Andrea Arnold and Sean Baker are part of the director coin flip. If you’re lucky and land heads, you’re Sean Baker, raised around the poor and forgotten parts of society but able to live happily and joyously around them. But more than likely you turn tails, and you end up in Arnold’s Kent worlds, dealt a bad hand and doing the best you can with what little you have. While Baker’s Anora is getting all the buzz this year, Arnold’s Bird almost gets to those heights…almost. She’s right there, but hey that’s what happens when the coin lands tails for you. Here’s hoping we get a heads for her soon.
Bird takes us back to Arnold’s Kent roots, with Bailey (Nykiya Adams) in the middle of multiple life crises. Her dad Bug (Barry Keoghan) springs upon her that he’s about to marry his 3 month girlfriend Kailey (Frankie Box) the upcoming weekend. Plus she’s estranged from her mom Peyton (Jasmine Jobson) who’s got a horrible new boyfriend Skate (James Nelson-Joyce). Not to mention puberty, very much on the 12 year old’s horizon. With nowhere to turn, Bailey meanders through her days outside either home, sleeping in a field one night. There she meets Bird (Franz Rogowski), a strange soul looking for his family he can’t remember. Desperate for a distraction, Bailey agrees to help Bird out, going on a detective hunt for the weird guy’s mom and dad.
At least Andrea Arnold continues to grow as a director. After the 47 hour opus that was American Honey, Bird is a more streamlined tale that retains the power Arnold can conjure with her story spotlights. It’s a very similar, but darker, premise to Sean Baker’s The Florida Project: what happens to kids of very financially, foundationally, and developmentally poor parents? Arnold provides that story with her in verite shooting style, making you feel like you’re Bailey’s imaginary friend as she goes about her day. The opening shot sums up what Bird will thematically be about: gorgeous shots of a seagull flying through the air, zoomed back to find those shots are being taken by an Iphone. Behind a chain linked cage. Overlooking a highway. From there, Arnold weaves this tale that slowly grows on you, interspersing Bailey’s frantic day to day life with the Bird mystery, making you feel like you’re watching some sort of Kent Urban Legend that will slowly be passed down generation to generation. Arnold takes some big swings she doesn’t really need to show in the final 30 minutes, but the dark, melancholic magic she conjures with Bird powers through, as the audience feels like we saw a British world that isn’t exactly advertised on any tourism commercials anytime soon.
Part of that magic is Arnold’s magician Nykiya Adams. She’s a revelation here, carrying this movie on those hardened, but fragile shoulders of hers as she basically has to become an adult at age 12, almost always doing so with very few words, constantly reacting to the bombastic personalities around her. And yet, because of that choice, Adams really makes the pain and frustration, with a bit of happiness here and there, land much harder than if she kept saying so as a motormouth. This gives bonafide bombast wierdos Franz Rogowski and Barry Keoghan time to cook. Both are used sparingly, and give off different weirdo energy thank goodness; Keoghan is brash incarnate, with scorpion face tattoo and scooter in tow, while Rogowski is quiet, oscillating between unsettling and sincere. Both let Nykiya Adams show different shades of Bailey’s personality, showing the full human person in halves at a time.
Andrea Arnold will get her Anora someday. She gets better with each film she makes, and some day she’ll take all the best parts of Fish Tank, American Honey, and now Bird and craft a UK Palme d’Or winner about someone the world should be seeing films about. Living on the fringes, doing the best they can with what they have. Dealing with a Shia Laboeuf here, a Barry Keoghan there all day everyday. Exhausting!