Andrea Arnold’s cinema takes a gritty, unvarnished look at those who occupy society’s very fringes. Without sentimentality, she puts them under the scanner, evoking weariness of being dealt a hard, unfair life and stray moments of reprieve. Her latest Bird (2024) reprises her regular obsessions, the overactive handheld style, but also marks major deviations. This combination hits several jarring notes. As always, the narrative is speckled with possibilities of transcendence—hope to go above and beyond one’s wretched circumstances. Instead of being absolutely put down, characters reclaim resilience. They move further, aiming for a shot which breaks cycles of misery. Arnold gives them grace of transgression, allowing them to dream and remake their lives. What flowers fresh is the surreal direction Bird rebounds in, becoming a vivid embodiment of the characters’ flinging desires. Magic leavens the drab arena within which Arnold traces the journey of 12-year-old disaffected Bailey (Nykiya Adams).
Amidst the maddening restlessness of her squat home in Kent, Bailey’s recourse is shooting snippets on her phone, then projecting it in her cramped room. Bird alternates between dramatic, enveloping compositions and Bailey’s phone footage. The latter is the space she levers for herself in a world denying her any. With it, she captures everything from birds, horses and butterflies to aggressions and awkward denials. She can’t hide her resentment when her father Bug (Barry Keoghan) suddenly springs on her that he’s marrying someone he’s known for just three months. Why is she the last one to know? She asks. Bug pops random living arrangements without ever considering his kids. He’s more invested in partying and karaoking with friends than being remotely bothered about Bailey and Hunter. To him, they are nothing but peripheral concerns—passingly recalled only if they aren’t back home by night. He forgets even if they’ve already informed him. Raging, she snips off her hair right before his wedding.
Bird blends the natural world and miracles in easy dialogue, one paving way for the other to emerge. Bird’s (Franz Rogowski) arrival is heralded by rustling leaves, the uncanny filling the air. Wrapped in ambiguity, the only thing he reveals is he comes from his town. He’s returned after many years, looking for his parents and family. However, everything appears unrecognizably changed. The radical overhaul he witnesses is also what he subtly promises Bailey.
Bird is often called a freak but it’s he who becomes an anchoring force. He radiates comfort and reassurance, though Bailey is initially unsettled by his sudden appearance out of thin air. His otherworldly demeanor tickles her curiosity. Eventually, she leans in to trust him. His kindness gently lifts her—his presence still, light and healing. It’s as distant as possible from all the coarseness and chaos she’s accustomed to everywhere she looks. His wanderer soul expands her vision. There’s almost something maternal to him, making up for the care, encouragement and understanding she expects from her parents. They are implicitly absent—her father busy with his new girlfriend, her mother caught in a stormy, abusive relationship.
As Arnold’s go-to cinematographer Robbie Ryan enlivens cracks in these lives, there’s also wonder infused. Bird vacillates between hard-boiled kitchen sink drama and mystical dashes. We are given windows into toxic family situations, children growing up in highly stressful environments, fighting neglect and abandonment. There’s no breathing space to jostle for a healthy, functional life where they can dissociate and bury themselves in school and homework and games. Shorn of parenting, kids in Arnold’s films have to fend for themselves, tossed into navigating the big, bad world. However, many scenes in Bird are stuck being mere patchy callbacks of infinitely richer, more nuanced Arnold films.
Enigma drapes this film’s spirit—Arnold interrupts with looseness and cheeky vagueness just when things seem too dreary or affixed in irredeemable situations. Magic delightfully bursts in as an alternative space, guiding the protagonist to head somewhere viable, tangibly affirming. As Bailey, Nykiya Adams combines sturdiness with dogged refusal to be cast aside. Bailey is not someone who’ll take things lying down. She hits back, fuming, asserting her will. She’s strenuously cautious and rock-sure of what’s unacceptable. Arnold extracts tragic desperation in her, along with persistent hope. Adams holds the film in a mix of brittleness and the yearning for calm and reliable love which racks Bailey. Even as the filmmaking is energetic and balanced, it’s impossible to overlook jaded strains in the narrative, a sense of a retread while characters grapple with their tough lives. Despite all its buoyant final notes, Bird feels too emblematic of the standard kitchen sink drama without carrying its own specificity.
Bird screened at Habitat International Film Festival 2025.
