H is for Hawk Review: Wings of Mourning

Helen Macdonald‘s 2014 memoir “H is for Hawk” became a publishing phenomenon—a Costa Book of the Year winner that resonated with readers processing their own losses through its raw account of grief and goshawk training. Adapting something so internal, so rooted in prose and private pain, is a tricky proposition. Director Philippa Lowthorpe and co-writer Emma Donoghue have given it their best effort, and while the film can’t fully capture what made the book sing, Claire Foy‘s committed performance makes the journey worthwhile.

Foy plays Helen, an up-and-coming natural science academic at Cambridge whose world shatters when her beloved father (Brendan Gleeson, The Tragedy of Macbeth) dies suddenly of a heart attack. Unable to process her grief through conventional means, she acquires a wild goshawk she names Mabel and throws herself into the ancient art of falconry—the same pursuit she once shared with her dad during their birding expeditions together. As Helen teaches Mabel to hunt and fly free, she begins to recognize how deeply she’s neglected her own emotional life.

Lowthorpe, who became the first woman to win a BAFTA for Best Director in Television for Call the Midwife, guides the material with a careful hand. Her script, co-written with Donoghue (who adapted her own 2010 novel “Room” into the 2015 film), tells a familiar story of grief but does so with its heart in the right place. Gleeson’s brief appearances carry the warmth and mischief you’d expect from anything he touches, while Lindsay Duncan (About Time) brings understated dignity to Helen’s mother, a woman processing her own sadness while worrying her daughter is spiraling.

What impresses most is the work Foy (All of Us Strangers) did with the actual hawks. According to production notes, she underwent intensive training with hawk handlers Lloyd and Rose Buck, who specialize in natural history filmmaking. The entire crew had to wear dark green or black clothing and hide in easy-ups (structures designed to blend into the environment) during exterior shoots to avoid spooking the birds. That dedication shows—Foy’s interactions with Mabel feel genuine, her body language shifting as the relationship between woman and hawk deepens. It’s where the real acting challenge lives, building a performance around an unpredictable animal who knows her as Helen, not as Claire.

Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s cinematography, like her work on The Hunt and Far from the Madding Crowd, casts everything in a gauzy glow that suggests dreamy mornings or an afternoon seen through eyes still misty with tears. Sarah Finlay‘s production design recreates Cambridge circa 2014 with understated precision, while Amy Roberts‘ costumes look itchy, scratchy, and oh so comfortable—academic practicality over fashion.

The film’s intimate, inward quality makes it better suited for a rainy Sunday at home than a big screen. This isn’t a criticism so much as an observation about where it lives best. It also places H is for Hawk squarely within a growing trend of films about processing loss through avian connection—Melissa McCarthy’s starling in The Starling, Naomi Watts’ magpie in Penguin Bloom, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ parrot-shaped Death in Tuesday, Benedict Cumberbatch’s manifestation of grief as a crow in The Thing with Feathers. Apparently, if you’re mourning in the movies these days, you’re going to need a bird. Macdonald is non-binary and has ADHD, and I found myself wishing the film had leaned into these aspects of their identity more fully—not because it would make the story more unique, but because it would have given Foy additional dimensions to explore.

Still, H is for Hawk offers something valuable: compassion for loss without putting grief on a schedule. Sometimes healing looks like standing on a windswept moor with a wild thing on your wrist, waiting for it to fly.