Review: "Bird"
Barry Keoghan helps this profound entry in Andrea Arnold's coming-of-age canon soar with his transcendent performance as an overbearing father.
Oscar winner Andrea Arnold has carved out a strong niche of coming-of-age tales centering on young women from working-class environments. Films that prove to be as much about parenthood as they are about transitions into adulthood. For instance, the masterpiece that is Fish Tank, which won the Jury Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, follows a teenager using dance as a form of artistic expression and potential escape from her mother whom she has a fraught relationship with. Meanwhile, American Honey, another winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes, depicts a group of runaway youths navigating life on the road without parental figures.
Arnold’s latest film, Bird, didn’t win the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival or any other prize. Yet, it’s still an intriguing, profound entry in her continuing coming-of-age canon. One that taps into a father-daughter bond this time around.
Nykiya Adams and Barry Keoghan star in Andrea Arnold’s “Bird.” (Photo courtesy of MUBI)
Bailey (Nykiya Adams in a remarkable breakthrough role) has a cracked relationship with her overprotective father, Bug (Barry Keoghan), that becomes more fractured once Bug gets ready to marry his newest girlfriend, Kailey (Frankie Box). Her mother, Peyton (Jasmine Jobson) being further away and living with an abusive partner creates more trouble for her. But when she crosses paths with a kindly, mercurial figure named Bird (Franz Rogowski), Bailey finds some form of escape from her stressful home life even as she goes through the relatable motions of slowly recognizing her father’s good intentions.
When you’re an adolescent and you’re dealing with a parent who might seem overbearing because they harshly ask where you’ve been if you sneak out of the house or if they ask you to do simple house things, you might look at them in a harsher light. But sometimes, they just want what’s best for you even if they might not say things the right away. Even if parents like Bug make rash decisions like, in his case, quickly marrying their partner without thinking of the children first, it’s easy to forget that parents are human, too, and aren’t without error. Actor Barry Keoghan expertly showcases Bug as a figure of knotty fatherhood.
Confrontational as Bug may be, Keoghan still leans heavily into how Bug is still figuring out how to be a dad as he goes along and, with his occasionally jovial spirit, was practically a kid himself when he started having kids of his own. Both carefree and shielding, Bug is another transcendent characterization from an actor who can seamlessly go from playing men who’re good, bad, and in-between. Meanwhile, Franz Rogowski gives a performance of sensitivity and eccentricity as the titular character. His portrayal of a willingly befriending stranger is worlds away from the self-absorbed Tomas in last year’s steamy erotic drama Passages.
Between the two story lines at hand, the father/daughter conflict and the bond between Bailey and Bird, the former proves to be more compelling. Bailey’s arc involving her seeing the world from her father’s point of view and how he’s doing the best he can for his family plays into the effective naturalistic storytelling that Arnold does well whereas the Bailey/Bird story that eventually involves magic realism goes a tad off-the-rails.
While I’m still unsure if Arnold’s slight foray into surrealism works, there remains an admirable attempt to not fully rest on her storytelling laurels despite Bird possessing mechanics present in the other two films in Arnold’s coming-of-age canon: A working-class setting, an unknown actress as the main lead, and occasional hip-hop needle drops. Also, for what it’s worth, by the time I got out of my screening when I saw it at TIFF, it made me want to call my dad and tell him how much I love him. For that reason alone, Bird soars pretty high.
Grade: B