H is for Hawk

In Helen Macdonald’s bestselling memoir H is for Hawk, a young woman named Helen trains an ill-mannered goshawk and eventually sees it off to an aviary for moulting season. Part meditative exploration of grief in the wake of the sudden loss of her father, part exhaustive detailing of the process of training a complicated and challenging creature, the film adaptation hews closely to the same description. You don’t need a PhD to understand that the two processes feed into one another in alarming and honest ways; so in BAFTA-winning director Philippa Lowthorpe’s moody adaptation, the visual metaphors are striking – even as the running time outstays its welcome. 

The film stars Claire Foy as a rather stiff-upper-lipped protagonist, an academic who avoids moping at all costs even after her beloved photojournalist father passes away suddenly of heart failure.

He’s played by Brendan Gleeson with warmth and humour in occasional mournful flashbacks, and the relationship between dad and daughter is poignantly sketched as a special one: supportive, cerebral, and one of shared hobbies like ornithology. The goshawk Helen adopts is one she might have found on a bird-spotting trip with her dad; she names it Mabel, and a new relationship of sorts springs out of the depths of her loss of another. Difficult, alienating, and even violently gauging Helen in the face, it’s hardly a fluffy companion; this is as good a metaphor for living with loss as any. Helen’s friend Christina (Denise Gough) advises her this isn’t especially healthy: but what coping mechanism is? 

The relationship between dad and daughter is poignantly sketched

The film does well to avoid sentimentality in its depiction of animal-human connection and its sparse, bleakly gorgeous nature scenes are gorgeously shot by DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen here, full of chalky grey sky, blood-hewn beaks and quiet respect for the way of things – a cycle of regenerating life and death that the natural world observes with stoicism and acceptance. 

Of course, Helen can only aspire to or pretend at this level of peace in her immense pain; Foy is very good at depicting the interiority of a woman doing her best to keep that pain at bay. But the fact is that her grief leaks out of her pores, informs all of her actions both with Mabel the hawk and without; she must live with it, even as it spreads its too-large wings and makes a mess all over the place.

In UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Jan 23.