Film Review - Bird
Images courtesy of Mushroom Studios.
British director Andrea Arnold is one of the most interesting and underrated filmmakers working today. While she is known by mainstream audiences for helming the second season of Big Little Lies, her strength lies in telling smaller stories that focus on living on the harsher fringes of society, like in 2016’s American Honey. Arnold’s latest film, Bird, follows in this vein and is her most effective and touching effort so far.
Set in the slums of northern Kent in England, the story follows twelve-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams). She lives in a rundown squat with her single father Bug (Barry Keoghan) and brother Hunter (Jason Buda). Bug doesn’t have much time to devote to his children, whom he both had at a very young age, and is more interested in his own chaotic antics. Meanwhile, Hunter is troublesome and on a wayward path. Bailey’s mother lives elsewhere with an abusive boyfriend and her half-siblings, making for a very fractured family life. Bailey is tough and knows how to take care of herself, but she is on the verge of puberty and is naturally seeking attention and support. She finds it in the mysterious Bird (Franz Rogowski), a strange man who is on a journey of his own in search of his family. Both Bailey and Bird transform each other’s lives dramatically.
Bird is a film that reels you right in and keeps your attention thanks to the immersive filmmaking and social realism portrayed on screen. Nothing about northern Kent is glamorous, and the dirtiness and immense poverty the characters live in is so authentically and potently captured. You can almost smell the stink and feel the grime. This is achieved thanks to thoughtful and stylistic cinematography, made up of shaky camera movements and close-ups of bugs, mouldy furniture, graffitied walls and more mundane entities. While Keoghan may be the biggest name in the cast, it's newcomer Adams who is genuinely revelatory. She’s so naturalistic on screen that it doesn’t even feel like this is an actor playing a character; this is simply Bailey. This goes for many of the other actors in the film too, who feel like real people and as far removed from Hollywood as you could imagine. As mentioned previously, this is a movie that depicts real and ugly issues in society, and nothing is sugarcoated. As Bailey tries to find herself, she has to worry about taking care of everything and everyone around her. She’s surrounded by absent parents, abusive behaviour, crime and drug use (as are her much younger siblings), so she can’t be a normal young person. Adams beautifully conveys this burden being carried.
While Bird is grounded in reality, it takes a surprising dip into magical realism in the film’s final act. It works well metaphorically, considering the mystery surrounding Bird, as well as the constant symbolism and motifs throughout the story. However, it does feel slightly jarring when we’ve been so immersed in this gritty and realistic story and are suddenly presented with fantastical elements. While this may slightly take some viewers out of the flow of the film, it also does make a lot of sense in the story’s context and themes.
Bird is a visceral coming-of-age tale that soars thanks to its naturalistic approach to both performances and on-screen craft.
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Bird is screening in cinemas from Thursday the 20th of February. For tickets and more info, click here.