Bird

This is an excellent coming-of-age story, reminiscent of "Wild Diamond" but, in my opinion, executed even better. We follow the life of Bailey, a 12-year-old girl living in the depleded areas of the UK. From the outset, it's clear that Bailey perceives the world differently from those around her. Nature, animals, and especially birds, symbolize freedom and lightness, a sensation that comes across vividly.

Bailey meets Bird, a character who embodies the person she aspires to become. Initially, she mocks Bird, but by the end, her ridicule transforms into admiration. Bailey faces numerous challenges, and Bird subtly guides her toward resolution. Some questions remain unanswered, but for me, the specific answers are unimportant. The journey and the growth Bailey experiences are what truly matter.

This film breaks conventions with its cinematography, using shaky, dynamic, and fast-paced shots. It's a stylistic choice I both loved and hated. The aspect ratio and filming format added an aesthetic that perfectly matched the film's gritty, raw tone. The plot is a montage of clips that feels nostalgic, weaving love, hate, drama, and conflict into Bailey's story.

The soundtrack, a fusion of rock, ambient, UK hip-hop, and indie, is another standout element, immersing you in the culture the film portrays. I was fascinated by the insights into Bailey's life - how she lives, the people she meets, and the culture that shapes her world. It's so removed from the experience of an average middle-class person, making it feel authentic and intimate.

At times, the narrative shifts between characters, leaving me unsure about the film's focus. Still, it's refreshing to see a story centered on flawed, raw characters. We're used to polished films with beautiful people, but Bird embraces the messy and the ugly - and finds beauty in it. The film feels deeply personal, leaving me with shared emotions and mixed feelings. While it may not resonate for everyone, its (symbolic) meaning is its true strength.

There are two lovely performances to enjoy in this story of the twelve year old "Bailey" (Nykiya Adams). She lives in a squat with her dad "Bug" (Barry Keoghan), brother "Hunter" (Jason Buda) and her soon-to-be stepmum "Kayleigh" (Frankie Box). It's that impending wedding, and the wearing of a pretty garish pink cat-suit, that puts her at odds with her well-meaning dad and sees her left to amuse herself amidst the fields of Kent. It's there that she encounters the rather enigmatic "Bird" (Franz Rogowski) who is looking for his parents who lived in a Gravesend tower block near her home. She decides to try and help this rather quirky chap and quickly their lives become curiously linked as we discover that her mother (Jasmine Jobson) is struggling through an abusive relationship with boyfriend "Skate" (James Nelson-Joyce) whilst also trying to bring up three youngsters. With the quest for her new friend's parents, her desire to help her mum and siblings and her dad's pressure to engage with his own hopes for happiness, the young "Bailey" hasn't her challenges to seek. Keoghan features energetically as he zips around the housing estates on his e-scooter, and his character serves well to help keep the main characterisations going - and it's on that front there's a charmingly understated chemistry developed between Adams and Rogowski that mixes their respective back-stories with a soupçon of the mystic and plenty of allegorical imagery to introduce quite elusive themes of freedom, family and quite frequently fun, too. There are also some fairly violent undertones, and we are left in no doubt that her life and that of her family has been and will remain fairly turbulent - but those points are not brought to us via a sledge-hammer, more by gentle observation and development of engaging personalities that evolve gently but potently over a couple of hours. It's a slow burn, but it works.

I had the opportunity to screen Bird at Newfest this past Wednesday at the SVA Theater, and it left an indelible mark on me-an experience that makes it easy to see why Andrea Arnold remains one of our most distinctive and fearless filmmakers. Arnold, whose works like Fish Tank and American Honey have long portrayed the fragile and bruised edges of society, delivers once again with a deeply affecting exploration of youth and its collision with the harsh realities of the adult world.

Nykiya Adams is utterly mesmerizing as Bailey, a resourceful teenager trying to make sense of the world around her while living on the fringes of Kent, England. Her performance is a revelation-filled with subtlety, grace, and the kind of honesty that feels almost documentary-like in its authenticity. Through Bailey's untainted gaze, we are confronted with a world that is both brutal and bewildering, but Arnold ensures that moments of tenderness and wonder break through the grimness. Adams has crafted a character who is not merely a victim of her circumstances but is instead a figure who finds beauty and resilience in spite of them.

Barry Keoghan plays Bailey's father, and he's as captivating as ever. His portrayal of a man entangled in shady dealings and moral ambiguity is layered with equal parts charm and menace. Keoghan's ability to oscillate between warmth and cold detachment keeps the audience on edge-he embodies a character who is meant to protect but is ultimately just as lost as the child he's trying to care for. In many ways, his character symbolizes the fractured state of authority that Bailey must navigate. Franz Rogowski also delivers a standout performance, bringing a quiet intensity to the role of an enigmatic figure who both looms over and occasionally offers glimpses of humanity amidst the bleakness.

Bird is quintessential Andrea Arnold-an immersive, visceral plunge into the lives of characters living on society's fringes. The camera work is as restless as Bailey herself, moving with a sense of urgency that pulls us directly into her experience. Arnold's use of handheld cinematography amplifies the sense of instability and danger, but there's also an intimacy in the way she frames Bailey's interactions with the world-a reminder that there's still magic to be found, even in the most unexpected places. The visual language here is striking in its ability to capture both the beauty and the decay of Bailey's world.

What truly stands out about Bird is its ability to balance two seemingly contradictory feelings: a sense of hope and the pervasive weight of despair. The film manages to capture both the haunting and the hopeful aspects of its setting with empathy and ingenuity. Arnold has always been adept at portraying complex, contradictory emotions, and Bird is no exception. The narrative is less about delivering a clear-cut plot and more about creating an emotional tapestry-a mood piece that speaks to the resilience of the human spirit. There's an almost Roger Ebert-esque appreciation for the small moments here, the sort of fleeting beauty that reminds us why we watch films in the first place.

Bird resonates because it refuses to offer easy answers. Instead, Arnold immerses us in a world that is fractured yet deeply real, a world that mirrors the uncertainties of Bailey's life and her unflagging determination to find her own place within it. There's a poeticism to the way Arnold captures her characters-not through grand speeches or melodramatic moments but through the silences, the glances, and the mundane details that add up to something profoundly human.

At the end of the day, Bird is a triumph-an evocative portrait of innocence, resilience, and the inescapable weight of the adult world. It's a film that lingers, that refuses to let you go, and that challenges you to see the beauty even in the most broken places. Andrea Arnold has given us a story that doesn't just tell-it moves, it questions, and it reverberates.

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'Bird' has similarities to Andrea Arnold's earlier film 'Fishtank' where an alienated teen put herself in serious danger while trying to escape loneliness and domestic dysfunction. In this new work Arnold focuses on pre-teen Bailey who lives in a squalid squat with her father and an older brother. Her dad Bug is planning to marry his kooky new girlfriend, while her troubled mother lives nearby in even more chaotic conditions with a clutter of Bailey's younger siblings, a long-suffering pup called Dave and a violently abusive boyfriend.

None of the adults in her universe seem capable of providing much guidance, leaving Bailey to chart her own course. Following a row with Bug, Bailey shadows a gang of street kids engaged in some random criminality. After evading the police, sleeping in a field and being awakened by a horse, she encounters a kilted stranger called Bird. This eccentric itinerant had been born in the area, raised elsewhere and is trying to find a father he can scarcely remember. After some hesitation, Bailey decides to help him.

Nykiya Adams delivers a courageous and convincing performance in the lead role as Bailey's pursuit of Bird's quest mingles with other digressions, distractions and sub-plots. Her apparently aimless wanderings eventually arrive at a revelatory moment which is depicted in a brief passage where the film briefly departs from gritty realism and enters the realm of the fantastic. Somehow Arnold pulls off this trick, transforming her urban drama into an intense and memorable fable.