by Cris Mora-Villa, Contributing Writer
The films of Andrea Arnold are the work of an auteur who has rightfully been recognized as an authentic and powerful voice in contemporary cinema. Her production cycle isn’t prone to the quickest of turnarounds, taking anywhere between two to five years in between films. She may not be your Clint Eastwood type churning out movies every other weekend, but for someone who puts in the level of devotion and care that she does into each film, I can’t say there should be pressure for her to do anything but what she’s comfortable with. Her credentials right out the gate showed all the signs of a budding new filmmaker whose work would attract the attention of highly respected film institutions and cinephiles everywhere. Five out of her last six feature films have, to the surprise of no one, premiered at Cannes, the only outlier being her 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, which instead screened at the Venice Film Festival. Alongside the likes of Ken Loach or Steve McQueen, Arnold is often attributed to being one of the great modern directors within the British film canon. Give or take an American Honey or the second season of Big Little Lies, Arnold’s work has been set exclusively in England. In more or less her own words, Arnold has a propensity for “writing what she knows.”
Arnold was born in the town of Dartford in Kent County, England and it’s where she set two of her most seminal works. First came Wasp (2003), her Academy Award-winning short film which followed Zoë, a single mother of four determined to form a romantic connection with a lost flame. The second comes in the form of her latest feature, Bird. Rather than following the story through the eyes of the mother as was the case in Wasp, Bird shifts its main perspective to that of the child. We follow 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams), who, while looking to escape the stress of her unorthodox and poverty-stricken upbringing, forms a strong bond with a mysterious figure named Bird (Franz Rogowski). My initial viewing for Wasp, while fairly recent, didn’t weigh heavily on me going into Bird,as I hardly knew anything about the film before seeing it at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival. Perhaps this is just because I’m not someone who needs to be sold to see anything Arnold does, but if I had known even a vague description of the plot, the connections do begin making themselves when comparing the film to Wasp. In a lot of ways, the two films serve as companion pieces to one another, sitting at opposite ends of Arnold’s career. So many of the compositions and set pieces in Bird harken back to these vague memories of an entirely different set of characters 21 years prior. The duality of their shared setting makes the environment feel extra lived in, a feat made impressive when examining the film’s distinctive visuals.
Upon watching Wasp, there was a real flip of the switch moment in terms of my own perceptions of Arnold’s filmography. While all of her films come with an unmistakable visual attitude, it was in Wasp that I came to realize how early attuned she was to capturing her very specific aesthetic. It shouldn’t go without mentioning and giving much deserved credit to one of her longtime collaborators, Robbie Ryan, who has worked as cinematographer for all of her narrative features, including Wasp. Were it not for his casually nerve-inducing work on Kinds of Kindness, Ryan’s efforts on Bird would be a dark horse contender for end of year awards consideration. He is nonetheless very skilled at his job if movies such as The Favourite or C’mon C’mon serve as the measuring stick, but what he’s able to get across in Bird is its quiet sense of imagination. So entwined are the graffiti-layered buildings with the surrounding density of nature’s landscapes that when looked at through the eyes of Bailey, it’s hard not to feel like you’re being transported to another world. Much of the film’s setting feels so foreign to someone such as myself who could not be more disconnected to the specific South London culture present in both Wasp and Bird. But that’s also what gives the film a sense of excitement, as we follow Bailey and Bird’s journey from one anomalous situation to the next.
In much the same way Arnold conceived of Zoë as an ungovernable protagonist in Wasp, Bailey is every bit as transparent in dealing with her emotions. For someone who is not even old enough to be considered a teenager, the weight placed on Bailey’s shoulders is objectively heavier than it should be. A lot of her ensuing behavior screams of a girl who is both ready to grow up and longing for things she missed out on. Part of that comes from a place of self-imposed responsibility, given the only adult she has to look towards as a parental figure is her devil-may-care father, Bug (Barry Keoghan). With news of Bug’s impending engagement to Kayleigh (Frankie Box), who comes with a child of her own, Bailey is left reeling in her own dissatisfaction with the decision. Her disposition throughout the film somewhat implies that it’s a feeling she is all too familiar with. Arnold is deliberate in taking her time to explore Bailey’s wider familial circle, introducing the viewer to her mother Peyton (Jasmine Jobson), as well as Bailey’s younger siblings whom she does not live with. This divide between the family is, whether Bailey recognizes it or not, a large motivator that drives her in both choosing to isolate from her father, as well as feeding her own interest in the sudden arrival of Bird.
The titular character of Bird presents itself as one of the more confounding elements of the film, and not in any sort of detracting way. There is such an evident boundlessness in the way Arnold’s directs her actors that feels virtually impossible to not detect traces of such energy. This method of operation in at least some respect helped piece together the finalized version of Rogowski’s performance, and I can say the film is all the more interesting for it. Rogowski commits to portraying Bird as a total enigma personified, and does so without ever feeling like he’s making bold choices for the sake of being extra performative. Bird’s relationship with Bailey is founded on the basis that upon meeting one another, there is an already unspoken bond between them. Almost as if fate itself was waiting for them to happen upon their encounter on a windy morning in the center of a field. While not all is rosy between the two on an initial introduction, there is eventually an understanding between them that they are more alike than at least Bailey realizes. Whereas Bailey keeps her guard up to anyone who isn’t a sibling, Bird just radiates a safeness and traces of adventure that naturally draw out Bailey’s interest. We come to learn more about Bird as the story progresses, most notably his vague backstory, which itself meshes thematically with Bailey’s own troubles. Where the duo go from there does veer on the abstruse, but it’s also for a deeply personal cause with Bird especially. Because at the end of the day, there isn’t anyone who is more capable of understanding each other than themselves.
The general usage of birds in Arnold’s films has never been pushed as far to the forefront as it is here, but they’ve been recurrently prevalent her other movies. Some instances don’t go any further than the ordinary establishing shot or a passing reference in dialogue, but even those moments feel like an intentional decision to have the camera focus on the birds. On other occasions, their significance deepens when pertaining to a moment where a character experiences a moment of introspection. Regardless, the symbolism of birds has always stood to mean something greater than simply a colony of seagulls flying over a blue or gray sky. That symbolism can broadly be categorized as a desire to escape the present of one’s own life, to fly away and journey to wherever your wings might take you. For the protagonists of Arnolds’ other films, it’s a reminder that life is constantly moving around us. In looking at them they get to ponder possibilities of their existence, their desires and their memories. In the context of Bird, there is an interesting expansion on these moments as Arnold is choosing to attach a face to the idea. She is in a sense literalizing this theme so as to allow it to interact with Bailey, and it’s through their open communication that Bailey is able to come full circle in recognizing a perspective she wasn’t ready to understand without Bird in her life.
While much of the film’s most vague elements is contained to anything involving Bird, what remains is the conflict at home between Bailey and Bug. In much the same way that Rogowski approaches his portrayal of Bird, Keoghan is just as uninhibited in expressing his eccentricities as a father. He even comes with his own sort of spirit animal in the form of the butterfly, which parallels the litany of bug tattoos covering his body. From a more detached perspective, it was a very interesting performance to see Keoghan give, as it’s not like anything I’ve seen him do before. For as fun as it is to watch, it doesn’t ever lean towards being inauthentic. The dynamic between father and daughter is every bit believable as Bailey’s relationship with Bird. The difference is that their connection isn’t just confined to that of kindred spirits. They are family after all, and there is no other connective through line within Arnold’s filmography stronger than family. The depiction between parent and child varies from film to film, as it often changes depending on what the narrative demands, but the lasting emotion that is felt here is one of affirmation. Arnold never endorses Bug’s style of parenting, as that would disservice Bailey’s own stance at the start of the film, but she does allow for the viewer to empathize with Bug’s intentions. His relatively youthful disposition does at times get in the way of fulfilling the practical needs of his children, but his perspective as a father who means well still looms over actions. It only takes a true heart-to-heart to point this out explicitly for Bailey, and it’s the scene of the film which is the most endearing, easily one of the best scenes in any movie from this year. For all the films that Arnold has directed throughout the years, Bird is without question one of the most formative, as she wistfully reminisces on a life not only she is familiar with, but entire generations that both came before her and soon will come after.
Rating: High Side of Liked It
Bird is currently playing in theaters
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