H is for Hawk – Film Review
by Frank L.

Director – Philippa Lowthorpe
Writers – Emma Donoghue, Philippa Lowthorpe, Helen MacDonald
Stars – Claire Foy, Brendan Gleeson, Denise Gough

In 2014, Helen MacDonald published her memoir H is for Hawk to considerable critical acclaim. MacDonald has now adapted it for the screen with the assistance of Emma Donoghue (Room, 2010) and the director, Philippa Lowthorpe. They concentrate on the grief which Helen (Claire Foy), a successful young Cambridge academic, experiences following the sudden and unexpected death of her much-loved father Alasdair (Brendan Gleeson), a professional photographer. MacDonald had always been interested in falconry and the natural world. In her grief, she decides to train a goshawk, which is bigger, “bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier and much, much harder to see” than a sparrowhawk, according to the 2014 memoir. The film combines her learning to train a goshawk, Mabel, whom she brings to live with her in her Cambridge apartment, with her career as a Cambridge academic. To train Mabel is a full-time occupation. Inevitably, there are patent stresses and strains on her personal and professional lives, but this is the reality of the grief that has encompassed her.

The centrality of the goshawk to the story is underlined with the opening shots as the magnificent plumage of the raptor is shown in close-up. These shots are like a great abstract painting. There is then a comparatively short sequence which depicts Helen in Cambridge and the run-of-the-mill contacts she has with her father and her mother (Lindsay Duncan) until the fateful telephone call she receives from her mother to tell her her father is dead. The film then runs complementary stories of how she acquires and trains Mabel, along with how the presence of her father is a constant in her life as she tries to handle the reality of his death. Through living with the goshawk, Mabel, Helen’s life becomes increasingly out of the ordinary and distant from the norms of academia and everyday domestic life.

Foy must have undergone considerable training as a falconer to be able to train Mabel, as the sequences of her with the goshawk show them having achieved a close modus operandi. It is magnificent to watch, but Foy also has to play Helen’s increasingly complex and strained relationships with her friends and her family. Her father’s presence, his background, his values, his professional work and achievements become ever more dominant in her everyday life. This is achieved by a series of flashbacks with Gleeson being a paternal presence par excellence who has an intimate, loving relationship with his daughter. Duncan is a carefully calibrated, concerned maternal presence as Helen’s mother, while Denise Gough plays the stalwart friend Christina with appropriate concern and loyalty. There is no doubt that Helen, in her grief, enters into a world where depression and eccentricity lurk, but somehow the positives of Helen’s personality hold fast.

The cinematography of goshawks in flight and in pursuit of their prey are memorable, as are the shots of Cambridge academic life. This is an impressive adaptation to the screen of a book which was an unlikely but richly deserved success. As a film, it is contemplative and challenging – it is not an easy story, but it is very worthwhile.