Independent British filmmaker Andrea Arnold has amassed an impressive filmography over the past twenty years, first coming to the attention of audiences with the release of her Academy Award-winning short film Wasp (2003), loosely inspired by her modest upbringing on a council estate in Kent. Famous for her secretive, semi-improvisational approach – she rarely allows her actors to see script pages more than a few days ahead – the iconoclastic director has an eye for raw talent and a peculiar aptitude for eliciting incredible performances from novice performers. As her latest effort, Bird, is poised to land in theatres this week, we take a closer look at some of her earlier works.
RED ROAD (2006)
Arnold’s feature film debut is a taut psychological thriller about grief, vengeance, and the power of letting go. Kate Dickie (Game of Thrones) plays Jackie, a Glasgow CCTV operator for a sprawling set of council flats, who revels in the voyeuristic pleasures her job affords her as she works to protect the people in her community. Haunted by the tragic deaths of her husband and daughter, her world is rocked when she spots the man responsible (Tony Curran) prowling across her screen. Setting out to avenge her family, she is instead unexpectedly drawn into the oddly charismatic convict’s intense orbit, finding a deeper connection with him than seemingly anyone else in her life. Shot in the Dogme 95 style, Red Road was to be the first film in the proposed Advance Party trilogy, utilizing the same characters but shot by different directors.
FISH TANK (2009)
Anchored by an astonishingly visceral performance from newcomer Katie Jarvis, Fish Tank represents the pinnacle of Arnold’s improvisational cinema verité approach. Mia (Jarvis), fifteen, lives on a council estate in East London with her mother and younger sister. Isolated and brimming over with rarely contained rage, she spends most of her time alone, getting drunk and practicing hip hop dance routines in an abandoned building. Lashing out at nearly everyone around her, she is desperate for connection, leaving her vulnerable to the wrong kind of attention at the wrong time when her mother starts dating the handsome and charismatic Connor (Michael Fassbender). Fassbender is disturbingly magnetic in an extremely difficult role, somehow painting an uncomfortably sympathetic and nuanced portrait of a philandering predator. While Fish Tank went a long way to catapulting Fassbender’s career, it would be a far lesser work if not for Jarvis, giving the performance of her absolute life.
AMERICAN HONEY (2016)
Taking her approach across the pond, Arnold shifts her gaze from the council estates of the UK to the backroads and highways of rural America. Ostensibly a road movie about a ragged crew of lost souls wandering the freeways selling magazine subscriptions to support their never-ending party, American Honey plays like an elegiac, meandering odyssey – an ode to those who exist in the fringes. One of those lost souls is Star (Sasha Layne), fleeing an abusive home and a hopeless life in Oklahoma, hoping for something better on the road. Layne, in her first role, is the magic holding this film together. Her transparent, fearless performance is truly something to behold. Like Katie Jarvis before her, Layne’s performance is mesmerizing, but gentler, and far more vulnerable. Shia LaBoeuf (convincingly volatile) and Riley Keough (jaded and menacing) similarly knock their supporting roles out of park.
COW (2021)
Seemingly taking an abrupt turn from her usual subject matter, Arnold sets her sights on a non-human animal in her debut documentary feature Cow. Following the life of a dairy cow called Luma over the course of three years, Arnold treats her subject with the same empathy and lack of judgment as her human characters. Watching the film, I was struck at the similarities to the filmmaker’s narrative works, with her cinema-verité ethos (and sensitive but darkly humorous sensibility) transferring ably to the documentary realm. While many have been outraged at the film’s content, Arnold refuses to impose an overt political perspective on the proceedings, allowing viewers the space for their own. Reminiscent of the work of acclaimed ethnographic documentarians Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Leviathan), Cow skillfully sketches out the outlines of a life so rarely considered.
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