“H Is for Hawk” is for the birds. And such majestic creatures they are, holding their own opposite the magnificent Claire Foy (“All of Us Strangers”).
The film, directed by Philippa Lowthorpe and based on Helen Macdonald’s memoir, centers on Foy’s character Helen, devastated by the sudden loss of her father (played by Brendan Gleeson). In her grief, she turns to a childhood interest, falconry, and buys a goshawk. The wilder the bird, the tamer the name; Helen calls her Mabel.
Producer Dede Gardner and Lowthorpe had worked with Foy before (in “Women Talking” and “The Crown,” respectively) and agreed she’d be perfect as Helen. But Mabel was another story entirely.
Lowthorpe tapped Lloyd and Rose Buck, married bird specialists who had worked for decades on natural history documentaries with the likes of David Attenborough. Since they were conveniently located not far from her home in Bristol, England, the three got together to figure out how to make the film work.
Five birds were needed to play the character of Mabel at different points; the main two would have to be raised and trained by the couple long before filming began. Sisters Mabel 1 and Mabel 2 had the bulk of the work. “They’re from the same clutch, but they’re like chalk and cheese in character,” says Lloyd. “Mabel 2 is much shier and has more wildness in her,” so she was used in the nervous bird scenes early on. Mabel 1 was used to fly to and from Foy’s glove, and for much of the action depicting Helen cohabiting with Mabel in her house.
Jess, on loan from a friend in Scotland with a falconry center, was accustomed to people, so she was featured in Mabel’s calmest moments. Juha, the only male and much smaller than the females, was seen only in high aerial shots. And Lottie starred in the hunting scenes, traveling up to 45 miles an hour through the woods to capture her prey.
Before filming was set to begin, Foy visited the Bucks for two weeks of intensive falconry training. “That was a crucial moment for the whole project, because unless they’ve taken to Claire and she’s taken to them, I don’t think it could ever have worked,” Lloyd says. “But because she was so amazing, it works. She’s interested, clever, intelligent, but above all she’s just a lovely person, and that’s what they see. You can’t fool them, they’re not silly; they can see if someone’s pretending to like them but they don’t really.”
Foy was delighted to work with the birds and with the Bucks. “They’re incredibly kind people,” she says. “They’re so tender and so beautiful with their birds, and therefore they are with other human beings as well. But also they just threw me in. At the end of the first day I was with Lottie hunting, letting her release off my arm. Learning with the birds was the last piece of the puzzle of Helen and the experience I was going to have, so it became a really profound experience.”
“Claire put her heart and soul into that training,” Lowthorpe says. “She has great physical instincts as well as emotional instincts.”
Everything on set revolved around the hawks’ well-being. Filming took place between October and January, to avoid molting season. Everyone in the crew wore drab, dark colors, because that’s what the birds were used to. Microphones were hidden because the birds didn’t like booms, and most of the crew hid upstairs; even Lowthorpe hid behind a piece of furniture with her monitor. Lloyd or Rose would either hood or remove the scene’s Mabel, and give the all-clear, before the crew could reappear to work between takes.
“I told Charlotte Bruus Christensen, our fantastic DP, we should just film everything,” Lowthorpe recalls. “If you pin it you might kill the flavor of danger or surprise. Claire was so in tune in those scenes, she was able to react in an improvisational way, and she would be in her character at all times during those long, long takes. Like I was capturing the hawks, I was capturing Claire, allowing her to move wherever she wanted.”
“It wasn’t like having another actor who had another agenda or actions or a perspective that they wanted to get across in the scene,” Foy says. “I was along for the ride with these animals.”
When Helen takes Mabel for her first walk around the house, she talks gently to her. “This is my kitchen,” she says. Mabel flaps her wings wildly. “It’s not that bad.” The bird poops. “Oh, thanks very much.”
Mabel becomes both salvation and addiction to Helen. “To feel that alive, chasing a goshawk as it’s hunting, you’re part of this extraordinary experience, which feels spiritual and meaningful,” Foy explains. “I do think that we try to avoid the ugliness of grief at all costs, like that’s something you’re supposed to do alone in a cupboard that isn’t witnessed. We just are so afraid of that expression of it. The journey with Mabel is the most vivid expression of that experience.”
Back home in London, Foy says she intends to visit the Mabels. “Whenever you drive on the motorway in the U.K., you’ve birds of prey everywhere, and now I can identify them,” she says. “I see them everywhere I go. There’s an owl out the back of my house. I feel like I’m constantly looking upwards now.”
