The reconstruction of a lost experience: Exploring ways in which The Nightingale (2018) depicts agency in voice using the arguments in Part I and II of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ *

*(Content warning: References to violence, rape and sexual assault)

“You know what it’s like to have a white fella take everything you have, don’tcha?”. [1] This question, asked by a young Irish convict named Clare (Aisling Franciosi) to Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), an Australian Aboriginal tracker, reveals an unexpected commonality they share: a loathing for British colonists. Based amid the infamous Black War of the 1820s in present-day Tasmania, The Nightingale (2018) directed by Jennifer Kent follows Clare on her epic journey to seek revenge on those who did her wrong. At the start of the film, Clare has lived out her prison sentence yet remains enslaved to her superior, Lieutenant Hawkins. Despite her reasonable requests to live freely with her husband Aiden and infant daughter, Hawkins’s refusal to grant her clemency leads to a confrontation between Clare’s family, Hawkins, and his posse. A struggle ensues and Hawkins kills Aiden, murders the baby, and gang rapes Clare with another vigilante. Left for dead, she miraculously survives the night only to find that Hawkins has set out to the next town seeking a promotion. Therefore with nothing left to lose she sets out to find Hawkins, but not without the essential yet unwelcomed help from Billy. As they embark through the unrelenting Tasmanian wilderness, Clare and Billy form an unexpected friendship through the empathy they garner for each other’s struggles. The Nightingale, therefore, brings forth a cinematic testimony of the cruel treatment that women and Aboriginal individuals experienced under British-colonial Australia.

Kent, a native Australian herself, embarked on two years of research for this film to truthfully depict this story. [2] With the help of an Aboriginal Elder, she was able to present Billy accurately as well as depict the violence inflicted on the oppressed groups as realistically as possible.[3] Kent therefore faces a challenging task of manifesting a 200-year-old history of two minority groups whose voices were silenced by colonialism, and breathe new life into their narratives. The extent to which Kent’s directorial choices improve her characters’ agency can best be explored through Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’. In Part I and II of her essay, Spivak explores the extent to which lower social classes can represent themselves. Her answer is ultimately no, they cannot. Individuals of the subaltern are denied human agency and are therefore represented by their ‘masters’ or predominantly Western intellectuals. [4] Kent however attempts to achieve a unique depiction of her oppressed characters through her focus on their authentic voices.

By exploring the conceptions of the subaltern in The Nightingale as seen through Spivak’s essay, one will better understand Kent’s depiction of speech, silence and song to magnify Clare and Billy’s experiences. Kent uses language to show how the ‘signified’ of a subaltern is revealed to the audience through translated subtitles from the native tongue of the subaltern voice. Kent shows the active suppression and silencing of voices through vividly displaying the violence experienced by Clare and Billy’s characters. Furthermore, Clare’s nickname as a ‘Nightingale’ defines to her subjectivity to Hawkins but later uses her name as a metaphor for her resistance. Billy, whose tribal name ‘Mangana’ means Blackbird, uses his voice to perform his rituals and connect with the natural world around him. Therefore, while colonialism can kill, eradicate and oppress the subaltern, through the production of The Nightingale Kent proves while the voices of the subaltern remain clenched in the ‘master narrative’, their essence can never be eradicated and will ultimately prevail to those who choose to listen.

Kent’s depiction of different languages helps Clare and Billy speak for their respective subaltern groups and endow their existence with an emotional charge. Spivak writes, “It is when signifiers are left to look after themselves that verbal slippages happen. The signifier ‘representation’ is a case in point.” In de Saussure’s semiotic equation, the signifier gives the sign (word) meaning. Kent utilises the element of language by allowing the characters to endow their realities with their own, distinct meaning through their native tongue. By attempting what Spivak notes as “represent(ing) themselves as transparent.” [5] in Kent’s position of power she strives to move away from ‘speaking for’ her characters. When Clare and Billy explain to each other the ways they are ostracised from society, their hatred for one another is blatant, as Clare has been conditioned to view Billy as lesser-than, and Billy sees Clare as a member of the colonist group:

“Clare: I’m not England. I’m Ireland.

Billy: You bloody England!

Clare: I’m Ireland! [in Gaelic] Damn all the English to hell! Every one of their sons! May the pox disfigure them! May the plague consume them! Long live Ireland!

Billy: … You Ireland. ” [6]

 Ironically, the language barrier between Clare and Billy does not prevent them from ultimately understanding each other’s differences, and each other’s pain. The audience has the privilege of reading translated subtitles of the native languages, allowing the audience to achieve a more emotional connection with the characters. The use of subtitles, therefore, also fulfils the two elements that make up the sign because it ensures a ‘conscience’ within the characters’ speech. This element, says Spivak, is married to the re-presentation of the subaltern. [7]

Clare’s dislocation from Ireland and Billy’s dislocation from his native place means both characters exist within a world that punishes them for their different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, both characters keep a connection to their culture by continuing to speak in their native languages, even if only in private. Despite her skin colour as Billy noted, Clare is denied the privileges of a sovereign subject because of her nationality so naturally, perhaps, the first voice we hear at the start of the film is a whisper in Gaelic from Aiden to Clare. These foreign utterance cements Clare’s narrative as the film’s focal point.

When being interviewed about his role as Billy, Ganambarr said that learning the language ‘palawa kani’ was the most challenging aspect of his performance. [8] Palawa Kani is a recreation of various original Tasmania languages that have withered away as a result of colonisation and is the only Aboriginal language in Tasmania today. [9] The restoration of this language shows its importance in holding elements of history and identity.

Palawa Kani has never been used in a feature film before. [10] Thus through the subtitling of Gaelic and palawa kani, audiences gain a unique perspective that the colonists did not or simply refused to attempt to understand. Additionally, by only subtitling Clare and Billy’s native languages, “It makes the characters speaking the un-subtitled language out to be subhuman like they’re animals.”, remarked interviewer Alissa Wilkinson with Kent. [11] Here, the image of the ‘Other’, as Spivak characterised the subaltern, is suddenly switched to favouring voices that are not usually given space to speak.

As Spivak would surely note, Kent is in a position of great power here, but rather than narrating this story in her own ‘intellectual language’, Kent allows language to become an element of revolution for the subaltern through Clare and Billy. The characters thus give the ‘signs’ of their language, not only meaning, but active breath.

Silence and violence seem to act interchangeably in The Nightingale. In her essay Spivak asks, “Are those who act and struggle mute, as opposed to those who act and speak?” [12] Her allusion to Foucault and Derrida’s exploration of the repressed shows the extent to which epistemic violence has dictated the representation of the subaltern. Through the depiction of graphic violence in The Nightingale, Kent reveals the atrocities that plagued the enduring history of subaltern groups of colonial Tasmania and the lack of accountability it retained. 

Kent’s use of the silencing of voices can be seen in the uncomfortable and wildly controversial scene where Clare gets raped by Hawkins and another solider as her husband and baby are murdered. Kent ceases to use any non-diegetic sound throughout the entire film, which makes this a very tense scene as the audience is forced to watch the reality of the situation, rather than experience a dramatized version. As Hawkins begins to rape Clare, the baby is screeching in the background. As the situation escalates, the infants’ scream gets louder until Hawkins throws the baby against the wall, instantly silencing her and silencing Clare. Speechlessness fills the once chaotic atmosphere.

Kent rejects the idealisation of Clare by depicting the violent atrocities that would regularly happen to women convicts in British colonies. Yet it is in Clare’s resistance of staying silent that reveals the true nature of her character: rather than staying silent she goes into the wilderness to bring justice to the killing of her family.

Another instance of the silencing of the subaltern is when Uncle Charlie, who is guiding Hawkins and his group through the forest, remains rather quiet throughout their journey but in an act of defiance leads the group of the path. When he brings them on top of a hill, he states, “You want all the land? Here is the land.” [13] [Fig. 1] And then proceeds to depart. A member of Hawkins’ team shoots Uncle Charlie despite him being the only one who can get the group into town, citing his reason as: “He was making fun of ya.” [14]

Words matter, even if it is a matter of life and death. The mere mocking of a lieutenant by an Aboriginal individual calls for his execution. By showing this disposability of life of members of subaltern groups, Kent argues that every time someone spoke up, they would be silenced. Spivak wrote, “The notion of what the work cannot say becomes important.” [15] The setting of the film is so desolate that ordinary life is anything but ordinary. Without the watchful eyes of any moral authority, Kent illustrates how Hawkins, a symbol of the colonial individual, is free to fabricate his own narrative simply due to the position of his voice. The privileges of the sovereign subject therefore become allocated rather than naturally inherent within an individual. 

Perhaps the most important use of the human voice in The Nightingale is song. Kent’s motif of song begins with the films’ title. Clare’s identity as Hawkins’ ‘Nightingale’ is used to sexualise her [Fig. 2], but she reclaims her voice in the parlour at the end of the film. She confronts Hawkins and sings one final song for him. “I’m not your Nightingale, you’re little bird, your dove, I’m not your little anything. I belong to me and no one else!” [16] This is ultimately her revenge: not physically ending his life but instead killing him in the best way she knew how, which is by using and reclaiming her voice. Billy would come to finish the job and kill Hawkins later that evening. 

Billy uses song to continue the traditions of his tribe. He uses it in ceremonious instances and to honour his heritage. Shortly after they leave the stunned group in the parlour, that night Billy sings a song to himself as he does a tribal ritual in preparation to kill Hawkins. 

When the deed is done, Billy and Clare escape to a shore where they sit apart. By beginning and ending the story in song, Kent gives the film a mythical, folklore feeling because song becomes memory, and the present must endure that memory. Both Billy and Clare’s symbolic identities as birds also give them a poetic symbolism as icons of freedom. In the end, they achieve their own, individual agencies illustrated by the space between the two. [Fig. 3]

History lives within the paradox of the story by the intellectual and the story of the individual which they are supposedly representing. As Spivak writes, this “double session of representations” [17] is necessary, and its continued pull at one another allows for the existence of friction. Kent’s telling of this history is not meant necessarily as an alteration to the characters, but rather a reconstruction of their narrative from their own perspectives. But of course, the characters of the film bend to the will of the director, therefore while they are given their own voice, it is still a case of being represented for.

As Kent stated at the Venice Biennale, “I don’t have all the answers to the question of violence. But I feel they lie in our humanity; in the empathy we hold for ourselves and others.” [18] The unlikely friendship of a Nightingale and a Blackbird therefore reveals the powerful forms in which the voice can communicate identity and reciprocate compassion.