★★★★★
A gritty yet dreamlike exploration of family dysfunction and the search for escape, set against the sometimes bleak, sometimes joyful backdrop of Gravesend. Anchored by powerful performances from Nykiya Adams and Franz Rogowski, the enigmatic Bird beautifully blends social realism with surreal fantasy, revealing hope amidst harsh realities. Andrea Arnold’s latest is lyrical and majestic.
Andrea Arnold’s Bird is a richly atmospheric return to the kitchen-sink realism that marked her early work, while introducing new elements of surrealism and fantasy. Nykiya Adams stars as Bailey, a 12-year-old navigating the chaotic world of her dysfunctional family, who meets Bird (Franz Rogowski), a mysterious birdlike man who brings an almost mystical presence to her life.
The genesis of Bird stems from a vision Arnold had of a naked man standing atop a high-rise tower, his exaggerated anatomy casting a long shadow over the city below. This striking image stuck with Arnold for years and became a touchstone for the film’s eerie and surreal atmosphere. It echoes themes of potency, power, and sexual threat, reminiscent of Arnold’s earlier film Red Road (2006), where another man, shadowy and potentially menacing, looms over the tower block setting. In both films, the tower block becomes a symbol of alienation, danger, and sometimes voyeuristic vulnerability.
Bailey’s family life is a mess. Her father, Bug (played by the always magnetic Barry Keoghan), is more concerned with his get-rich-quick schemes—like extracting hallucinogenic slime from a toad by playing Coldplay’s Yellow—than with raising his children. Her brother Hunter is caught up in local gang activity, while her mother lives with a violent partner in a different part of town. Bug’s sudden announcement that he’s getting married to his girlfriend of three months, and that they’re moving into the cramped flat, sets off a cascade of tensions that Bailey, hardened by her young life, can’t seem to escape.
Bird’s presence in the film—perched atop rooftops and hovering around the margins of Bailey’s life—introduces a fantastical element that disrupts the otherwise grim realism of her existence. He is a trickster figure, a presence that upends Bailey’s reality in a way that both offers a way out of the limitations of her world, whilst also embodying a subtle sense of threat. I was reminded of Ted Hughes’s Crow poem cycle – the bird as a figure locked in a defiant battle with existence. Rogowski plays this character with a soft-spoken, ethereal quality, embodying a strange mix of protector and outsider. His relationship with Bailey grows organically, built on shared isolation and a desire to escape the harsh realities of their world.
Filmed around Gravesend in Kent, the film taps into a sense of desolation and aimlessness that permeates the lives of its characters. The local landscape, with its grey skies and industrial decay, reinforces the film’s bleak tone. The area, with its abandoned lots and graffiti-covered buildings, feels like a world apart, where hope is scarce, and survival is the only option. Arnold’s camera lingers on this sense of desolation, capturing the characters as they wander aimlessly through the town, often accompanied by shaky handheld shots that emphasize the instability of their lives. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan, a frequent collaborator with Arnold, uses the camera to evoke a tactile, immersive experience, making viewers feel as though they’re walking the streets alongside Bailey and Bug.
But despite the film’s rawness and the grim circumstances of its characters, Bird is not without moments of beauty and tenderness. Bailey, though cynical and world-weary beyond her years, finds solace in nature and in her iPhone camera, which she uses to capture fleeting, poetic moments—birds in flight, butterflies on her finger, the world as seen through her eyes. These scenes offer a glimpse of her inner world, a space where she can dream and imagine a life beyond the dreariness of her surroundings.
Arnold masterfully juxtaposes these quieter moments with the film’s harsher realities, balancing the grittiness of the characters’ day-to-day struggles with the dreamlike, almost magical realism that Bird brings into Bailey’s life. His presence, while strange and otherworldly, represents something beyond the physical and material—a metaphor for the possibility of escape, both literal and emotional.
Bird succeeds in merging Arnold’s two cinematic worlds: the stark social realism of films like Fish Tank and Red Road, and the more expansive, lyrical storytelling of American Honey, with something else – perhaps the childhood fantasies of Terry Gilliam – Tideland especially, with its lyrical sense of menace. The film’s final moments, while open to interpretation, leave a lasting impression, offering a glimmer of hope amidst the bleakness.
With stellar performances from Nykiya Adams, Barry Keoghan, and Franz Rogowski, Bird is a haunting, visually striking exploration of loneliness, resilience, and the longing for connection. Arnold’s return to the tower block—a constant symbol of urban alienation and sexual tension in her filmography—adds another layer of complexity to the story, reminding us that even in the most desolate environments, there is still room for beauty, love, and flight.
Bird played at the London Film Festival and is released in UK and American cinemas on 8 November
Whitlock&Pope 