Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Can Claire Foy handle a “perfectly evolved psychopath” in H IS FOR HAWK?

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Some exciting news—The Take is now on Patreon: www.patreon.com/kermodeandmayo. Become a Vanguardista or an Ultra Vanguardista to get video episodes of Take Two every week, plus member‑only chat rooms, polls and submissions to influence the show, behind‑the‑scenes photos and videos, the monthly Redactor’s Roundup newsletter, and access to a new fortnightly LIVE show—a raucous, unfiltered lunchtime special with the Good Doctors, new features, and live chat so you can heckle, vote, and have your questions read out in real time. Claire Foy is our special guest this week—and we promise that’s not just because her dad keeps writing in to the show... It’s also because she’s starring in H is For Hawk, out in cinemas this week. She plays Helen, who decides to keep and train a notoriously difficult goshawk as a means of coming to terms with the death of her father (played by Brendan Gleeson). Claire chats to Simon about bringing this bestselling memoir to the screen and learning to falcon with one of these ‘perfectly evolved psychopaths’ for real. Mark reviews H is for Hawk, plus three more fresh film releases—it's a packed show! First, Saipan—the football drama starring Éanna Hardwicke as Roy Keane and Steve Coogan as Ireland manager Mick McCarthy, which charts their legendary bust-up ahead of the 2002 world cup. From Korean cinema superstar Park Chan-wook we’ve got No Other Choice, a black comedy about a white-collar worker who turns lethal after being laid off. And last but certainly not least we’ve got even more Josh O’Connor and more Paul Mescal (surely those two lads deserve a holiday?) in The History of Sound—a gay romance between two student musicians in WW1 era America. Plus all the cinema action from the box office top 10, the endless hilarity of the laughter lift, and your tip top correspondence. Don’t miss it! Timecodes with YT clip codes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free) Saipan review 08:36 Box Office Top 10 - 18:43 Claire Foy interview – 42:09 H is For Hawk review 58:08 Laughter Lift - 01:07:47 The History of Sound review 1:16:01 No Other Choice review 1:10:54 You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo Please take our survey and help shape the future of our show: https://www.kermodeandmayo.com/survey EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts To advertise on this show contact: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Mooby, the global film company that champions great cinema. From iconic directors to emerging otters, there's always something new to discover. With Mooby, each and every film is hand-selected, so you can explore the best of cinema, streaming anytime, anywhere. When we say the best, we mean the best, because now streaming on Moabue from January 23rd in the UK is the film that I said was my favorite film of last year, which is Die My Love, the new film by Lynn Ramsey. It has an extraordinary central performance by Jennifer Lawrence, but also I think Robert Pattinson is brilliant in it. I love all of Lynn Ramsey's films,

but I think that Die My Love is just a further example of what a brilliant poet of cinema she is. And that is available streaming on movie from January the 23rd in the UK, and it is wonderful. It's my favourite film of last year. To stream the best of cinema, you can try Mooby-free for 30 days at Mooby.com

slash Kermode & Mayo. That's M-U-B-I-D-M-O-M-O for a whole month of great cinema for free. Here, Mark. Now, I've been thinking about the early days of our show, just a little bit recently. Okay, go on. When we first started out, we didn't have our truly wonderful top production team, did we? No, we didn't. How on earth did we manage? Well, when you're starting out, finding the right tool that not only helps you out but simplifies everything, can be such a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. With helpful AI tools and hundreds

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that you can become a Vanguard Easter and get an extra episode every Thursday. Including bonus reviews. Extra viewing suggestions. Viewing recommendations at home and in cinemas. Plus your film and non-film questions answered as best we can in questions, Schmestians. You can get all that extra stuff via Apple Podcasts

or head to extra takes.com for non-fruit-related devices. There's never been a better time to become a Vanguard Easter. Free offer, now available, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're already a Vanguard Easter, we salute you. Are we on? Is that it? Are we starting?

We are on. Should we start by saying that the weird thing is, although this is the beginning of the program, we've already done an interview. Oh, I mean, we're so hard working on this show. We are. And then we're going to do, we're going to record this podcast, and then we're going to come straight off and do a live show. I know.

that's for the Take Ultra community, the Patreon, our Patreon friends. Dance Monkey Dance. Plus, this week's show, we've got more films than usual to review and a whole new feature in which I have to answer five. I mean, it's, it's,

we just don't stop. We're like machines. There is news of a bonus later on. Is there? Yes. Where are you, by the way? I'm in Ali's house. Who's Ali?

Ali from the Dodge Brothers. Ali. I mean, I know who he is. is, but on behalf of the audience, you know, like, right. I believe the listeners know who Ali is, because I have done, if I'm here, because as you know, the internet connection in Brockenhurst is like, literally, you might as well just put it on a piece of paper and attach it to the leg of a carrier pigeon. But Ali's house has got millions of megabytes.

He's got the super fast ultra-wife, so I'm up in Ali's office, which, of course, looks like my office anyway, because he's got a picture of Elvis over there and a picture of, you know, a Beatles thing over there, so we might as well live in the same house. is he like the center of the megabyte universe it sounds like the way yeah it sounds as though you know you're at the heart of everything yeah that's him basically all all internet traffic goes through ali's house isn't that amazing yeah so somewhere in in the basement there is the the internet the basement it's got the internet in it and then next door there's just an endless water supply you know to cool it all down yeah if ali's house goes off the whole the whole web goes off apparently

what an amazing world we live in anyway um He's there. I'm here. What are you doing? What you're reviewing? We've got an incredibly packed show. We have reviews of Saipan, which I'm going to have to have a conversation with you about because I didn't know even what the word was, but it's a footballing film. No Other Choice, which is the new film by Park Chan Wook. The History of Sound with Josh O'Connor is back again with Paul Meskell. And H is for Hawk, which brings us to our very special and personally arranged guest. Yeah, well, it's Mr. Foey's daughter. Mr. Foey's daughter. Which obviously we're only referring to as such because Claire Foie's dad listens to the podcast and we did go on Bended Knee to ask Claire to appear on the show.

And he played that to him. He played that to her and the results are on today's show. Yes, and we should point out in advance that she also, on Bended Knee in the interview, asks him to stop emailing the show. Yes. Which I'm happy to say Claire is wrong about because we encourage him to carry on.

By the way, he say Josh O'Connor is back again. So is Paul Meskell. So, you know, they're two men of the moment in history of sound. Anyway, what about Take Two then? In Take Two, more reviews. Heavyweight, featuring a performance by Anne Jason Isaacs and Mercy, a science fiction action thriller starring Chris Pratt.

Well, we kind of know what you think about that. Do you? From your tone of voice. Yes. From your tone of voice. Okay. Is Jason in that one as well? No.

Okay. Plus all the extra stuff, including the new feature which Mark has already referred to, five-question film club, in which we pick a film that's airing on free television in the UK. And then Mark answers what we think are five key questions about what is almost always going to be, a classic film. You then watch it during the week and then we reconvene for a debrief and we get your reactions next week. Yes. You ready for that? I am ready for that. Yes, I've prepped. Further discussion on the best football dramas in one frame back plus questions, Schmesszgens in which we answer the excellent question was 1992 to 1995, the golden period

for film. The golden period for film. No. I mean, no. Correct. That's that, but we'll give it slightly more thought and detail. And our extra show, Take Ultra, we're going to stream live every other Wednesday. And today is one of those. Anyway, by the time you've heard it, it's too late. But you can watch it again, obviously. It's also available as a video episode on Patreon or as an audio podcast. This week we're talking about the latest awards news.

We'll discuss what you're streaming at home. And of course, it includes hot takes and cold comfort, and a feature which exists solely for the purpose of the redacted dressing up, because that's what he likes to do the most. And using a prop pipe for some reason that none of us understand. Also, we'll be announcing the latest entry to our Hall of Fame, the needle drop, which you've been discussing and voting on our chat room over there. So head to patreon.com slash Kermit and Mayo and sign up. Also, if you just want to email the show in an old-fashioned way, correspondence at kerberdameo.com.

Throwing back to our obit section on the end of the year show, we raised a question and we have answered it. So well done to the Swedish team, who are led by, I hope I'm going to get this right, Hamas Hamalinan. Hamas Hamilinen. I think that's right. Who's in Sweden? Okay. Thank you for a great and insightful film podcast that always gets my spirits up and takes its listeners

seriously. I heard you talk about the live your dash expression and its origin. I first heard it in the Werner Herzog documentary into the abyss and thought that Surely someone was going to mail you about it, but since no one has, here is a link to the clip, which we've clicked on, and now we present to you in all its glory. I just make sure, and somebody told me about to live your dash, and that's really, after all this, that I went through and quit and everything, I heard the stories of telling me of live your dash. How do you, how are you going to live your dash?

And I didn't understand what are you talking about, dash? It's just on your tombstone. You got your birth date, and you got the day that you deceased, and you got that little dash in the middle. That's your life right there. That's everything between, from the time you was born, from the time you die, how are you going to live your dash? And that's where I'm at now.

I'm going to live my dash and make sure that everything, try to make everything right for the family, everybody. hold still and watch the birds. So thanks to Hampas in Sweden for sending us that clip, which, so was that, that's not a famous person. It's a Werner Herzog documentary into the abyss, which is a documentary about capital punishment. And I had absolutely no memory that during the interviews,

that comes up. But then, I mean, it's like the fact that when we were talking about, you know, everything would be all right in the end, that neither you nor I remember that it came from Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. But, of course, what it does establish is that the phrase predates, that film is from 2011,

and it's being talked about as something that was said to him. So, I mean, maybe it's the first time it's real, but well done for remembering that and for getting that clip. And Habber says, it's burned into my mind, partly thanks to another podcast, the Philip and Frederick podcast, a Swedish TV duo who talk about the scene at length many years ago. As a relatively new listener, I'm not fluent in your lingo yet,

but I believe I should say something like, Ticcada Tunk and Up with the Monks. Thank you again. Hampus, Hamilin in Sweden. I'm not sure where Up with the Monks comes from, but this is just for Hampus. Tickety-Tonk was a sign-off from the woman who was formerly the Queen Mother, who during the war would sign her letters.

Tickety-Tong hold fruit and Down with the... and with the Nazis, which is why it has stayed on as something that seems to be appropriate today. But Hampus, thank you very much indeed for getting in touch. You can check out where all our listeners are around the world, well, some of them anyway, with the Iwitter app, of course. We are not part of it. We do not gain financially, but it's a very, very useful device. Thank you very much indeed for that.

Okay, what's out, what's new, what's interesting? Okay, so this is something which I need a little bit of guidance from you, Sipan, which, now when I say the word Sipan, what does it mean to you? S-A-I-P-A-N. What does it mean to you? To be honest, I mean, I know what it is, but it doesn't really mean anything as a word. Okay, fine. So it's a location. This is the new film from Lice Brostasar and Glenn Laban, who you will remember are the filmmaking team behind good vibrations, which is my favorite film of the year that that came out, and ordinary love, which I absolutely loved as well. They were described by the Irish Times as, quote,

the most important contemporary filmmakers working from Northern Ireland. And I knew that about it. Other than that, the title didn't mean anything. So the screenplay is by Paul Fraser, who's a long-time collaborator of Shane Meadows, and it is about the apparently infamous falling out, and you will know about this because you know about football, on the titular Saipan,

between footballer Roy Keane, who I confess, I don't know anything about, and manager Mick McCarthy, who I confess, I don't know anything about, the period leading up to Ireland's matches at the 2002 World Cup, which I confess, I don't know anything about, okay? Yeah, your target audience for this, certainly. Precisely.

And actually, we will come back to that because it's kind of important. So Anna Hardwick and Steve Coogan are the two protagonists. Steve Coogan, of course, has played a number of real-life characters, you know, ranging from Paul Raymond, or Paul Raymond, as he calls himself, to Stan Laurel and Jimmy Saville. So anyway, Ireland headed to the World Cup in Korea, in Japan, and Roy Keane is the team captain, and he's got a very fracturous relationship with Mick McCarthy. He thinks that the Football Association of Ireland are basically a joke. He's hacked off about the travel arrangements.

He thinks the facilities when they get there are terrible, because the facilities include no balls to practice with, bad food, faulty towers like hotel that they're staying in with rubbish air conditioning and a pitch on which they are meant to practice which is virtually unplayable.

Here is a clip. If this is day I won, my chance have we got. You're a bit overdressed? I've seen the pitch, Mick. Okay. So right, it's not great, but they'll do for what we need.

Like since whenever we needed a rockery? I mean, seriously, you're asking, to risk injuring themselves in it white. I should have sport cup during the meeting. It's day one, right, relax. We don't have the kits, we don't have the drinks, we don't have the sun cream, we don't have footballs.

We're just doing drills. We can manage without that stuff. Without footballs? It'd be better if we had footballs. That's funny. Isn't that a brilliantly delivered line? So the key issue is that Keane basically sees this as preparation,

but he thinks that the rest of the people there, his teammates and the management are treating it like a jolly. Like they're playing golf and they're messing around and he's angry. And the press get wind of the fact that he's angry. And he is loose-lipped with journalists and stories of his annoyance make it into the press. And the whole thing climaxes in an apparently infamous row, which has been detailed numerous times over the years,

but I didn't know about it at all. one report of it says Roy Kean's 10-minute oration against Mick McCarthy was clinical fierce, earth-shattering to the person on the end of it and it ultimately caused a huge controversy in Irish society. Now, as I keep saying, I knew nothing about this at all.

And in fact, one of the best things about the film, and this is why I think they're such good filmmakers, is that it doesn't assume prior knowledge. Although this is a famous story, it assumes that some people like me are going to be watching it going, I don't know who any of these people are, and I don't know what the fuss is.

You know at the beginning that there's like a montage of press reports telling you that whatever is happening is a really, really big deal, a dark day for Ireland, a public outcry. You know, people are genuinely shocked by it. And the thing that the film does is that it sees the row from both sides. So on the one hand, you've got Mick McCarthy, who is trying to do the best under difficult circumstances, saying it would be better if we had footballs.

On the other hand, you've got Roy Keane, who said, I'm going there to win. That's what I'm doing. I'm not here to do anything else other than to win. And I think the two central performances are great. They're both very convincing. They're not caricatured. They're absolutely not caricatured. And although both characters are flawed, we do understand their differing perspectives,

and we do get to see why it is and how it is, that they fell out at least in this telling of the story. I mean, the tone is generally lively upbeat, but there is a real sort of sense of melancholy underneath it, that this broiling conflict could somehow be diffused if either one of them could kind of step down from their position. I mean, like all sort of rows, it takes two people to have a row. There's a great supporting performance from Alice Lowe,

as Mick McCarthy's partner. It's a small role, but it's fully three-dimensional. And it demonstrates how something could be dealt with, because you see if he gets a slightly less alpha-male confrontation, and it's slightly more jovial because the way that she deals with him is, you know, affectionate and loving and actually very sweet. And I saw this on the same day as Giant, you know, which is, again, is a real estate sports film about a fallout between an,

athlete and the person who is training them. And again, based on a true story, I have to say, I found this much more immediately engaging. There's a provisor at the beginning, which says this is a dramatization. And obviously, it does take some liberties with the truth, one of which is there is a thing about cheese sandwiches, which apparently isn't from this particular event. It comes from another event. And I was thinking about the Judas thing in the Bob Dylan film, you know, and I was complaining about the fact that that didn't happen there. It happened at the Manchester Friedrich. Yes. I remember that you got fixed on that. Yes. And I was thinking, well, why isn't this bothering me? Because the reason it's not bothering me is because I don't know about this area.

And therefore, I don't know that the cheese sandwich has actually come from from a different thing, whereas I did know about the Judas thing. But it's, I think that the, when you, the film gives you the impression that it, that it is, it is cleaving fairly close to reality with a certain degree of invention. But what's really important is that I went into this not knowing and more importantly not caring about this particular round because I'm not, I don't follow football. And I found it really, really engrossing and engaging. And honestly, I don't know who's right and who's wrong in terms of the football, but I do know that these two filmmakers continue to make films that delight and engage me. And I think that if the film can work for somebody like me who literally doesn't know

anything about this route, these people, the contest, then I think it's really doing a very good job of telling that story. And the fact that you laughed, you laughed. Well, I have, yeah, I haven't, I haven't seen the film. I have noticed that the clip is labeled here on our script as sauna clip. So does that conversation take place in a sauna? That's why at the very beginning, he says, you're a bit overdressed. Oh, right. Okay. Because yesterday there was, and I hesitate to mention this, But yesterday, the Prime Minister of Finland said, talking about global stuff, I'm sure it would all be sorted out if we could all go for a sauna. He would say it. He would have said, sauna, because that's how to say it.

And he specifically said, I'm sure if we could get President Trump into a sauna, I'm sure it would all right, which then, obviously, as an image, is something which people will have to live with. It would be all right, because if you got President Trump into a sauna, he would expire, and then that would be all right. So specifically about this film, what's it about? Is it actually just about the football spat between two people who look at the planning and preparation in a different way? Or is it about modernity?

Is it about two different types of male characteristic? I don't know. I think what it's about is two blokes being unable to step down. And I think it's a kind of melancholic, a melancholic portrayal of the way in which a relationship between two, you know, obviously fairly alpha bloke's. cannot simply put something aside. But also, I think it's a film about the way in which certain things, and you think culturally, you know, the death of Diana or certain things, just ring in the public consciousness.

And as I said, this montage of stuff for people saying, this is terrible, it's a dark day, it's an awful day, it's why can't they just sort it out? It's how something can become much bigger than it actually is. Correspondence at curbinamow.com, once you've seen this movie, let us know what you think. What are we back with in just a moment, Mark? Well, we'll be doing the UK box office top ten.

And, of course, we will be reviewing H's for Hawk with our special guest. David Foy's daughter, Claire. Also, lots of other stuff which you know and love so much. Both chuckle warmly at the exciting prospect. Carvana's so easy, just a click, and we've got ourselves a car. See? many cars. That's a click-tastic inventory. And check out the financing options. Payments to fit our budget. I mean, that's... Clickonomics 101. Delivery to our door? Just a hop, skip, and a click away.

And bought. No better feeling than when everything just clicks. Buy your car today on... Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. This is not a drill. For the first time in lipstick on the room history, a real housewife has entered the studio. And not just any housewife, Rachel Zoe, the fashion legend herself. Did we expect styling stories, glam, chaos, stories from the past decade and a full cat eye at all times? Yes. Did we expect her to open up about divorce, rediscovering herself, joining housewives as a zero prep, and what it feels like to finally feel like her again? No. It is vulnerable, iconic, hilarious, and one of our favorite conversations ever.

The real housewives have officially entered the chat. Listen now. So here we go with the box office top 10, starting sort of problematically at number 10, number 9 in America, and that's Anaconda. Yeah, and number 10 and number 9, which is Anaconda, the SpongeBob movie, I haven't caught up with it. Still. And no, but weeks and weeks are going past. I'm reviewing, yeah, I was off for one week over Christmas, right? And this happened, and I haven't been able to catch up because since then, because we're now in the awards corridor thing, there are like six, seven, eight important movies coming. out every week. Plus, we've got a new feature with five questions that I have to learn.

Plus, we're doing the thing with Pete Doctor that we did before. I'm sorry. Number nine is the SpongeBob movie Search for SquarePants. Number eight in the, I don't know, Lord of the Rings, Fellowship at the Ring. Have you seen that? You know I've seen that. We did a whole conversation about the fact that they're reissuing all the long, the extended versions, and you can either do them in a marathon, which was 12 hours, 17 minutes, with 15 minute intervals between the films, which honestly, not long enough for anything.

The cue for the loo is going to be nuts, isn't it? But yeah, I love the Lord of the Rings movies. I've never read the novel, Lord of the Rings, and I don't have any intention to do so, and I don't like The Hobbit movies at all, but I do love the Lord of the Rings films. UK number seven, nowhere in America is rental family. This email from James says,

I have often listened to your excellent podcast, and subsequently seen the films you discuss. However, noting that your opinion have said films and mine often diverge, this is the first time such a difference of opinion has motivated me to write in. Rental Family is a charming, moving and uplifting film and a genuine achievement. I wholeheartedly recommend it to all my fellow listeners, in closing solidarity with the annex population of Venezuela. Oh, okay, there you go, isn't that?

Lots of politics there. But anyway, James, thank you very much indeed, who thinks rental family is charming, moving and uplifting. I think charming is the right word. My issue with it was that is that it isn't much more than that. And I think that because when it had initially played, and there was quite a lot of awards buzz about it, I was expecting it to be something slightly deeper.

And we had talked about the fact that Werner Herzog had made that film about the rental family phenomenon, which actually had an awful lot of darkness underneath it. And there isn't much darkness in this. I mean, there's a certain amount of, poignant sadness. But really it's a film that rests very heavily on the shoulders of the incredibly likable Brendan Fraser. And I understand that, but I think charming is exactly the right word. I wanted more than charming. Zootropolis 2 is at number six, number three in America.

Still doing brilliantly, still doing basically what Zootropolis did, which I liked the first time, and I enjoyed the second time. Number five here and there is Marty Supreme. This from, well, it's just signed O, as in the letter O. It turns out there's a backstory to the use of Tears for Fears, Peter Gabriel and so on in Marty Supreme. And I mentioned the Corgi's track. Everybody's got to learn sometime. According to a piece in Variety, an early version of the script had a 1980s set framing device in which an old Marty, who has become a successful owner of shoe shops, is at a Tears for Fears gig with his granddaughter. And the music prompts his ping pong memories.

hence the 1980s songs to which once he had worked with them Safdi had become sufficiently attached that he kept them in even after abandoning the framing device and that done the songs went on to influence the score more generally vintage 1980s since and so on so that's okay well that's the back that's interesting I had no idea about that at all because obviously the remnants of that don't exist in the film I had read a piece an interview which had talked about the rise of electronica in the 50s and that then working with them. But that is interesting.

It also, I mean, as I said, the problem with anachronistic music is only a problem if it starts to bug you. But if it does start to bug you, it is a problem. And I know it did bug you. Yes, it's interesting. But why did it bug me in, and just speaking about electronic music, you know, for example, the Vangelist, the famous Vangelist soundtrack to Charac of Fire, which should have had, you would imagine sort of some 1920s Charleston. in there. And there is some Gilbert and Sullivan, as I remember, on the boat over to France. But maybe because we, I don't know, what order it came out in, but it was just, I guess because they weren't, it wasn't a hit music-based soundtrack. There were no

it's an original score. Yeah, exactly. It was original score. So therefore it wasn't problematic. Anyway, that was, you know, each to their own. Marty Supreme is at number five. Number four, here, number one in America is Avatar Fire and Ash, I think, but it's interesting only that in week five, I mean it has taken a huge amount of money but it is, it's down

at number four in week five, this massive, massive behemoth of a film. And I, you know, I suppose I kind of expected it to sit around in the top three for longer than that. I mean, the figures that we've got, you know, it's taken 38 million.

Oh yeah, no, it's taken a bunch of money. Maybe the reason it's dropping is because everyone's seen it. I did see a quote saying that they're going to have to try and find a way of making the future movies cheaper if they're going to stay on course. But anyway, for another day, we've done enough avatar. I think that's at number four. Number three, here is Hamnet. Here's an interesting, this is a great piece from Dr. Bill Pollard, B.S.C. M-A., M-Phil, Ph.D, Diploma in Therapeutic Counseling, ASA 25 metre breaststroke

1976 and Dr Bill is in Henley on Thames Dear Flying Gull and Tobacco A very long-term listener First-time emailer Vanguard Easter but not ultra Because I love you but not in that way

Okay I think you might have misunderstood something there Bill Further to last week's Anachronistic Bird in Hamnet Yes In which we were talking about Just the very opening It being the wrong kind of hawk

Somebody had written in to alert us to this. They had said it was the hill upon which they would die. Just as it looked like Jesse Buckley's Agnes, Agnes, Annius had gloved, said hawk for the first time. What does Paul Maskell's William Shakespeare do? He jumps into the River Avon to let off some steam only to start doing the front crawl. Well, I was outraged. As church members will know, the overarm action of the front crawl, was not seen in England until 1844.

No. When the British Swimming Society invited Native American Ojibwe swimmers flying gull and tobacco to London to demonstrate their stroke. Their stroke was described as, quotes, lashing the water like windmill sails and did not catch on. Spectators found all the splashing to be, quotes, un-European. And the British stuck to them. more civilised breaststroke. Your listeners may also recall that in 1873, English swimmer John Trudgeon introduced a hybrid stroke with overarm action and breaststroke scissor kick, which was used in the first Olympics of 1896. And it wasn't until the 1903, until 1903, that front crawl,

as we know it, involving a flutter kick, was introduced to Europe by Australian swimmers, Henry Wickham and Sid and Charles Cavill. Blimey. And was adopted for the 19-19. 12 Olympics. It is perhaps fortunate that in the scene in Hamnet, we are not given a view of Mr. Shakespeare's leg action, so we cannot establish if he was doing the arm action alone, the trudgeon, the Australian crawl, or even some of the more modern derivative shudder, but this would merely determine the level of anachronism, not the fact of it. One thing is for certain. As a proud Englishman in 1596, Mr. Shakespeare would have had nothing to do with all that splashing. Love the show, Steve, tigitty-tog, and so on.

And there you have it. So regardless of the fact I think the film is fantastic, you think the film is very good with some reservations, the two aspects that we did not pick up on as being problematic. One, the wrong bird. And then two, very specialist, the wrong stroke that Shakespeare does when he jumps in water. Who would have thought it? There used to be a column in Viz magazine, which was Mark Commode's movie bloopers. And it was a picture of me and then a list of really stupid movie, one of which was, you know,

such and such a film is, you know, he's set in 1915, but he shot in colour. They didn't invent colour until 1923. And then the other one was, if you see Free Willy, the big problem is that as the whale jumps over the thing at the end, if you look closely, you notice that the whale is wearing a digital watch. And the whole sort of point of thing was people noticing things that are, you know, that are complete. But in the case of this, the fact that it's not one, but two anachronisms that have driven people to go, I'm sorry, I'm not thinking.

Yes. I mean, you can imagine how both might have got through. I'm just intrigued. So if you were in the water, if you're just chucked in the water, I suppose what we call doggy paddle is the most instinctive, the kind of thing that a baby would do. or a child would naturally do do dogy paddle. But breaststroke seems no more natural than crawl. No.

I mean, butterfly is obviously ludicrous. No. I mean, I can't do breaststroke. And the weird leggy thing that they do with breaststroke, which is kind of like, you know, the legs like that. I can't. Yeah. But there we go.

He would have just drowned. He would have just anachronistically drowned and never written none of those plays. So when you see Hamnet, you can nudge the person next to you say, wrong hawk. Wrong stroke. There you go. Apart from that, fantastic. Number two in the UK, number four in Canada, the housemaid.

I mean, the high camp continues to score high, apparently. It's rubbish, but it's enjoyable rubbish. Okay, so number one here, number two in America, 28 years later, the Bone Temple. So let me give you some emails and then we can go again. Andrew in Liverpool, a long-term listener, you had me from Sex and the City to Ranting First-Time email. About Bone Temple.

What a fantastic movie. The tension at points was causing me to sweat and squirm uncomfortably in my cinema chair. There were audible code-compliant gasps at certain barn scenes, but then in the next breath, inclusive audience laugh-out-loud moments, which made the funny bits, and there were lots of them even more funny. DeCostom took a fantastic script and turns it into something that is brutal to the point of becoming almost too nasty, for me it was, but her directing ability to diffuse something so horrendous and cut to something hilariously funny in an instant was so slick that it never weakened either the horror or the comedy, led by two amazing performances from Ray Fines and Jack O'Connell who give everything to their performances. By the end of the movie, it felt like the entire cinema,

and then Andrew says, was ready to stand and embrace the devil, which you might misconstrue if you haven't seen the film, because that's not what we're standing up and embracing. No. This movie perfectly set up the redemption arc for the last installment, and I cannot wait. Thank you, Andrew. Kaya Kanaq in London. Having enjoyed 28 years later and been at your Christmas spectacular, to experience your excellent interview with Nia de Costa,

me and my girlfriend went into Bone Temple, excited to see what was next. We lasted just over an hour before having to walk out. Our conclusion was that the film was unnecessarily violent. You might say that we should have known what we were letting ourselves in for, given the skull-popping gruesomeness of the previous film. But the violence in this one felt different, whereas 28 years later's more vomit-inducing moments felt like they were furthering the plot.

This felt like it crossed the border into gore porn. The charity scene in particular felt like it belonged more in a mindless horror film like Saw than it did a film that is supposed to be exploring how humanity functions when society collapses in an interesting way. Based on plot synopses I've read since, I honestly feel you could have taken that scene out of the movie without it really changing the course of the story. We already know that Jack O'Connor's character is the embodiment of evil.

I mean, he's a Satanist dressed as Jimmy Savile, for heaven's sake. Could the film not have relied on the audience's intelligence to connect the dots instead of feeling the need to show us such a visceral and drawn-out way? It's a shame because the film had really good elements. I think the cinematography was beautiful. The acting from Ray Finds in particular was great, and Acosta's direction was largely spot on. I just feel the level of gore was a misstep. Thank you, Kaya. And one more from Charlie.

Bone Temple is a better, more dramatically coherent film than 28 years later and has virtually none of the many glaring logic fails of the earlier film. But its box office failure cannot be a surprise. Box office failure, Charlie, it's at number one and number two in America. I think that counts as a success. But anyway, following up a film with variable word of mouth, with one lacking much of a plot and wallowing in unnecessary torture poured was an odd choice. Near de Costa's film was certainly a deeper and considerably more intense movie,

but one I will probably never re-watch. After the ending, also, the ending was just as bad and utterly illogical as the earlier films, tonally again as if plucked from an entirely different movie. In the same way, the inexplicable Jimmy Savile attire is never addressed. No kids in 2002 were remotely aware of Saville, nor how children survived in post-apocalyptic zombie hellscape, so we can guess the many questions of how around Bone Temple's ending will be ignored

if indeed there is a trilogy film. Not a great way to treat an audience all round. Narratively, some main character endings in Bone Temple seem very odd choices for a mooted film trilogy too. All in all, an oddity of a film. I think Charlie saw something else, but anyway. So a variety of opinions there, Mark. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.

We appear to be sort of out of, step with those emails. In terms of the violence, I think I did say this at the time. Bone Temple is an 18, 28 years later was 15. So you would have known from the BBC. And as we said, nowadays, you have to work to get an 18 certificate a lot of the time, particularly on what you're doing. And they did. I didn't have a problem with it. Partly that'll be because I'm a horror fan. And so I tend to be, what's the thing that they say in the Simpsons? If I don't watch the violence, how can I become desensitized to it. And partly because I think it is necessary.

I think the charity sequence is necessary and the fact that it's the word charity because you have to get a sense that the point about this film is that the infected are not the problem anymore. That the real horror comes from the people who have survived. And to use the phrase that came up in your interview,

have they, he said they're thriving, they're excelling, that they are exploiting the fact that the apocalypse has happened, and they are having the best time of anyone. And I think that has to be depicted as absolutely loathsome, and I don't have a problem with the violence. I do understand, however, that if you do have a problem with it, obviously that's going to be a kind of,

that's going to be a red line. But it's why it's always good to go to the BBFC advice, this has up the certificate from the previous film. As far as the second email is concerned, I'm surprised that you disliked it that much. I'm quite afraid. It's also factually wrong. It's not a box office failure.

It's a huge hit. I'm just looking at the figures. So on the wiki page, it says that the budget is 63, and the box office so far is 30.6. But I don't know when that will have been updated. And as you say, it has gone to number one in the UK box office. Do you say it's number two in America? Is that right?

Yeah. Okay. So we're still in week one, but it's, you know, it's, I don't know, it's not a huge box office opening, obviously. And the thing is, in order to clear 60, you do need to take 120. And I don't know whether we're going to get to that figure. But it has, yeah, I mean, I'm just, I'm, I'm surprised because almost everyone I've spoken to has really, really enjoyed it. But, you know, obviously people react to films individually. The Jimmy Saville stuff, I actually think that it does work.

And I think that it solves the problem of why your response at the end of the first film and also my response, which was what on what? You know, sorry, what? And it does make some kind of sense that this is this monstrous creation. So it worked for me. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, the point about no kid in 2002.

would be aware of Sable. So Jim will fix it was on between 1975 and 1994. So it's true that it wouldn't have been on on television at the same time. He was still there in popular culture. Yeah, yeah. And I do think that near de Costa

in essentially your interview when we did our Christmas show because I hadn't seen it and then my interview with Jack O'Connell, they kind of batted away. They don't really engage in it. And I think there is a point that this second film doesn't, apart from the fact that he sits in a Jim or Fixit chair

right at the very beginning, he's just this guy on a purple track suit. It's not, it doesn't really become part of the plot. To the extent that they could have made a different choice there. They could have used any monstrous character to be created by Jack O'Connor. It didn't need to be Well, that is true, but the point that they're making is that they are living in the detritus of pop culture and we see that they've been watching videos of telitubbies and in fact the tinky winky dance features and in fact I remember when my kids um were watching uh see bbys or c bbc in the late 90s early noughties there was a very popular program that had in in one episode one of the main characters doing an impression of jimmy savile and I remember that because they then had to pull that

episode later on. So it's not true that kids around that time had no awareness. My kids grew up in the early 21st century and the kids' programs they were watching were making references to Jimmy. So, I mean, benign references at that point because it was just seen as a, at that point, as a benign character. I think, and to Kaya's point, who walked out of the film, I would, I would say it is important that you know exactly, as Mark said, this is an 18 certificate. It is more gory than the last one. Yes. So if the last one was pushing you to the limit, then this one is not for you.

Yeah. And 18 for a violent movie now means 18. Yeah. And if, I mean, as I mentioned, I had to look away a number of times and it's all about that particular scene. And in the same, but in the same way, and our first emailer, Andrew Liverpool, made this point. This is a bizarre comparison, which I think I might have mentioned before. Do you remember Pingu on C-B? I remember Pingu very well, yeah. So an episode of Pingu's, who are animated

penguins, and Pingu's dad is a postman. And they're on the sledge delivering mail, and they're clearly delivering, they then have an envelope which is edged in black, and it's clearly a note about a bereavement. And they hand it in to this penguin living in a name. And they're The penguin cries, the postman father sort of consoles the penguin. And as they drive off on the sledge, they go off too far so Pingu falls off the back. Slapsick comedy following the sadness of the bereavement. This is Pingu that we're talking about. But I think it's the same kind of vibe that we've been talking about in this review,

which is this is seriously grim. But if you can get through it, however you want to get through it, There are some laughs and some... The penguin will fall off the sledge. Yeah. The penguin will fall off the sledge if you can get around the actual delivery of the notice. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

I love Pingu. Pingu is great. I need to start watching that again, I think. Correspondence at Kodomo.com. Back shortly with Mark. Well, I know what you're egging me on to say, Simon. Back shortly with the laughter lift. Now I was hoping you might say no other choice,

the history of sound and H's for Hork. Oh, all right. It's all right. I thought you were going to say because I never, I always skip over the bit that says the laughter lift. And also the laughter lift. The laughter lift. So our guest today is Claire Foy, trained at the Oxford School of Drama before going on to work in television film and theatre. International recognition came her way playing the Queen in the Crown in 2016, two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe.

Since then, first man, girl in the spider's web, which she came on the show to talk about, women talking, all of us strangers, my son and Breathe. On television, Wolf Hall, playing Am Berlin, Little Dorriton Crossbones. Now, H's for Hawk, her latest project, adapted from the 2014 memoir

by Helen MacDonald. She stars in the film alongside Brendan Gleason. Here is a clip in which, as I think you're about to hear, she has a hawk on her arm throughout. Very good. Professor Camm.

Let me introduce you to Helen MacDonald, one of our fellows here at Jesus. What a splendid looking falcon. Hawke? Yes, falcons and hawks are as different as cats and dogs. Falcons are aerial hunters, like fighter jets, and hawks are like a patchy gunships, low-level, heavily armed killers.

What will bring her back to you when you let her off her leash? Is it merely habit? No, it starts off with food and rewards, and then... Might there be an element of affection? element of affection? The 16th century volcanoes would have called it love. Yeah, the bonds between us are love. And that is a clip from H is for Hawk.

It stars Claire Foy, who joins us from a dungeon somewhere. Hello. Hello, Claire. How are you? Hello there. I'm all right. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, it's very nice to see. We've been talking about you for a number of weeks because your dad emails the podcast.

And we said to him, could you put in a good word for us, please? And lo and behold, here you are. So I'm not quite sure how involved your father was in getting you on to the show. But we like having you on. Thank you. I'm just so mortified that my dad is like, I mean, it's very understandable that he's your number one fan. But I do wish he'd stop communicating quite so much with you.

He's made it to me at Christmas. He played me the clip at Christmas. With us beseeching you to come on the show. I know. I know. It's very funny, but yeah, he's a big, big fan. I hope we didn't appear too needy. No, well, then I text my publicist and I said,

oh my God, look what my dad's done, she went, it's already in the diary. Okay. All right, excellent. Anyway, the movie is H's for Hawke. We've heard a clip. Many people will have read the book, of course, by Helen McDonnell, just introduce us to this film and how you got involved. telling this story?

Yes, so it's a New York Times bestseller memoir by Helen McDonald, and it's basically about the loss of their father. Their father, Alison McDonald, was a very, very well-respected and well-known photographer, and he died very suddenly, and the memoir kind of follows the sort of very non-linear thing that is grief, and, and, through that grief, Helen, who was already a falconer, decides to train a gozhawk, which is notoriously the most difficult of all the birds of prey

to have a relationship with. And this bird, Mabel, sort of, I wouldn't say it's not Tweed. It's not sort of like a journey of like, and then Mabel helps her feel okay. It's more that communing with nature and with this wild animal who hunts and kills and being so close to death allows, Helen to kind of come to terms with their loss in a way, I suppose.

Just explain a bit more about the goss hawk, just because this will be, I think, the first time for a minute, the overwhelming majority of people that we've been so close to such an extraordinary bird, why is it considered an extreme falcon? I think because there's like hobbies and there's kestrels and they're sort of considered to be the sweet sort of smaller birds of prey that you can very easily as a human being kind of pick up cues of affection and and then you have falcons which are incredibly impressive and fast and sort of seem to be the most superior of all the kind of birds of prey

I mean then you have eagles and things like that I don't think people are expecting you know that an eagle is going to be particularly friendly although they are actually and I've met a few but gorse hawks are supposed to be kind of a bit you know grumpy and difficult and hard to win round and they only do what they want to do they won't be manipulated they won't. And they're very, you know, isolated anyway. Goshawks themselves don't, you know, the male and female coupling isn't like a thing that exists. They don't sort of nest together and

things like that. They're very, very solitary birds. And so I think it's just that kind of, like, why would you tackle such a difficult kind of creature, really, is the opinion. Yes. And why did Helen choose such a difficult? Was it because it was so difficult that she went for the goshawk. I think so. I think that it was almost like a, in the film and there are lots of memories that Helen has of when she was going to Vulcanry as a child and they mention it in the memoir about kind of,

or the people talking about Gozhawks a lot and saying, oh God, they've got a Gozhawk. And even Gozhawk, you know, in medieval times, gozhawk trainers and people who had gozhawks were like ostracized and they wouldn't be like if you're a hawker you're like impressive but if you're an oestringer you're not you're really sort of out of the you're not you know um on the fringes of society i think it's that feeling of like she um she helen describes them as perfectly evolved psychopaths like that they're at apex sort of predator and they there's nothing outside of that people only see them as that as a very very high

evolved killer. And Helen wants that distance, wants that lack of humanity, because being a human being hurts quite a lot, especially when you've, you know, the love of your life, basically, your father who, you know, was so close to, passes away. You don't want to have to be human anymore. It feels like just too painful thing to have to do. And I think that Helen speaks to the fact that they wanted to be more like the Gosshawk. They wanted to be above everything. They wanted to not be weighed down by, you know, feelings and, you know, the kind of the overwhelming responsibility for being a human being sometimes. So your character is then trying to isolate herself. Would that be, would that be correct? Almost becoming less, less human, not looking

for a way out of the grief, but to actually insulate herself in it? I'd say so, yeah, I think it's, I don't think that's like a, like, logical, like, I don't think Helen's aware. that that's what she's doing during this film. But I think it's a way of gradually, and gradually over time, Helen withdraws from loved ones, family, and Mabel becomes the only thing, really, that makes any sense.

And because it's so vivid and because when you're hunting with a bird of prey, especially a goswalk, it's so visceral and so power, like, you know, that you're so connected, you're so in the moment, and you're so kind of in nature and you're so connected to what it feels like to be alive.

There is no afterlife. There is no what's happening next. There is no dead fathers or lost loved ones. It's just that moment and that is so powerful that I think it's addictive and it becomes a way of feeling. I think, you know, Helen speaks to the fact that people often turn to drink or to drugs and I think it's a way of getting feeling back in your body when you feel so numb really.

And your father is played fantastic by Brendan Gleason. What an amazing actor he is. But when he dies, in the book, Helen writes, a kind of madness drifted in. There are her words. Is that how you would describe what you're doing in this film after your father's death? Yeah, I think that it would be tempting

to take that literally, as in, and start do mad acting, if you know what I mean, and start being kind of extrovert, I suppose, or like declamatory in some way. But I think that it's often I find in my experience of being alive is that the madness can feel so extreme inside. And only the people close to those people can pick up on what those cues are. But seemingly, for a while, everything's sort of okay. in the aftermath, everyone's sort of okay. They're continuing to go to work.

They're continuing to go to social events. And it's just over time gradually that sort of seeps in. And the madness is in behaviour. It's how you're outwardly showing it to people. And the disconnect between people thinking that what you're doing is odd and you thinking it makes total sense and you can't quite understand why they would think that was strange. I think that was how I interpreted that feeling of kind of

people from the outside not really getting it. Yeah. Yeah. How long did it take you to be comfortable with a goshawk on your arm and the training that went into, you know, you turn up on day one. You're not learning how to how to be a, how to train this goshawk, how to be familiar with this goshawk on day one of the filming. How long did all of that take? And just to walk around with it on your arm must have felt extraordinary. because we see you walking around Cambridge and walking into people's houses with this incredible bird on your arm.

How long did that whole process take? So we didn't have a lot of money, which may surprise you, but there's not much money anymore for things like that. So I had about two weeks pre to shooting. I'd read lots of falconry books, and I had at that point kind of done my Helen work, I suppose. And so I went to these amazing people called Lloyd and Rose Buck near Bristol. And they do lots of natural history shooting, lots of David Attenborough kind of things with their birds. They've got these incredible, incredible birds.

And they were just so beautiful and tender with their birds that what I thought it would be, quite often when you train with animals before you start shooting something, it's quite often like, in the deep end, oh my God, you've got to do this, so just suck it up. kind of approach, which I just, you know, sometimes I just don't think it works so well. And they were just, they just loved their birds so much. And it was a really interesting way into Helen's character as well. I was at seeing how you behave with these birds and the

amount of love that showered upon them and understanding and picking up on their cues. And so, yeah, I only had two weeks of training, but by that point, I'd kind of, we'd got it all down. And then I had like another, you know, we shot for seven weeks. And so by the end, like we shot a lot, the majority of the sequences in the house with the very last thing we shot. And by that point, I'd, you know, as far as I was concerned, I was best mates with them, all the birds. They've probably felt differently. The credits at the end of the film say you filmed with Mabel 1 and Mabel 2. Also, Jess, Lottie and Yuhar, I think with the names of the other ones. Also, Onion the Mouse and On the rook get a credit. So there are five, so there are five goshawks that you've worked with?

Yeah. Well, I didn't work with Yuha. He's the only male and he was the aerial bird. He was the only gozhawk because males are smaller, so they fly higher. So but I work with all the ladies, yeah. Okay. Did you have a favorite? I had two favorites, but that's because my relationship with all the different birds had to be different to capture different aspects of the relationship that Helen had with them. So I had to have one bird, Mabel 2, who was much more nervous of me, who I didn't spend as much time with.

And then Lottie was the hunting bird, and she was absolutely an absolute killer. So I didn't have necessarily warm and fuzzy feelings for her. But with Mabel Wad and Jess, they're the birds I spent the most time with, and they're the ones that I'd sort of be kissing and things like that. It must have been a very different vibe on set if, you know, the scenes when you have one of the goshawks on your arm,

presumably they don't want lots of distraction. They don't want a room full of engineers and camera people and sound people. What was that like in the room at the time? Yeah, we couldn't have anyone. So it could only be me and Charlotte, who's the camera operator and DAPE in the room. And even then, the Maples wouldn't necessarily tolerate Charlotte being close. Or they certainly didn't like certain things. One of the, one didn't like Dolly's, didn't like wheel.

in any way, so we had to make sure that we didn't ever use. But people had to hide. That was basically the setup every day, was that Lloyd would come in and say, no one can be here and everyone go away, basically all day every day. And did you have the freedom to ad lib some scenes? Because you don't, there are many scenes where you have one of the goshawks on your arm

and it suddenly tries to fly off and you talk to it. And the impression I got is that you're extemporising there. Would that be right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, a vast majority, it would be what the written scene was. So I'd know what the, like, emotional kind of energy of it was, or I would know what I was supposed to be feeling about Mabel or my stage of Falkenry or my, you know, manning of Mabel at that point.

And then it would all go, you know, I don't want to swear, but it would all go wrong. Because it's a... What would your father say? Yeah. But it would all be dependent on what Mesa. was doing but that was the beauty and that was the kind of freedom of it for me because I would come in and I wouldn't know what was going to happen every day and so most of you know there are

moments where Mabel does a poo or Mabel casts a pellet and or Mabel rouses and they're things that you wouldn't capture unless the bird was comfortable but also you just would never what am I going to do as an actor just not pick up on those and allow them to be in the film and just be like oh no the bird's just on a poo do we need to go again you've got to go with it and hope that you know that the rawness of it is what helps it really. You must have been aware that the birding community will be watching this intently. We had an email on the show last week from an ornithologist saying that Jesse Buckley in the opening scene of Hamnet has the wrong hawk, that that hawk did not exist in England in the 16th century.

Yeah, I heard that. So, you know, this is, you know, you must, are you nervous or is the reaction from the burning? I mean, it looked fantastic to me. I thought it was extraordinary. The Gossel looks amazing. You put in a fantastic performance, I think. But the birders are saying what, as far as you know? Well, none of them have got to me yet.

Like none of the information has got to me. I mean, luckily for me, I, the people that, you know, Helen is a falconer, and so is Rose and Lloyd Buck who I trained with. So I learn falconry through them. I learn their type of falconry. So I'm not putting, as Claire Foy, the actress, I'm not putting any skill in there that doesn't exist and is done by very, very competent people.

So it would be a criticism. I'll just have to pass that along to them, I suppose. But it's difficult. It's a very, it's a small and incredibly skilled community. And I would understand why you want to make sure that people are doing it properly and correctly. And I can only assure people that we did and hope that that comes across. Yeah, I think the result is stunning. Claire, it's a pleasure talking to you as ever.

Thank you very much indeed for talking to us. Thanks to your dad for playing you the bit and persuading you to come on the show. Don't write in, Dad. Leave it alone. Stop it. We're on it. Claire, thank you so much. All the best for this film. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. The ever delightful Claire Foy, thanks to her. Who was booked? properly, you know, and as she said, you know, it was already in the diary, but we just made sure that she appeared because her dad told her to. And please feel free to continue writing in despite what... Yes, that's right. And if you are the parent of a movie star, or indeed if you are a movie star, and did we get in touch, please come on the show because we like talking

to you. So anyway, I thought 18's fault was fascinating on a number of different levels and certainly on the most obvious one, to be up close to such a wild and untamed bird was fascinating. But anyway, what did you think of H's for Hawk? Well, to recap, adaptation of a memoir by Helen MacDonald recounting the grief experienced after the loss of their father, the form of madness, as it's described, and the decision to buy and train a gosshawk. Famously, apparently, the most difficult bird to own and train, as Claire Foy said in that interview, Helen describes the gosshawks as perfectly evolved psychopaths, which is a great phrase.

So, you know, it's a challenge. More importantly, the gosshawk is by nature a loner and an outsider, a misfit, not unlike Helen in this period. And as Claire Foy said, in the wake of Helen's father's death, Helen wants some of that distance, that lack of humanity, that, you know, that disconnection, not to be weighed down by these overwhelming feelings of grief. And so Helen withdraws from society, from family, from the academia of Cambridge, around which Helen now wanders with a perfectly evolved psychopath on her arm. And increasingly, the connection that Helen has is to Mabel, the bird. It's pointed out that the mean of the bird, the sweeter the name. So the fact that the bird is called Mabel tells you something. And really, the only moments that Helen comes to life is when

Mabel is flying and hunting and you're living literally in the moment, second by second, and everything else goes away. Now, I have to say, I really, I really like the film. And I, because they're both out at the same time and because you've already made the comparison because you've said that there's the bird issue in Hamnet. I like this film much more than Hamnut, and it's not just because it gets the bird stuff right, and it's not just because of the breaststroke.

That's a reference to the thing from Hamnet, that apparently Paul Meskell is doing the wrong swimming, see previous review. The thing I like about H's for Hawke is that it has a toughness, a lack of sentimentality, a touch of grit under its fingernails. It's directed by Philippa Lothorpe, who came on the MK3D show that I do at the BFI, talked really eloquently about the film.

Philip Lothop has a background in documentaries. He's perhaps best known more recently for directing the very powerful miniseries Three Girls about the child abuse scandal, Roshdale. So Philip Lotha, Lothorp knows about capture reality and also knows about dealing with the darker side of the human experience. Philip Lothorpe co-wrote the script with Emma Donoghue who wrote the book of Room. And I think they do a very good job of adapting a novel, which I've been since listening to on audiobook as read by, I think it's read by Helen MacDonald.

And a lot of the book is internal monologue, a lot of thought, a lot of this is what I'm thinking about nature, this is what I'm thinking about death, this is what I'm thinking about grief. There's a lot of internal monologuing. And in the film, rather than just doing swathes of voiceover, that conversation, that internal conversation is, I think, transferred into visual poetry in which the story and the meaning of the story is explained through the visuals. So Philip Lothor and Charlotte Bruce Christensen, who's the DP, took inspiration from a series of Polaroids taken by Tarkovsky, the film director, which combined on the one hand the soft. of the image that you get from a Polaroid, but also that there's something quite stark and arresting and snapshoty about Polaroids. And I think you get that on screen, that there is both

beauty, but there is also bite. There is harshness in there. The other thing that's doing the storytelling is a superb score by Emily Levinez Farouche, who is one of my favorite composers. You'll recall I spoke about her doing the brilliant piano score for Only You. She did that amazing synth score for Sensor the Prana Bailey Bond film. And here, I think that what her music does is get into that. I mean, she also did all of us strangers, which is great. But her music gets into that sense of yearning, that sense of longing, and also the sense of movement and flight and the kind of conversation

between the human element and the bird element. And I think that a lot of what's happening when they're taking out the internal monologuing and turning it into visual poetry, they're also turning it into musical poetry. And I really think that Emily Levy and Osiruio's score tells the story. As for Claire Foy, she's brilliant. Not just because she's Clair Foy and she's brilliant, but because as she says, she underplays it. She doesn't do what she referred to in that interview as mad acting.

Right? She plays everything down. She becomes, if anything, sort of slightly still. And again, it's interesting to compare this to Hamlet. I mean, Jesse Buckley is amazing in Hamlet. And we'll very probably win best actress. and one of the reasons is because you can see the act, you know, it's the full range of human emotions.

There's real outpourings of grief and anger and all the rest of it. But I think there is an equal dexterity and an artistry in the restraint that Claire Foy demonstrates here by kind of shutting down. I mean, it's very hard to play a character who isn't expressive, who isn't communicative, who isn't particularly verbal. in the whole film, there's only one scene that struck a wrong chord for me. And that's the scene in which she does a lecture with the bird. And she's challenged by somebody in the room about, well, you know, it's just cruelty, isn't it?

You're taking the bird hunting. That's just cruelty. And the interesting thing about that scene is, I think in any other film, it wouldn't have stood out. But it stood out for me in this because it actually felt dramatized. And I thought that what was really good about the rest of the film was it didn't. So even that criticism is actually a compliment to the way in which the rest of the film felt natural and the rest of, you know, the shots of the bird, it's not CG, the shots of the bird flying low through the trees of breathtaking, see it in the cinema because you do, the visual poetry is amazing. But it's, it feels like it's got talons. It feels like it's got, it's got bite to it.

and it never falls into sentimentality or emotional pleading. It's that the story tells itself, and it's told through the visuals and the performance and the music. It made me think of, I mean, I agree with everything that you said. A number of years ago I interviewed Chris Bonington, Mountaineer, who'd written a memoir and was fascinating. But he said that in the mountaineering is one of those. occupations. I was going to say a hobby, but clearly it's not that. It's one of those occupations

in which you have to be 100% present all the time. Right. Because if you're not, you don't have, yes, you will die or the people that you're with will die all of the above. And that was one of the things that was so remarkable about this film is that is, that it, these are the mountains that Claire Foy's character is climbing that she has to be completely present all of the time with this killer on her arm. Yes. Because that's what they are. And to sort of master that.

And you can say, yes, okay, that's where she's disappearing. That is her dealing with her grief. And I should say, I mentioned Chris Bonington because he and his wife lost a child very early. And he said that the way he dealt with the grief was through climbing a mountain. And so this is what, sorry, I didn't make that connection entirely clear because I didn't mention it. Yeah, so he was dealing with his grief and by climbing mountains and this is Claire climbing her mountains. And I thought it was beautiful. It's really well done, isn't it?

It's really, really well done. And do you agree with me about the lack of sentimentality, the fact that it doesn't do that? It's telling, it's getting you to understand the grief by not doing it. I mean, I thought the phrase that she used me, I'm not doing. ad acting is, it was perfect. Yes. And I think she says early on in the, in the conversation, she was more scared of that than dealing with a goss hawk. Yes.

That it was how do you communicate that kind of characteristic by underplaying things? You know, what can you? I guess playing the queen was, might have been quite a useful. Yeah, yeah, of course. Training ground because she was buttoned down and did not express herself a lot. But anyway, I think it won't win the awards the way Hamnet will win the awards, but I think people should definitely see it. I agree.

What do we do next then? We have two more films to review. We have no other choice, which is the new film from Park Chan Wook. And we also have the History of Sound with Paul Meskell and Josh O'Connor, yes, them again, hardest working actors in show business. But before we get there, the laughter lift, of course, I hadn't forgotten. Here we go. All right, I'd only slightly forgotten.

Mark Mark Mark Mark Mark I don't know about you But I'm quite an old school guy really A bit of a traditionalist If you will I tried being polite today By holding the door open for The Good Lady ceramicist

Her indoors It didn't go too well Do you mind I'm on the toilet She screamed I just thought there's no pleasing Some people Some people Have I told you about my neighbours

Just down the street Barry he's called And his wife's an undertaker They have two vehicles His and hers I know, it's too Ronny's thing. Mark, as well as being a traditionalist, I'm also a woke soy boy, and I was watching the new Lord of the Rings. Yeah.

What does that mean? Watching the new Lord of the Rings reissue at the weekend. And I wondered why there haven't been any Latinos in the film. And apparently, Juan does not simply walk into Mordor. And that was the answer. Okay, I'm just still stuck with soy. What is a soy boy? A woke soy boy.

Well, if I need to explain it, there's really no... Okay. Because jokes are always funnier when explained. That's right. That's right. I don't know. But anyway, back in just a moment. That studio, your new foundation.

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Learn more at Adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. On game day, pain can hit hard and fast, like the headache you get when your favorite team and your fantasy team both lose. When pain comes to play, call an audible with Advil plus acetaminophen and get long-lasting dual-action pain relief for up to eight hours.

Tackle your tough pain two ways with Advil plus acetaminopin. Advil, the official pain relief partner of the NFL. Ask your pharmacist at this product's rate for you. Always read and follow the label. Before the reviews, an email from Nibbers from the Crouch End Festival Chorus. Okay. I used to play a lot on Magic Classical, previously known as Scala.

Greetings from N8, which is where Crouch End is. A lot of us in your favorite symphony choir, Crouchend Festival Chorus, are eager consumers of your lozenges. of preference, vocal zone. Unlike lesser medicinal soothing sweeties, they don't actually numb your vocal cords, which is essential for us, whether we're doing film soundtracks

and work with our patron, Han Zimmer, or our former patron, the late great Ennio Morricone, or hefty classical whoppers like Elgar's Kingdom at the Royal Festival Hall in London, 29th of January. Last remaining tickets available now, just saying. In other warbling-related news,

your schooling was only half right, Simon, as when it comes to Agnes, A-G-N-U-S, aeneas, as we said, because that's kind of the way it's done in Hamnet. It depends if you're singing in Italian, Latin or German. Latin, Italian, Latin or German. Latin as the former would be the soft G-N. You spoke, Arnus. But the latter, a hard G-N.

So if it's German, it's Agnes. I imagine that's what it is. Anyway. Okay. Says Nibbers, just like Broznan, we're very particular about our accents. And thanks to Mark from Vocal Zone for sending us 1.68 kilograms of Vocal Zone. But anyway, we've got a couple of films to discuss, first of all. Yeah, no other choice.

No other choice is the new film from South Korean director Park Chan Wook, who's the O'T behind the Vengeance Trilogy, Old Boy, famously, and The Handmaiden, which is huge international success. This is South Korean entry for the International Film Oscar. is adapted from the book The Axe by Donald Westlake, whose novels of previously inspired films like Point Blank and Hot Rock. In fact, the Axe was previously filmed in 2005 by Costa Gavris as Le Coupere. This film is dedicated to Costa Gavis as a result.

The original Korean title translates literally as it cannot be helped. So the tone is a very strange mix of dark comedy, morbid social satire. At the globe, it was nominated. for best motion picture, musical or comedy alongside best foreign language film and best actor, actually. So Libyanne is a well-to-do family man working for solar paper. He's good at his job, and it funds his family's fairly costly lifestyle. Then American company buys his company, and he loses his job, and he's soon in danger of

losing his home and his family. And he says he can get reemployed within three months, but he can't. and so he desperately now needs to get a new job because everything's falling apart. And he wants to work at a company called Moon Paper, but he realizes that if vacancies come up, he'll be in competition with other candidates who might be better than him. So he comes up with the plan. The plan is that he will put a fake advert in a newspaper,

or put out a fake advert for a job, an industry job, a paper industry job. He will then go through the candidates who will apply. He will figure out if he will. any of the candidates are better than him, and then he'll kill them, thus creating job opportunities for him that he can definitely get. And why is he doing it? Well, because as the title says, there is no other choice or, you know, like his own redundancy, it cannot be helped. I'm going to play you a clip from the original. Obviously, the clip is not in the English language. So what you're going to hear is, so firstly, a motivational instructor saying deep breaths, I am a good person,

losing my job is not my choice. And then you move to a dinner table scene in which, his wife is saying, refrain from the listed activities until dad finds work. No more tennis. My car and our house. Here's the clip. Sim-up. Please. I'm a good person.

Siltzscheon. I want to do not. Here's what's here. Here's what's got to be. After dad's chisiked-taxed-kazer. I'm tennis for-kie. My car. and my

home. Huh? Huh? Huh? Uh? So, as you get a sense from that, the kind of, I mean, it's got a very strange tone. I mean, at times there's touch of like the sort of Coen Brothers'

tragicomic violence like Fargo, but with some really nasty edges. Other times, it's like an overcooked domestic drama about a man who's emasculated by unemployment and he really wants to regain his place at the head of the family. And the family is full of all these subplots about all the individual things that are happening to, in this dysfunctional family dynamic.

And then other times it looks like it's an economic satire about the way that technology is, and globalization is making people disposable. You know, they can be thrown away as easily as a paper that they're all dedicated their lives to making. And then sometimes it's like a crime thriller. Sometimes there are these tense things

with carefully laid, but essentially insane plots. And then there's a kind of Shakespearean element about living with guilt and living with grief. And then, you know, at other times, it's like a kind of weird, off-kilter depiction of social climbing and the desperate need to hang on to status symbols and not lose faith. And the most remarkable thing is that with all of these different things going on,

it holds together. It actually hangs together. The total shifts don't make you think I'm watching 15 different movies. It all hangs together. And you don't know whether to laugh or wince or or cry sometimes. But the thing is that Park Chan work has got such confidence, such a lan in directing, that you think, well, I don't know where the film's going, but I'm absolutely certain that a director knows exactly where it's going. And it is really interesting how when a film, where you get the confidence in the film that all these tonal shifts are happening, but the film knows its own destination, even if you don't, then you're fine.

The time that you lose it is if you think the film doesn't know where it's going, the film doesn't know where it's taking me. And I thought it was genuinely remarkable, genuinely, impressively peculiar, very entertaining and completely, completely weird tonally, but in a way that was also confident enough that I never lost faith in it. Your comments, welcome, correspondents at kodomero.com, and this being 2026, you're never more than five minutes away from a new Josh O'Connor or Paul Mescal film,

or in this case, both of them. Yeah, so the history of sound, which is the new film by Oliver Ammanus, whose previous film was Living, which was, if you remember, that very accomplished remake of Kurosayakiru, which Katsui Shiguru did the screenplay for. So this is written by Ben Shattuck adapted from two of his stories. Paul Meskel and Josh O'Connor are Lionel and David. They are two men who meet in a bar in 1917.

They're students of music. The latter is collecting folk songs of which the former recognizes one of the songs when he hears it being played at the piano and goes over and says, where did you know that song? Because I know it from here. And then they start talking about songs. They start swapping songs, discussing the nature and history of folk songs. And through this shared conversation about songs, they find themselves starting to fall in love. Here's a clip. Oh, who is this that sits on my grave and will not let me sleep? She tells him to enjoy life while he has it to go away.

It's a good lesson. Where'd you learn it? My uncle and I learned it on one of our song collecting trips in England. And why were you there again? You were asking a lot of questions so early in the morning. Well, I've told you of everything about myself. I don't even know where you grew up. You don't?

Newport. Once again, a perfect example of non-American actors stealing American actors' jobs by being really, really good at accent. So the story then follows their lives separately and together David gets drafted. Lionel's got bad eyesight, doesn't return to Kentucky, works on the family farm, then reunites when David gets funding to embark on a music recording exercise, going out with a wax cylinder machine to record folk songs, going out to find the people who know these folk songs.

And it's kind of, you know, it's sort of idyllic, but it's also self-contained. and then their paths diverge again, but the memory of that time remains, as do the recordings of it, as the history of sound as the title. I mean, I thought it was a beautiful film. I love the way that the romance between these two disparate and very different characters is effectively voiced

through their shared love of folk songs, which are described as like the authentic voice of the people they meet. I mean, they go out into these remote rural communities and hear people singing these songs. And crucially, they don't really discuss what's happening, between them, but the recordings of the songs and the singing of the songs, it sort of speaks in the same way that I was saying with H's for Halk, that I think Emily Levinez Faruci's score is telling us the story. And I mean, there are parallels between this and the hardscrabble communities

in which these songs are passed around, in which people don't talk about their feelings, but they do sing the songs, which are absolutely laden with emotion, as you heard just a little snippet of there. And the stories are passed on through song. And I was saying, thinking of things like there's the sequence in Winter's Bone in which Fair and Tender Ladies, and you think, okay, they're doing Fair and Tender Ladies, things are going to go very, very badly. There's the sequence in Sinners, which you've referred to, the dancing sequence, and also the thing where they're playing Wild Mountain Time, and you think that things are going to go very, very badly. Congratulations to Oliver Coates, whose music winds its way around

to kind of the existing folk tunes. And production designer Deborah Jensen, who lends real authenticity to the period setting, and the DP is Alexander Dinnan, whose credits include first reform and after love, and brings a kind of lush pain to the edge to it. I know that some critics have said that they found it slow. I didn't at all. It may well be because I love the music, and it may well be because I love the idea of a story being told through song when the characters aren't talking to each other, really. But I found it very affecting, and I really liked it. And that is the end of take one. This has been a Sony music entertainment production. This week's team, Jen, Eric, Josh, Heather and Dom, the redactor Simon Paul. And if you're not following

the pod already, please do so wherever you get your podcast and tell everyone else. Come and join us on Patreon, where you get lots of extra cool stuff. Mark, what is your movie of the week? Well, H is for Hawk, F is for Film of the Week, and D is for Claire Foey's dad. Very good. Correspondence at Cervynameh.com, please get in touch and we'll be with you very shortly because take two is already landed.