Nightingale (Eliott Lester, 2014): USA

Reviewed by Erik Johansson at metro 4. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015.

Nightingale (2014, USA, Elliott Lesler) is one of the more stylistic films made the year of 2014. Following the story of one character, Peter Snowden (David Oyelowo) in one location, this drama feature has been given a good reputation in the business.

Birdman, Boyhood, yes, there are many films released 2014 that explored new ways of film making, and Nightingale is one of them. The story follows Peter Snowden, a man in his 30’s with a fractured mind living in his mother’s house and talk on on the phone. he has two different phones, one who is his mothers home phone where he takes phone calls from people who wants to talk to his mother and one personal mobile phone where he talks to his love interest Edward, and a computer where he records his video journal.

The narrative is a bit blurry, the first 20 minutes of the film we see Peter wonder around in his house and talk, and it’s not very clear that there is something wrong with Peter and there wasn’t really a hook until the first act, When Peter walks in to his mother’s room and we find out that his mother have been dead for about a week and that Peter have killed her.

The movie has a lot of warm brown colors giving a sense of calmness, indicating that you don’t understand what a fractured mind Peter has by his appearance.

The role of Peter Snowden is very dialogue heavy, but the editor made a very good job keeping a very high pacing so you don’t get board and at the same time don’t get confused. And instead of the classical fade in/fade out transitions, the director chose to go with dissolving beauty shots of stuff like incense just to indicate the calmness of Peter. The costuming and hair changed for every time jump on Peter, and you could see how for every time he kept getting crazier and crazier.

Nightingale was very well made and had some very interesting elements for filmmakers to look at but, but the narrative was a little bit too flat to be compared to the bigger films of 2014 like Birdman, but otherwise a very well made film.