25/01/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Based on Helen Macdonald’s 2014 memoir, H is for Hawk is the story of the author’s headlong plunge into depression after the sudden death of her beloved father, Alisdair (Brendan Gleeson). When we first meet Helen (Claire Foy), she’s an academic, teaching History and Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, but already feeling that she’s not really inspiring her students. Alisdair, a celebrated newspaper photographer, is her constant source of solace: warm, understanding, the only one who really ‘gets’ her. His unexpected demise leaves her utterly bereft, unable to properly communicate with her mother (played by Lyndsey Duncan) and strangely detached from her Aussie best friend, Christina (Denise Gough).

After chancing upon one of her father’s old photographs, where a teenage version of herself is standing with a hawk perched on her outstretched hand, Helen becomes obsessed with the idea of revisiting this long-forgotten interest and, almost before she knows it, she’s impulsively driven to the North of Scotland to purchase a goshawk – the most feral and unpredictable of birds. But once she has ‘Mabel’ installed in her college digs, she realises that she will now have to spend her days working with the bird, learning its habits, how to feed it, care for it and, eventually, take it out to hunt in the Cambridgeshire countryside.

Meanwhile, her commitments at the University are going to have to take a back seat. To her friends and family, it seems as though she’s having some kind of nervous breakdown…

H is for Hawk is a ‘small’ film with big things to say about the nature of bereavement. Adapted from Macdonald’s book by director Philippa Lowthorpe and novelist Emma Donoghue, it’s an absorbing story, anchored by a remarkable performance from Foy. Lacking the kind of budget that would allow for CGI, she works alongside real birds – there are four of them in total, though only the eagle-eyed will spot the joins – and the developing ‘relationship’ between woman and raptor is at the heart of this affecting story. The moments where Helen unconsciously mirrors some of Mabel’s feral characteristics are a particular delight and so are the scenes featuring extraordinary wildlife footage, courtesy of veteran cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen.

Flashbacks to Macdonald’s memories of Alisdair are nicely interwoven throughout the narrative and a climactic scene where Helen delivers a moving eulogy at her father’s memorial mass has me in floods of tears. The mournful tone won’t appeal to everyone, but for me, this ticks all the right boxes.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney