Bird

Bird | 2024 | 15 | Dir. Andrea Arnold | US | IMDb 7.1 | Subtitled | 119 mins 

Bailey lives in a dilapidated house with her hapless dad, Bug, and older brother, Hunter, with a private space that consists of a sleeping bag separated from Hunter’s room by a gauzy curtain, and she’s starting to realise life isn’t turning out so great.

If Bailey’s family is big and loving, it’s also a source of constant worry. Trouble brews as early as the film’s opening, when Bug announces he’s soon to marry, and the bride and her little girl are moving in. Bailey’s stubborn refusal to be a bridesmaid, provoking Bug’s anger, is clearly only the tip of the iceberg of dire tensions between a rebellious daughter and the father whose actions seem to her selfishly haphazard. Meanwhile, drugs are casually taken in both parents’ homes, Hunter styles himself as a neighbourhood vigilante, and mum’s dating a new, violent boyfriend, who increasingly petrifies Bailey’s young and defenceless siblings.   

In turmoil, Bailey bolts and runs away, a whirlwind of impulses. Only when in nature does she slow down. Her iPhone’s camera becomes her greatest ally. Though sometimes it documents aggression and violence – it also captures fleeting, bewitching moments, like a horse grazing in a meadow, a butterfly landing on Bailey’s finger, or seagulls taking flight. In the scenes of Bailey projecting her videos on the walls of her room, or when her little movies run through her mind, in a constant relay of past and present, Arnold incapsulates the magic of cinema as a sensory tool for discovering and staying connected to the material world, and dreams. 

One such dream literally blows into Bailey’s life, propelled by a strong wind, it seems: after running from home, she wakes up in a field, to meet a peculiar young man. Bird is looking for his family, and though wary, at first, Bailey decides to help him, finding his mysterious ways – spending days and nights perched atop the roof of an apartment block – slowly growing on her. Their bond ripens into a friendship that’s rooted in a sense of otherworldliness, in sensing that there’s another, gentler, way to live.  

Newcomer Nykiya Adams triumphs as Bailey, commingling edginess, tenderness, and introspection; so do Barry Keoghan, whose Bug is as big-hearted and droll as he is hapless, and Rogowski, who delivers Bird’s stoic poise with a wispy softness. Rogowski’s also convincingly birdlike. By the time his character literally spreads his wings – as a half-man half-beast, an incarnation of a kindred spirit, or a messenger from another world – it’s not too off-putting. His figure rather comes off as manifesting Bailey’s belief in her innate power, and perhaps also her last bid at the safety of childhood, with its array of protective fantastical beings. In some respects, Bird fits in line with gritty contemporary fables such as Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012). Regardless of what viewers make of Bird’s duality, as both a man heartbroken over his family and an animal endowed with supernatural powers, Arnold grapples with the very real dilemma of how to keep one’s senses, and spirit, alive, against uncertainty and pain. 

·       Screen 2 upstairs

·       Doors open 7pm

·       Welcome from our chair Paula Stott @ 7.30pm

·       Free parking after 6pm if you DISPLAY an orange parking voucher, available from the Odeon lobby

·       Unreserved seating

·       We invite every viewer to score the film afterwards using a token system in the lobby