‘H Is For Hawk’ review: Claire Foy soars in Philippa Lowthorpe’s sensitive adaptation

Dir: Philippa Lowthorpe. UK. 2025. 115mins

Claire Foy goes head to beak with a big and intimidating-looking hen of prey in Philippa Lowthorpe’s delicate adaptation of Helen Macdonald’s best-selling e book, a mix of nature writing and memoir. Foy performs Cambridge tutorial Macdonald who, following the sudden loss of life of their beloved father Alisdair (Brendon Gleeson), decides to channel their grief into coaching a goshawk, notoriously some of the wild, fearsome and recalcitrant of all raptors. Foy is terrific in a movie which balances bruising candour about psychological well being points towards arresting wildlife images and a fervent appreciation of the pure world.

Captures among the e book’s meditative reverence for nature

The e book’s reputation – it gained the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa E book of the 12 months, amongst others – will likely be a key promoting level for this elegant adaptation, as will Foy’s expressive and uncooked efficiency. US rights have been picked up by Roadside, and Foy may enter the awards dialog for her work. The movie premiered in Telluride, however the model that screens in London has been additional edited, dropping practically quarter-hour from its working time. At its present size the movie works effectively, capturing among the e book’s meditative reverence for nature, significantly the ‘pink in tooth and claw’ savagery of the pure world, with out getting slowed down in longueurs.

The loss of life of photojournalist Alisdair Macdonald from a coronary heart assault is sudden and brutal. One second Helen is asking him, to share the information of a sighting of a pair of goshawks within the wild. The following, he’s gone, returning sporadically within the cussed, stabbing pangs of grief and vivid reminiscences that hang-out Helen’s each waking second. Proven in flashbacks, Gleeson imbues the character with such heat, infectious enthusiasm and curiosity concerning the world that we readily be part of with Helen in mourning his premature loss of life.

Helen’s choice to purchase and prepare a goshawk as a method to course of their grief isn’t as outlandish as it’d initially appear. An skilled falconer, Helen has shut connections with the falconry group – Sam Spruell offers a delicate, low-key efficiency as Stuart, fellow raptor coach and Helen’s rock throughout instances of stress. And the hyperlink between falconry and grief has been mined earlier than, with Julian Goldberger’s 2006 adaptation of Harry Crews’ novel The Hawk Is Dying exploring related themes. There’s a kinship, too, with Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun.

However whereas the obsessive focus and persistence required to achieve the hen’s belief offers a distraction from Helen’s unhappiness, it additionally disengages her from the world, her work and her more and more anxious family and friends. A robust scene sees Helen takes the hawk to a college division reception. After just a few faltering makes an attempt at small discuss, the opposite friends recede, leaving Helen alone and solemn with the hawk on their arm scanning the room with prehistoric amber eyes. The hen, named Mabel, consumes Helen’s vitality and focus: it fills up the gaps the place the unhappiness would possibly lurk; it acts as a barrier that retains life at arm’s size. It’s not, Helen’s shut good friend Christina (Denise Gough) factors out, a completely wholesome state of affairs.

Not all the pieces that made Macdonald’s e book such a profound and rewarding learn makes it onto the display screen. A biographical ingredient, concerning the author T.H. White, writer of The Goshawk, is excised utterly. And Macdonald’s exquisitely phrased meditations on bereavement are one other casualty. However the image has different strengths: the satisfying, fleshed-out performances are one. One other is the look of the image, a handsomely photographed appreciation of the British panorama and the creatures that inhabit it.

The tech credit are spectacular, with the cinematography – each DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s reverent photographs of textured feathers and wildlife cameraman Mark Payne-Gill’s thrilling footage of Mabel in flight – a selected standout. Additionally notable is figure from the make up division on a blood-crusted claw gouge on Helen’s face which steadily fades, therapeutic in tandem with the scars of grief on her soul. And an emotional climax makes use of the real-life photographic archive of Alisdair Macdonald to highly effective impact.