The Tender Chaos of Andrea Arnold’s film ‘Bird’

The quiet, relatively featureless suburbs of Kent, England might not be the first place one imagines situating a magical realist film, but director Andrea Arnold has a knack for turning landscapes of apparent visual monotony into places of expansive dreams. The English auteur has done so for Glasgow (Red Road) and the American Midwest (American Honey), but Bird marks a return for Arnold to the stories of working-class lives in southeast England, where she herself grew up and captured lovingly in 2009’s Fish Tank.

Bird follows Bailey (Nykiya Adams), a 12-year-old living in a run-down squat with her father Bug (Barry Keoghan) and half-brother Hunter (Jason Buda). Largely ignored by Bug and his new fiance, Bailey feels adrift in the suburbs, until she meets a mysterious man in the park who calls himself Bird (Franz Rogowski). An unlikely friendship forms as both attempt to help each other reconnect with their families. Bailey seeks connection with her mother, who lives in another part of town with an abusive partner and Bailey’s two sisters, and Bird with his long-lost parents, who he says once lived in a nearby apartment.

Keoghan, who left Gladiator II to work with Arnold, is excellent as Bug, a mercurial father who largely neglects Bailey in favour of personal obsessions, like his determination to get rich quickly by selling the hallucinogenic slime of a toad. His attempts to play the toad music to encourage production of this slime creates delightful comedy, including a priceless needle-drop of Coldplay’s “Yellow.” Though frustratingly selfish and bad-tempered, Bug’s relationship with Bailey is punctuated by sporadic gestures of affection, captured movingly by Arnold when father and daughter race through town on his electric scooter, a fleeting burst of freedom and closeness. But Bailey is largely left to her own devices, and Adams portrays her quiet interest in the characters around her with luminous warmth.

As Bailey and Bird investigate a potential lead to find Bird’s mother, Arnold returns to themes she has been drawn to throughout her career: cycles of familial neglect, and the coming-of-age of a young woman without parental guidance. However, there comes a point where the introduction of too many narrative threads leaves Bird’s plot feeling somewhat unfulfilled and fragmented. Bailey, for example, displays a compelling freedom with gender presentation, cutting her hair and wearing androgynous clothes, but how this impacts the way she sees the world is left largely unexplored. A side-plot about her brother’s desire to flee their home town serves Arnold’s fascination with how working-class youth seek to escape economic deprivation, but it seems to exist in a different film from Bailey’s relationship with Bird.

The lack of harmony between Bird’s different plotlines is perhaps a casualty of production issues: Arnold told audiences at Cannes Film Festival that it was her “hardest film to make,” and its production was a “painful journey.” There are flashes of her signature brilliance here though, particularly in Bailey’s journey with Bird, and it’s through their relationship that the film becomes most enchanting. Towards the end of the film, Arnold introduces beguiling strands of magical realism, largely centred around who Bird truly is and his purpose in Kent. The audience is left pondering these questions, with Arnold taking a sudden pivot to the surreal during the film’s denouement. 

As someone who has found Arnold’s films emotionally distant at times, I found the surprising tenderness with which the magical realism unfolds elevated Bird’s depiction of lonely souls eager for connection, though others may find it jarring. The fantastical elements take flight during a late confrontation with Bailey’s abusive stepfather, and the scene allows Rogowski to take full control of the role. In his early scenes, Rogowski plays Bird almost as a charming fairytale character, but tonal clashes mean there is something slightly menacing about him, accentuated by Bailey’s initial mistrust. Arnold also largely glosses over the implications of a 12-year-old girl being approached and befriended by a much-older man in a park. But by the end, the audience is more familiar with Bird’s woundedness, and how this helps him show Bailey the guidance and care she has not been granted by her own father.

The closing moments of the film then focus on how Bird’s impact has transformed Bailey, bringing Adams’ wide-eyed, deeply affecting performance back to centre-stage. Although at times Bird may feel like an incomplete puzzle, at its heart is another Arnold fable of a young woman finding her voice against a world that barely listens.

Bird is released in French cinemas on January 1.