Bird

 

“Don’t you worry. Everything will be okay”

Esoteric, surreal and raw, Bird is a candid coming-of-age drama led by a phenomenal Nykiya Adams as the rugged Bailey whose unlikely friendship with the sensitive Bird, played gently by Franz Rogowski helps her navigate a harsh broken world to find hope and love amidst the messiness of its surroundings.

Discussion Points:

I’m willing to admit I probably wasn’t in the best headspace to watch this. After a long day of work and having slept poor the night before and with a million things on my mind, I went into Bird incredibly distracted, but left very moved albeit still weary. Bird is a slow and at times esoteric and surreal coming-of-age British poverty drama that is harsh and full of broken people but also glimmers with hope and love. Nykiya Adams is absolutely mesmerising, a young woman coming-of-age but already lopsided in maturity. She’s a product of a broken home with a dropkick dad (played with roguish charm by Barry Keoghan), a messy mother and a brash half-brother. She’s lost most of her childhood innocence: she drinks, she smokes and she looks after her younger half-siblings like a second mother. But her hard exterior is steadily broken down by the silly yet sweet Bird - a mysterious stranger she comes across and becomes intrigued by. And it’s his mystic aura that eventually helps Bailey to conquer her loneliness and find some semblance of peace. I applaud Andrea Arnold’s attempt to use magical realism for escapist and esoteric catharsis but it takes a long time to culminate. It’s at times messy, and I’ll be honest not all of it connected, but at its core it’s a beautiful film about broken people finding each other and trying to make each others lives that little bit better and brighter.