{"id":426219,"date":"2026-01-20T20:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T20:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/426219\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T20:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T20:48:10","slug":"h-is-for-hawk-review-too-keen-to-avoid-ruffling-feathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/426219\/","title":{"rendered":"H Is For Hawk Review \u2013 ‘Too keen to avoid ruffling feathers’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recently bereaved academic (Claire Foy) decides the best distraction from her grief is buying and taming a goshawk \u2014 but her new hobby becomes all-consuming.<\/p>\n

Writer-and-director Philippa Lowthorpe\u2019s (Misbehaviour<\/a>, Cider With Rosie) feathered biopic, adapted from Helen Macdonald\u2019s beloved memoir of the same name, is an unconventional riff on typical grieving narratives. Amid a cluster of recent heart-renders about bereavement \u2014 The Thing With Feathers<\/a> (a fellow fowl-related film), Hamnet<\/a>, Good Grief<\/a> \u2014 this one stands out for its somewhat outlandish story. But, despite impeccable performances, there is a tweeness here that sees Lowthorpe\u2019s film fail to fully convey the emotional toll of mourning.<\/p>\n

\"H<\/p>\n

H Is For Hawk begins in Cambridge in 2007, as research fellow Helen (Claire Foy) strides along cobbled streets and ushers her students out of seminar rooms and into the pub. The film wastes no time in announcing that she is no fuddy-duddy professor, partial instead to chain-smoking, off-key renditions of old pop songs and reckless driving. It\u2019s a shake-up for Foy, best-known for playing roles with the utmost poise (most obviously Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown). Here, she\u2019s made to tap into a more rogue and rebellious energy; it\u2019s an exciting new mode for the actor, but she\u2019s let down by an uneven script from Lowthorpe and Emma Donoghue (Room<\/a>, The Wonder<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The film takes flight when Helen brings the intimidating raptor back home.<\/p>\n

Helen\u2019s newspaper photographer dad (Brendan Gleeson) dies suddenly, blowing apart the academic\u2019s life as she knows it. At first, the History and Philosophy Of Science expert tries to drown her sorrows with a drip-feed of ill-advised dates and self-help books, before, a little perplexingly, trying her luck taming a goshawk \u2014 the Hannibal Lecter of the bird world.<\/p>\n

The film takes flight when Helen brings the intimidating raptor \u2014 christened Mabel \u2014 back home. It\u2019s rare to see so much palpable on-screen chemistry between a human and an animal actor, akin to Tarka The Otter or Kes<\/a>; the tension between them could be cut with a talon. The drama then occasionally strays into nature-doc territory thanks to veteran cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen, whose camera impressively tracks Mabel\u2019s hunts, while Helen gets her steps in scurrying after her.<\/p>\n

Lowthorpe nails this story\u2019s soaring highs, but the same can\u2019t quite be said of its lows, with Helen\u2019s mental trajectory becoming increasingly difficult to comprehend. She seems to be doing better when she starts to live in self-inflicted squalor in a deeply unhygienic college flat, adorned with bird pellets; spends the latter half with blood smeared across her face; and starts to literally shut the door on her Aussie bestie (Denise Gough) without context. Meanwhile, some of her students\u2019 concerns about the ethics of hunting with hawks are shoehorned in towards the end to make a stunted point about getting over death. It\u2019s a well-meaning and graceful adaptation, which could have reached loftier heights had it embraced the complexity and weirdness of its source material.<\/p>\n

A birdie biopic that\u2019s too keen to avoid ruffling feathers, Lowthorpe\u2019s film still boasts two brilliant lead performances \u2014 a magnificent Foy and an even more majestic Mabel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recently bereaved academic (Claire Foy) decides the best distraction from her grief is buying and taming a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-426219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}