Bird

Andrea Arnold is a director that has long focused on realism. Yet, in her new feature, Bird, she has experimented with elements of the surreal. She has still rooted the story in grim situations, photographed in jagged form and brought to life by actors who you might otherwise never imagine in such roles. Barry Keoghan is the biggest name here, playing Bug, the tattooed father of twelve-year old Bailey. Bug and Kayleigh, his girlfriend, are getting married and Bailey is having none of it, nor is her slightly older brother, Hunter. One day, Bailey meets Bird, a strange man who is wandering the marshes near her council flat. Franz Rogowski and Nykiya Adams are superb here as a most unlikely pair. Despite the film being named the same as Rogowski’s character, the film is not about him.

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Instead, the film is about growing up and becoming responsible and learning to accept love, limits and finding a place for yourself. It does not fully succeed in this, but it is not a dismal failure. It does, however, belabor its point, muddy the waters and not quite stick the landing because of its pacing and structural issues.  How it gets there is painful, and not typically in a good way. Arnold is similar, as a director, to artists like Kelly Reichardt and Jane Campion. Unlike those two, her command of space is not as refined or powerful, but she does fully use the settings of her stories to great effect, creating in this film a chaos and claustrophobia through both shot selection and the sets themselves. Further, like the other two directors, she often centers her films on female characters. Here she is more successful than Reichart, who most often exchanges fully fleshed characters for types or as means to explore themes, rather than as anything approaching a real person.

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Bailey begins as a rather annoying child. You wonder why the film seems to be suggesting that it is better for her to hang with hoods than her father, and you wait for the other shoe to drop. When it does, it completely changes your perspective. Aside from First Cow and Certain Women, Reichardt-one of our very best directors currently working-has never seemed as interested in creating a mixture of plot and character. Yet, as mentioned earlier, the journey getting to the end is more satisfying than what you would have believed, given what preceded it. This is because you start to see that Bailey is more than an angry child, and why. She is also neglected, but not by her father. She has misplaced emotions, better aimed at her birth mother, and she is, as we discover, a very protective older sister. At around the halfway point of the film, we begin to see the story of Bailey, Bird, Bailey’s mother, Bailey’s siblings and Bailey’s mothers very dangerous boyfriend, take shape. Where it goes leads to some rather surreal images, and along the way, we get to explore the aforementioned themes of love, limits, belonging and self-determination. Through her relationship with Hunter, we see another side of her father, as Bailey brings the two together to face a crisis. This also follows a rather subtle and perfect détente with her future stepmother, the details of which this reviewer will leave you to experience for yourself.  However, a very strong third act and some interest within the second, cannot entirely save this film from the ranks of the average.

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Bird is worth seeing, without a doubt, and the performances are uniformly excellent. However, it spends too much time in the first half on elements and threads that go nowhere and which, rather than creating interest in the characters, may just turn you off of them. Not a disappointment, but an imperfect good one. With some trimming, or alterations in pacing and structure/focus, this could have been as great as its ambitions. Keep an eye on Adams, as she is going places, and I hope Arnold, a very gifted film maker-and every bit the equal of the two I compared her with-gets a chance to work with her again. That kid has it.

Bird opens in select theaters on Friday, November 8th.