Does anyone else remember gaining consciousness as a preteen and thinking ‘What is going on, and why is it my problem?’ Have we ever really figured it out since?
Just when the era of great coming-of-age films had passed, Andrea Arnold swooped in and gifted us Bird, offering an answer that feels more like another question: ‘What does making sense even mean?’
The film stars newcomer Nykiya Adams as 12-year-old Bailey, who crosses paths with an elusive, whimsical stranger at a pivotal moment in her and her loved ones’ lives.
Franz Rogowski is the titular Bird, a fairytale-like guardian to Bailey, who is as whimsical as he is mysterious. With Barry Keoghan alongside Bug, Bailey’s difficult but well-intentioned father. Keoghan embodies the contradictions that Bug represents in Bailey’s life: endearing yet rash, joyfully deserving yet frustratingly human. He enters the film with one of the best opening scenes of recent years soundtracked by Fontaines D.C.’s Too Real. Like the film itself, the moment is offbeat, attention-grabbing, and unapologetically cool.
An iconic, generation defining coming-of-age story
But this isn’t Bug’s story or Bird’s. It is all Bailey’s. For a feature-length debut, Adams’ is a triumph, embodying preteen angst and existentialism that feels less like a performance, more like pure empathy. Adams reacts to the chaos and constant movement, balancing quiet observation and street-smart agency in her role.
We are immersed in Bailey’s perspective…moments that weave the tapestry of her life and identity
On top of these performances, Arnold masters the synthesis between her characters’ emotional subjectivity and the film’s aesthetics. Her signature hand-held camerawork amplifies the commotion of these overlapping interior and exterior worlds. We are immersed in Bailey’s perspective, in particular through her cracked phone screen. She captures neighbourhood disputes, butterflies on windowsills, triumphs over an abusive stepfather, horses grazing in fields – moments that weave the tapestry of her life and identity. Without even realising it, film has become a tool for understanding and reflection for Bailey. Where she lacks the vocabulary to express what she experiences, she has a visual language of her own.
Part of this, one of the film’s most captivating aspects is its depiction of Bailey’s rundown British town, uncanny in its accuracy and strange beauty. As a university student, I often miss my Midlands hometown and its strange half-urban, half-rural identity. How you can hop over a few fences and be surrounded by cows, walk the other way, and it is all concrete. It is an ache that should not make sense, and yet Bird colludes with me on appreciating this juxtaposition and mundanity – the emptiness and abundance, the loneliness and understated extravagance of growing up in a small British town. The music blasting from e-scooters to the wind rippling through long grass, graffiti-covered walls, makeshift curtains billowing in impossible afternoon light; no matter how commonplace, this film emphasises the magic within.
Verdict
Andrea Arnold’s Bird flew under the radar, and I’m mad about it. Where are the video essays and the think pieces? How does a film so relevant and unique manage to make such little noise? Bird is a deeply validating portrayal of the in-between – of adolescence, of small-town life, of messy connections between nature and technology, urban and rural, masculinity and femininity, even dad’s place and mum’s place. This film certainly deserves a place alongside Lady Bird and Eighth Grade as an iconic, generation-defining coming-of-age film.
It’s about the beauty in the chaos, in not making sense, in simply being.
Bailey’s journey isn’t about answers, throwing out order in favour of the contradictions, the converging situations and locations that establish her identity. It’s about the beauty in the chaos, in not making sense, in simply being. Diving headfirst into the landscape that chose you and choosing it back, wings outstretched.
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