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Films that deal seriously with grief and depression can be heavy going, but they can also be illuminating and rewarding. H is for Hawk, based on Helen Macdonald's award-winning 2014 memoir, is an example.
In 2007, Helen Macdonald (played by Claire Foy) seems to have a pretty good life. While not lucky in love, she is a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, where she teaches the history and philosophy of science. She's the kind of lecturer who will take her students for a class down at the pub.
But when her beloved father, the award-winning press photographer Alisdair Macdonald (Brendan Gleeson), dies suddenly, Helen is shattered. She loves her mother (Lindsay Duncan) and brother (Josh Dylan), but her relationship with Alisdair was special.
One of the things Alisdair and Helen shared was a love of nature. After his death, Helen, who has had a longtime interest in birds of prey, acquires a goshawk. The challenge of training the fierce and independent bird seems to provide her with a way to channel her grief into something external. Perhaps she identifies with the bird's fierce and solitary nature and hopes that harnessing some of its strength will help her through her pain.
Her friend Stuart (Sam Spruell), an expert with such birds, assists with the initial training and caring for the bird, whom she names Mabel. Eventually Helen can go it alone, though Mabel is no cuddly pet that will simply eat meat on a perch: the goshawk is, as Stuart puts it, a perfectly evolved psychopath that needs to be allowed to hunt and kill (squeamish animal lovers be warned).
Helen carries Mabel around with her everywhere and this is pretty much accepted, given the British fondness for eccentrics.
But her increasing devotion to - or is it obsession with? - Mabel has its problems. She becomes withdrawn, creating a world with just the two of them, and neglects her work and basic housekeeping and hygiene as well as personal relationships, including with her patient and understanding best friend Christina (Denise Gough).
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And even though Mabel provides some relief and distraction for Helen, grief and depression cannot be held at bay indefinitely.
Screenwriters Philippa Lowthorpe (who also directed) and Emma Donoghue handle the way Helen deals with grief very well. Helen's frequent memories of her father are both comforting and painful. Some scenes, as when she and her brother fall into helpless laughter at the sight of "themed" coffins in a catalogue, are effective depictions of how personally people react to trauma.
The latter stages of the story become a little more fragmented, perhaps reflecting Helen's mental fragility. A scene where she finally delivers a lecture she's been putting off writing - and where she's forced to defend her keeping of a goshawk - cuts away before she finishes, which is a little frustrating, and the film ends at an unresolved point, suggesting that Helen is well on her way to returning to the human world without providing a pat happy ending.
Her life is up in the air, metaphorically speaking. A long-running thread about her wanting to apply for a fellowship in Germany drops off and her future is uncertain. But we know she was able to write her memoir, and the scene where she delivers her father's eulogy is funny and touching.
Foy and director Philippa Lowthorpe worked together on The Crown, and Foy is excellent here. She's convincing in her portrayal of grief and in her handling of the bird (at least to my inexpert eye). All the supporting actors are good, too, and Foy and Gleeson make the father-daughter bond feel real.
The cinematography by Charlotte Bruus Christensen (A Quiet Place) captures the stark beauty of the countryside very well and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch's music is a fine complement to this rewarding, low-key drama.
