nature which leads to acceptance and healing.  This is a very powerful portrayal of grief and I was particularly struck by how the memories of her father would randomly overwhelm Helen when she least expected them because that is my own experience with grief over the death of my father.  Her interactions with Alistair, shown through flashbacks, are so poignant that I had tears in my eyes on more than one occasion (Gleeson gives a lovely performance).  I also loved the strangely compelling interactions between Helen and Mabel (I wonder how long some of these sequences took to film and how much training Foy received because they appear so authentic) and the beautiful cinematography as Mabel flies through the sky hunting for prey.  Foy gives an amazing performance, in my opinion, because, even though it is incredibly restrained, you understand everything that Helen is feeling just by her body language and facial expressions.  This is a very slow and introspective movie so it might not be for everyone but its themes resonated very deeply with me and I loved it.