Flight or Fight: A Review of 'Bird'
Barry Keoghan provides striking support in his first film since 'Saltburn'
November 4, 2024
In director Andrea Arnold’s Bird, a 12-year-old girl named Bailey — newcomer Nykiya Adams — struggles to assert her individuality, to protect her siblings, to achieve some kind of truce with her feckless young father (Barry Keoghan) and to preserve the pockets of peace she feels when contemplating nature, especially animals. Especially birds.
Working against her is, well, her whole world. Her father is little more than an overgrown kid, driven by impulse. The area in which she lives is working-class, or no-working-class, and there is no real supervision — or protection — for her.
Her mom (Jasmine Jobson) is more actively a roadblock, insulting her looks and prioritizing an abusive relationship, allowing the guy into her home in spite of the clear danger he presents to her other children.
When things don’t seem like they could get worse, her dad announces he’s marrying his latest squeeze (Frankie Box), who is not Bailey’s favorite person. There is a bridesmaid outfit Diane Arbus would have loved to see her in.
So when Bailey — sleeping in a field overnight after witnessing some violence visited on an offending boy by her half brother (Jason Edward Buda) and his friends — encounters a mysterious, otherworldly man (Franz Rogowski) who goes by the name of Bird, she is drawn to him as an oasis of softness in a world of mean.
It’s jarring to take a step back and contemplate how quickly a drifter, however kindly, insinuates himself into a young girl’s company, but we are meant to intuit, as Bailey does, that there is something special about Bird — just as there is something special about Bailey.
The film has little narrative drive; it is more contemplative, an extended character study of a young outsider and her spirit animal (somewhat literally).
It works best when it is most observant, and stumbles with a last-minute dash to a train station and an entirely too feel-good ending. But Bird is worth watching for its outstanding lead actor, Adams, who is in basically in every frame. It feels poetic and personal, and there is an aching authenticity to the love between Bailey, her goofball dad and her naive, tough half brother.
A postscript: I caught this film at NewFest, the LGBTQ+ Film Festival, and was left wondering what is queer about Bird. I think that is a good question, and expect some viewers will make a connection and others will not.
one thing you don't mention is how hectic the handheld camera work is. I left the same screening feeling queasy from the chaotic the filming is (and I am not easily upset)