In their genre-defying landmark book about grief, ‘H is For Hawk’, Helen McDonald dug deep into the time-honored tradition of falconry and how it connects human beings closely to the line between life and death. Her personal story was adapted into a major release this year, starring Claire Foy and Brendan Gleeson, with Foy playing Helen as she navigates the devastating loss of her father (Gleeson).

THS was lucky enough to participate in a unique press event that allowed members of the media to engage with Falconry in person, just as Helen does in the story. There is something undeniably primal about these birds of prey; their transactional relationship to human beings is entirely survival and food-based. The birds were described as ‘a hunting instrument’ with the human being almost akin to the wielder of a gun or bow and arrow. You can see how this dynamic led to a sustainable relationship dating back to a time before guns were used to hunt, and a Hawk or Falcon might be the most effective tool in your arsenal for catching certain prey.

The symbiotic nature of this dynamic is fascinating to consider as the centuries fly by (pun intended). The ancient nature of falconry is connected to not just the development of civilization, but to our mythology as well, with a frequently cited example in McDonald’s book and movie being the vast world of Arthuriana.

In a sunny park on a normal January afternoon in Los Angeles, a group of reporters, media members, and maybe even ‘influencers’ gathered while Hawk on Hand Falconry demonstrated the nature of this ancient hobby in honor of the film’s release. Watching a falcon, hawk, and owl all perform their flights to and from the trees back to gloved human hands gave everyone a taste of the ancient practice, but also a window into how the hawk becomes an extension of the human partner.

In the film, Helen’s deep dive into Falconry supercedes all other facets of her life. She loses herself in the practice, turning one of the more difficult to train Hawks into an excellent hunting partner. Her job, family, home, health, and hygiene all fall by the wayside. It’s as much due to the loss of her father that she can’t quite face as it is to the new interest, but the two things go hand in hand. What the book layers throughout, and the film hints at in certain moments and more obviously in one dramatic presentation scene, is that a modern human’s relationship to death is confusing.

We hide from it through detached ritual and masked platitudes. The primal forces of killing, being killed, consuming, and simply dying that are part of every second in the wild are distanced and removed from most moments a modern human being faces. When death arrives in ways we can’t ignore, how do we connect back to the reality of it, the constantly present fact of mortality? The Hawk is constantly motivated by what humans have a hard time facing.

“H is for Hawk” is in theaters on Friday, January 30, 2026.

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