Movie Review: ‘Bird’

Director: Andrea Arnold

Cast: Nykiya Adams, Barry Keoghan, Franz Rogowski, Jason Buda, Jasmine Jobson, Frankie Box, James Nelson-Joyce

Plot: Bailey is a 12 year old forced to grow up quickly on the lower tier of Britain’s socio-economic scale. Whilst trying to find her way, Bailey has to navigate gang violence, familial abuse and helping a mentally disabled man looking for his family.

Review: The dramatic sub-genre of coming-of-age stories often feels like one of the most rigid formulas in cinema. In recent decades there’s been a trend towards the same story being told with only changing contexts offering any variation. In the case of Bird, experienced film-maker Arnold is able to bring some much needed nuance and complexity to the characters, especially the lead role of Bailey (Adams).

Bailey hasn’t drawn a strong hand from the deck of life. She sleeps on a mattress on the floor of a run-down apartment building with her father Bug (Keoghan), who is relying on a get-rich-quick drug scheme to pay for his marriage to a woman he’s only recently started dating and intends to move her and her young daughter in with them. On top of this, Bailey’s half-brother Hunter (Buda) has joined a vigilante gang bringing violence to the area in the name of ‘justice’. Amid the confusion and chaos, Bailey encounters an odd man in a field named Bird (Rogowski). While keeping an eye on Bird, Bailey learns that he’s looking for his missing family and sets out to help him.

While a straight-forward act of charity on the surface, the nature of Bailey’s life makes any step of the process complicated. She takes Bird to meet her mother Peyton (Jobson), but her violent boyfriend threatens Bailey’s young siblings and their pets. Bailey wants to recruit Hunter to help, but must help him deal with a pregnant girlfriend who he is being kept apart from. Although every step of the way in bleak and fraught with danger, she pushes through.

Bailey is a character who has had to grow up quickly, and while barely a teenager she has a maturity and reserved nature that comes form surviving her situation. Adams astounds in her first screen role, with her only previous experience being as ‘Matilda’ in a school play. Between Adams and Arnold, they’ve created a performance that doesn’t rely on dramatic gestures or outward declarations with Bailey rarely raising her voice whilst the adults around her dance, yell and fight. There’s a great deal of nuance to the role, as Bailey finds comfort and meaning in filming snatches of nature – often birds – and finding the positive details and expressions amid the mishmash of graffiti that covers her entire world. Nykiya Adams does incredible work for one so young and inexperienced in acting.

The biggest name attached to the project is Barry Keoghan, playing a less sinister kind of character than we’ve become accustomed to seeing from him. Bug (is he called Bug because of his bug tattoos or the other way round?) isn’t necessarily a bad person, as we see that he loves his children and chases his dreams of a better life, but he is frustratingly incompetent. He has an almost childlike ambition to have a good wedding, but spends his days trying to find the right song to make his acquired toad secrete a hallucinatory slime to make some cash. Where Koeghan really elevates the experience is in some heartfelt exchanges in the final act that help bring some of the cast together. There’s also a cheeky prod at his now legendary nude dance to ‘Murder on the Dance Floor’ that gave us a chuckle.

There is, sadly, little in the way of happy endings for these characters. Unlike the birds who frequent the film, there’s no opportunity for them to fly away. Instead Bailey tries to protect those younger than her from the violent people in their life. This said, it is an oddly hopeful story. Perhaps the viewer, like Bailey, is compelled to find the small glimmers of goodness among the mess.

Although the opening scenes of the film led us to believe we’d be having a miserable night with Bird, we came out the other end embracing the positivity that Bailey brought to the world. A very well crafted character piece with enough light to break through the darkness.

Rating: EIGHT out of TEN