A grieving academic and a hawk

    In H is for Hawk, Claire Foy plays a grieving woman who adopts a goshawk as a way of reconnecting with nature, and, just as important, avoid a return to the normalcy of life before her father's sudden death.

    Director Philippa Lowthorpe bases her movie on a well-recieved memoir by Helen Macdonald. Lowthorpe's story requires Foy's Helen, an academic studying and teaching at Cambridge, to spend much of the movie carrying the hawk while wearing a cumbersome protective glove. 

   When the hawk, though tethered to Helen's arm, flaps her wings, a sense of nature's uncontrollability becomes palpably present. Hawks are natural-born hunters, and much of the movie involves Helen's attempts to allow the bird, which she names Mabel, to hunt before returning to its perch on her arm.

   I've read that bird specialists were used and that numerous hawks were employed for the filming, but that doesn't make the feat any less impressive. Maybe it's just my skittishness, but I felt a sense of imminent danger, as if the hawk might strike at any moment. 

    Added emotional weight derives from Helen's slide into a severe depression that cuts her off from her academic life and turns her into a bit of a recluse. She shares her apartment with Mabel. Her Cambridge colleagues don't always approve. Some are indifferent. Some do their best to indulge her passion.

   Helen understands that goshawks aren't affectionate creatures. Still, she develops a connection, perhaps one-sided, with the bird. 

    Wisely, Foy makes little attempt to ingratiate herself with viewers. The movie's warmth is generated in large part by Brendan Gleeson, who appears in flashbacks as Helen's idiosyncratic news photographer father. His love for his daughter includes chiding humor and acceptance. Clearly, the two operate on the same wavelength.

   A strong supporting cast includes Lindsay Duncan as Helen's mother, Josh Dylan as her brother, and Denise Gough as Helen's devoted friend.  

    And, of course, there's Mabel. 

   Lowthorpe captures the liberating beauty of Mable in flight, but never loses sight of the fact that the relationship between Mable and Helen contains an element of unease. That edginess allows the movie to sidestep any sentiment that might have undermined the sense of irreparable loss, which the movie ably captures and sustains.