Bird: Horses and Feathers and Bugs, Oh My

Bird, the latest feature from celebrated British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (Red Road), sees the director circling back to her old stomping grounds with a magically tinged coming of age tale that doesn’t quite reach the heights of her previous efforts. Despite being littered with many of the hallmarks of her more successful works – not to mention a cast stacked with indie darlings -the film never adds up to the sum of its parts.

As she did in Fish Tank and American Honey, Arnold once again places a complete newcomer centre stage. Nykiya Adams plays Bailey, an introspective twelve-year-old girl living in a sprawling squat with her father, Bug (Barry Keoghan – mainly shirtless and slathered in less than convincing fake tattoos) and a host of other unsavoury characters, including her older brother, Hunter (Jason Buda). As the story kicks off, Bug is crowing about his latest get rich quick scheme, an anxious hallucinogenic drug toad that seems to serve no purpose in the story other than giving Arnold an excuse to interject as many of her signature pop music interludes as possible. Apparently, Coldplay soothes the savage beast … or something.

Much to Bailey’s chagrin, however, Bug also has another announcement – single mom Kayleigh (Frankie Box) is moving in, and they’re getting married at the end of the week. Furious at the purple leopard bridesmaid catsuit she’s being forced to wear (who could blame her), Bailey buzzes her hair off and runs away, though as we soon figure out, she really has no better place to go. As she wanders the surrounding buildings and the nearby fields, Arnold’s unparalleled eye for urban landscapes works overtime, treating the audience to a divine series of poetic images as she sketches out this rough and tumble world through Bailey’s eyes. Making deft use of smartphone screens and projected video, the film is at its best in its impressionistic moments, allowing the juxtaposition of images to gently wash over us in an approximation of Bailey’s inner reality.

Unwilling to return home, Bailey falls asleep in a field, surrounded by wild horses (another of Arnold’s recurring motifs), awakening to a gentle sunrise and the sounds of bird song. Out of nowhere, an oddly dressed man with an out of place accent approaches. His name is Bird (Franz Rogowski), he tells her, and he’s looking for someone in the nearby flats she lives in. Wary but intrigued, she points him in the right direction, and secretly follows along as he knocks on doors and makes enquiries with the locals. Eventually she loses sight of him, only to find him perched on the corner of the roof, watching her from a distance.

Different than anyone else in her life, Bailey is drawn to him, seeking him out on his rooftop perch. He tells her he also comes from this place, but has no memory of it, and is looking for his people. She agrees to help him and takes him to meet her mother, hoping she might remember him from when they were young. As the pair enters the squalid drug squat where her mother (Jasmine Jobson) lives with her horrifically abusive boyfriend and her three younger sisters, the awful fullness of Bailey’s life comes into stark relief. Mum remembers Bird’s dad, and offers up his name, but then things get ugly, and the pair are forced to make a quick escape.

As the subsequent events of the film unfurl, Arnold takes us to places both expected and unexpected, with seemingly inevitable outcomes giving way to a magical realist conclusion that will either leave you cheering … or scratching your head. Famous for her semi-improvisational, cinema verité approach, the successful alchemy of Arnold’s work relies in part on the serendipitous transformational reaction of the elements it contains. While her loose approach – Rogowski likened her to a hunter patiently waiting to capture her prey – has often yielded her great success, it’s bound to occasionally fall short. It is a testament to her talent that this so rarely seems to be the case, and that even her less perfect works contain so many moments of great beauty.

Bird lands in Canadian cinemas on November 8th.   

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