H is for Hawk
I just finished reading a short story collection which featured two tales about men who become obsessed with a deer and a chicken, respectively. In my review, I flirted with writing a meme-y joke—“men will literally develop crushes on animals instead of going to therapy”—but I omitted it because I’d rather not engage in gender stereotyping. It turned out to be a wise choice because I just saw a movie which applies the same theme to a woman.
H is for Hawk is adapted from a memoir, and follows Helen (played by Claire Foy) after her father passes away suddenly. In her grief, she decides to raise a goshawk. They are apparently not easy animals to handle, being driven mainly by the desire to hunt, and Helen finds that bird husbandry doesn’t quite fit into her academic lifestyle. But she sticks to it, despite getting strange looks from her neighbours and family.
For me, the first half of the movie edges a little bit too close to being overly sentimental and trite, with many scenes where she zones out into a saccharine flashback about happy times with Dad. I was expecting (and dreading) an ending where the mutual love between human and bird overcomes all grief and wins over the whole town and brings her family closer together, &c, &c.
But thankfully, the film is more nuanced than that. Her obsession with the hawk veers into an unhealthy one, and she starts to neglect her duties and her human relationships. I appreciated that the story was honest about there being no magic bullets to “solve” grief and depression.
The highlight of the film for me were the scenes featuring the hawk, which Helen names Mabel. I don’t know how they trained the bird behind the camera, but there’s a clear progression between the earlier scenes, where Helen and Mabel are both apprehensive about the other, and the later ones, where they’ve grown to be comfortable. Foy’s performance sells the relationship’s progress, but it also really does seem like the bird is “acting” differently as they get to know each other.
There are also a couple of great hunting sequences showing Mabel in action. I’m sure it was hard to capture such clear footage and the filmmakers deserve credit for doing it so well.
