H Is For Hawk: Movie Review

Cast: Claire Foy, Brendan Gleeson, Lesley Duncan, Denise Gough
Director: Philippa Lowthorpe

Based on Helen MacDonald's own memoir, H Is For Hawk is a broodingly introspective piece about grief and coping with loss.

Cambridge Academic Helen spends her time as a teacher taking her students to the pub and engaging with them on their course work - but when she receives a call that her photographer father (Gleeson, mostly glimpsed in flashbacks) has collapsed and died while out on a job, her world falls into a tailspin.

As she negotiates the next stage of her life, she decides to take up falconry, buying a goshawk to train after years of bird-watching with her father. But the new hobby becomes all-consuming, leading family and friends to fear that Helen is inert and unable to move on.

While H Is For Hawk's 2-hour run time can feel drawn out in places, the film's slow peeling back of the layers of grief prove to be just about compelling enough to keep you engaged - though in truth, a lot of that is due to some handsome cinematography and Foy's restrained and soulful performance.

It's perhaps fascinating that scenes between Foy and the hawk (named Mabel) are perhaps the more engaging, as the rest of the film feels more like a traditionally dour affair, that has a degree of predictability about it.

Family and friends fret over Helen's over-identification with the hawk and Lowthorpe's movie does little to move on the idea that Helen's projecting onto the bird and hiding behind the need to keep her indoors and in darkness - there's little to no subtlety in the parallels here and the conclusion is no real surprise to anyone.

But in the final moments, as Helen and the hawk stand alone on a bucolic paradise, the sun hazily retreating in the background, the movie's less interested in providing ultimate closure and more concerned with raising the spectre of a life after.

It's just a shame there aren't more of these moments scattered throughout - as it is, and no matter how strong Foy is, H Is For Hawk flies, but it sadly rarely soars.