Nightingale

There are many moments in the new film "Nightingale", that premiered last Friday night on HBO, where we see Peter Snowden (David Oyelowo) looking into the mirror. This mirror has three parts, sits upright, opened up, on the kitchen table in his mother's house. The parts fold into one another, showing different angles, a triptych of self reflection. Peter looks at himself in the mirror and talks, he lectures, and most menacingly, he stares. He asks questions and continues to answer them himself. We aren't sure what he sees when he's looking into them, but almost as soon as "Nightingale" begins we know we are watching someone disturbed.

Something terrible happened in that house, and we know what it is, we're watching its aftermath. Or is it just the beginning? Peter killed his mother. He snapped. There's blood smudged on his glasses, the TV is static in the background, the house emanates ruin. Johnny Mathis plays on loop in the background. No one else is around it seems and no one is coming. It's just Peter, and it's just Peter for the entire duration of this 82 minute movie.

David Oyelowo in "Nightingale" 

In "Nightingale", Peter Snowden is lonely and we quickly learn, repressed. He's confused. He eats fruity pebbles in a rainbow colored robe while lying to his sister about the whereabouts of his mother. He goes over a conversation again and again, obsessively, with various iterations before attempting to call an old friend he was in the army with. Turns out it's not just an old friend, but an unrequited love, one sided of course. He's a recluse, shutting blinds, rushing out to get the mail and scurrying back in, answering calls only to divert messages from his dead mother.

Watching a person mentally come undone with violent repercussions no less, can be an exploitive and even cheap way of exploring the anguish of a character's inner life. It's too easy to just make someone a nut job for dramatic purposes. But when you have an actor as compelling and committed as David Oyelowo, most doubt usually subsides. Oyelowo, who starred as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in "Selma" earlier this year, elevates "Nightingale" beyond it's premise and gives a performance I'm not sure the writer, Frederick Mensch, or even the director, Elliott Lester expected they could get. At once frightening, then contemplative, then manic, then charismatic, then quick witted, Snowden the character never stops changing, and Oyelowo, using his remarkable voice, is up to the scripts many shifts in tone, in point of view, in direction.

The novelty of watching a story with one character, in one location, remarkably doesn't begin to wear thin. A large part of that probably has to do with Oyelowo's performance, and the film's surprisingly brief running time. But as the story progresses, and our understanding of the character grows and shifts, the film starts to build in suspense. Even after Peter has shut the real world out, living through his own mind's delusions, trying to forget the people that make it up, it finds a way to remember him. The invisible and silent characters who existed solely on the other ends of the telephone begin to close in on Peter; neighbors and family calling too much about his mother, his old friend's wife asking too many questions. An inevitable, tragic conclusion must come to a head. But the film takes a surprising turn in its final minutes, that I'm not sure entirely worked. It becomes a lecture. This is what I know, Snowden is a killer. He is alone. He is sick. But in the end, he is also a human being.