Film review: ‘BIRD’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
Mixing raw and confronting ‘life on the skids’ drama with touches of the surreal, British director Andrea Arnold’s impressively ambitious if uneven, Bird will entrance many but leave some a little confused.
The film centres on 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) who lives in a highly dysfunctional household with her sullen brother, Hunter (Jason Buda) who seems to be part of a home invading vigilante gang and her frequently shirtless, tattooed, scooter riding dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan). When Bug announces he’s about to remarry, Bailey feels even more alienated at home. Escaping the house on one of her many soul-searching walks, Bailey encounters the mysterious and seemingly homeless man, Bird (Franz Rogowski). Learning that Bird was abandoned as a child, Bailey agrees to help him track down his parents. At the same time, Bailey tries to protect her estranged mother (Jasmine Jobson) and her younger siblings from her mother’s violent new boyfriend, Skate (James Nelson-Joyce).
As well as Arnold’s previous features like American Honey, Bird’s grim but convincing depiction of economically depressed areas and their subcultures at times recalls the 1990’s work of directors like Larry Clark and Harmony Korine. Everyone here seems to live in dilapidated squats covered in graffiti with angry hip hop blasting away. Using rapid editing, jump cuts and hand-held cameras, Arnold creates a frequent sense of unease but thankfully knows when to pull back to avoid giving the audience a headache and to allow characters room to breathe. Arnold also crafts an impressive soundscape of cluttered ambient noise and well-chosen songs from the likes of Blur, Sleaford Mods, Fontaines DC and Coldplay.
Arnold isn’t just interested in raw, unadorned depictions of struggling people, however, as she juxtaposes images of Bailey’s squalid world with occasional magic realist sequences that possibly exist only in Bailey’s imagination. Some will no doubt feel these more surreal flourishes are a wonderfully inventive respite from the miserable world Bailey inhabits while others will find them incongruous with the harsh reality of her life.
While views might vary about Arnold’s approach to the material, few could fail to be mesmerised by young Nykiya Adams’ wonderfully assured performance. She captures the conflicted emotions of a child forced to adopt a protective parental role while trying to cope with seismic changes in her life, including the onset of puberty.
From the film’s marketing, people could have been forgiven for thinking Bird was mainly about Barry Keoghan’s Bug but while he’s an important character, he’s not the centre of the story. Still, Keoghan is alarmingly convincing as a perpetually wasted layabout and manages to make Bug dislikable, sympathetic and funny at the same time; his forays into singing and selling toads with hallucinogenic properties make him hard to forget. Rogowski, who looks remarkably like Joaquin Phoenix, is at first a little creepy as he approaches young Bailey but he imbues the character with pathos and even heroism. The character remains something of an enigma, however and feels a little underwritten. Impressively, Arnold has populated the film with a host of very convincing supporting players. It’s almost as if the director just walked up to people on the street and started filming them.
With its often-frenzied visual style, strong accents and use of slang, some will find Bird hard going but many will be moved by its honesty, heart and vivid characters.
Nick’s rating: ***1/2
Genre: Drama/ coming of age.
Classification: MA15+.
Director(s): Andrea Arnold.
Release date: 20th Feb 2025.
Running time: 119 mins.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.