(Andrea Arnold, UK, 2024, 119 minutes)
Since 1998, when she released her directorial debut Milk, a short film, UK filmmaker Andrea Arnold has been exploring the lives of women; usually young, but not always, and often grappling with forces beyond their control.
If they were comfortably middle class, they might go to the police or hire an attorney, but those options aren't easily available to them, and nor have they been brought up to believe that authority figures are their friends.
More often than not, her protagonists have to figure things out on their own. In 2006's Glasgow-set Red Road, for instance, Kate Dickie's CCTV security operator Jackie has her own unique way of dealing with a sexual predator.
Like newcomer Katie Jarvis (below), who went toe-to-toe with Michael Fassbinder in 2006's Fish Tank, newcomer Nykiya Adams holds her own with Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski in Bird, Arnold's fifth narrative feature.
As with Sasha Lane's runaway Star in 2016's American Honey, 12-year-old Bailey is also biracial, though this is never a plot point or complication, just one of a few characteristics that sets her apart from the rest of her community.
Unlike the other women in her orbit, Bailey also avoids girly accouterments in favor of neutral-colored hoodies and track pants, though she does learn to love black eyeliner, which adds goth flare to her practical, utilitarian affect.
In a sign that she sees the world like a filmmaker, Bailey whiles away the time capturing iPhone video of butterflies, crows, seagulls, and horses—any living creature that captures her attention. (Robbie Ryan, Arnold's gifted cinematographer, shot the film, and presumably the video footage, too.)
Bailey is a child of divorce and her tattoo-covered father, Keoghan's boisterous Bug, is more overgrown kid than adult, especially when he zips around the aptly-named Gravesend in Kent on an e-scooter while shouting along to Fontaines D.C.'s "Too Real" (a possible nod to his Irish roots).
She's Black, he's white, and they live in a graffiti-filled squat where his noisy friends come and go.
Her mother, Peyton (Jasmine Jobson), shares a home with Kite (James Nelson-Joyce), an abusive ogre who would frighten Bailey away altogether if she weren't so protective of her younger siblings.
Early in the proceedings, Bug announces he's getting married to Kayleigh (Frankie Box), a single mother with a toddler, and asks Bailey to wear a tacky pink catsuit to the wedding. She's horrified.
Knowing that it will piss off her father, she encourages her stepbrother Hunter's girlfriend, Moon, to take an electric razor to her hair (Jason Buda plays Hunter). She ends up looking a little like punk singer Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex–hardly the worst thing in the world–though no one is too happy about it.
In the days before the wedding–even though Bug has only known Kayleigh for a few months–Bailey does warm up to her a bit, especially when she comes to the girl's rescue with supplies after she gets her first period.
One morning, after falling asleep in a field, Bailey meets Rogowski's Bird, an androgynous foreigner of unknown origin in an embroidered sweater and pleated skirt. She gives him directions, and he goes on his way, but then curiosity gets the best of her, and she follows him to a council estate. It turns out he's looking for long-lost relatives, so she resolves to help him.
Bailey feels a kinship, though he's an odd duck. With no place to stay, he hangs out on the roof of the estate where Bailey can see him through her window. It's where he grew up, even if no one remembers his family.
Though Bird resembles a human being, his predilection for rooftop hangouts and preternatural stillness aligns him with birds, which aligns the film, probably unintentionally, with Alan Parker's Birdy, Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, and possibly even Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud, all films centered on men who think they're birds, wish they were birds, or have an avian alter ego.
To aid in Bird's quest, Bailey brings him to meet Peyton, who grew up in the same housing project and might remember his people. What they find is deeply disquieting–more to the sensitive man than to the unflappable kid.
There's Dave, a little yapping dog in the front yard, three stoners crashed out in front of the TV set, three small children wandering around unsupervised, and Peyton and Skate sleeping the day away upstairs.
When they awaken, Skate yells and yells for a cup of tea–Bailey's sister, Peena, brings him one–before threatening to kill Dave, calling Bird a freak, and telling Bailey her new haircut makes her look ugly. If you've seen Arnold's potent 2001 short Dog (below), this scenario may feel familiar.
A bad time is had by all, though Bailey and her new friend manage to extract some useful information from the groggy, drug-addled Peyton before Skate, who threatens to expose himself, inflicts any more damage. The two visitors won't be so lucky next time around.
Bailey then sets a plan in motion designed to help Bird, her mother, and her siblings--and remove Skate from their lives. The plan includes a trip to the beach with the kids and a visit to a hardened middle-aged man (played by Sleaford Mods' Jason Williamson), who may or may not be related to Bird.
Then, Bailey finds that 14-year-old Moon is pregnant, the same age as Bug and Peyton when they had her. If her father swears he has no regrets, it's clear that her mother does, not least since she abandoned her first child.
Just when it seems as if things can't get much worse, Arnold shifts into magical realist mode. In light of her work to date, it might seem as if it comes from out of nowhere, except she dropped hints along the way, most significantly when a crow does Bailey a crucial favor involving Moon and Hunter who end up in their own real-life Romeo and Juliet scenario when her middle-class parents forbid Moon from seeing her working-class boyfriend.
After establishing a vérité tone, with Robbie Ryan's tactile attention to earth, sea, and sky, the shift to another realm doesn't quite work. From the title of the film to the name of Rogowski's traveler to the numerous shots of seagulls and crows through various viewfinders, it's just too on the nose. To Arnold's credit, it–I won't say what "it" is–is mostly a practical effect with what looks like a CGI flourish at the end.
After that, she returns to reality, except not. There are details that seem real, but based on everything the director has depicted, these things and events probably don't exist and aren't really happening. It's like Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher, which ends with what feels like the culmination of a young man's fantasy. Arnold rights the ship with this move into trickier, more ambiguous, less showy territory.
Though she follows in the footsteps of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh in her empathy for underprivileged Britons, she’s from a different generation and background, and her films often feature the kinds of pop songs her characters would enjoy, and that's more true than ever of Bird, which lends it a buoyancy not always found in the works of her predecessors, though if I wanted to make a direct connection, I would say that Loach's deceptively simple, deeply moving Kes might have served as a possible inspiration.
But back to the soundtrack, which includes an original score from the reclusive William Bevan, aka Burial, alongside tracks from the Verve, Coldplay, and Sleaford Mods.
Bailey jokes that her father is turning into a guy who likes "dad" music, and he doesn't reject the tag--he embraces it.
These aren't people who are trying to be cool; they lean into whatever makes them feel good, for better or for ill–for Peyton, alas, it's drugs, but it's fun to watch Bug shouting along to his favorite songs, touching to see him use others, like Blur's "The Universal," to convey sentiments he can't quite express, and amusing to watch his entire posse go ham on Sleaford Mods' "Jolly Fucker" like a reverse Terrence Davies where unity comes not from the poetic ballads of yore, but profane screeds about "elitist hippies" and "arrogant cunts."
I run hot and cold when it comes to Barry Keoghan, who pushes too hard with some performances–the same ones other critics tend to praise, like his off-kilter outcasts in Yorgos Lanthimos's The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Emerald Fennell's Saltburn, and even Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, but he's in the zone here as an affectionate, immature, get-rich-quick-with-stupid-schemes guy who knows how to have fun, but not how to run a household.
Franz Rogowski, on the other hand, does what he can with a construct that never feels quite real, though that may have been Arnold's intention.
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Bird provides the support Bailey needs when she needs it, and almost plays like an older version of herself.
The German actor, a true one-of-a-kind, has done his finest work for Christian Petzold and, especially, Sebastian Meise in gloriously queer 2002 drama The Great Freedom, which is sexier from top to bottom–pun intended–than Ira Sachs' widely praised and comparatively timid Passages.
That leaves Nykiya Adams: the best reason to see the film. Andrea Arnold has a knack for casting and eliciting mesmerizing performances from inexperienced actors, except they're not really inexperienced in terms of the lives they--and their characters--have led. Like Katie Jarvis and Sasha Gray before her, Adams breathes life into a young woman to whom she could probably relate, guided by a director who knows how to showcase her gifts and ensure that she's never overpowered by her more recognizable costars.
Adams never pushes too hard; she just becomes Bailey, lives her life, tries to lift her loved ones up in the process, and quietly breaks your heart.
MUBI releases Bird exclusively in New York theaters on Nov 8 and nationwide on Nov 15. Seattle preview screening on Nov 14 at Regal Thornton Place. Bird video and stills courtesy of MUBI. All others: The Guardian (Nykiya Adams and Barry Keoghan / Holly Horner/PR), Aemi (Dog), and Le Rayon Vert Cinéma (David Bradley with his kestrel in Kes).
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