“When things go wrong in life, don’t just throw everything away”: Nykiya Adams and Jason Buda on Bird

Andrea Arnold is back with her first fiction movie since 2016, after a foray into TV with Big Little Lies season two and documentary with Cow, and proves once again why she is one of this country’s foremost filmmakers.

While it may not have taken this writer to quite the exalted heights reached by Fishtank and pitch-perfect American Honey, it’s bursting with life as it’s lived, in all its chaos and joy, pain and beauty. New-to-screen Nykiya Adams’s knockout performance as 12-year-old Bailey anchors the film, and it’s through her eyes we see the universe she inhabits in. Filled with the usual trials and tribulations of coming-of-age, compounded by the world-rocking news her young father Bug (a gloriously kinetic, tattooed Barry Keoghan) is marrying his girlfriend, and the ongoing tyranny her mother (a scene-stealing Jasmine Jobson) and half siblings suffer at the hands of her hideously aggressive boyfriend (an unnervingly convincing James Nelson-Joyce), we follow her as she seeks solace in nature and finds connection in an expected meeting with a strange, childlike man, Bird (an especially quirky Franz Rogowski).

As is Arnold’s signature style, there’s no shying away from the gritty realites of working-class life, infused with the authenticity only possible from someone who’s experienced it, showing both its shades of darkness, deprivation and violence but also community, laughter and resilience. What puts Bird into a slightly different register are the splashes of the surreal and magical that surface from seeing the story unfold through the lens of Bailey. And hard-to-watch moments make those moments of tenderness stand out all the more, not least the scenes with Adams and Jason Buda with Keoghan, their father-child relationships being more akin to sibling than adult ones: you can’t help but take away that, despite any failings, love can always prevail. And the music is sublime: listen out for a one needle drop that’s particularly genius.

The Upcoming interviewed the young stars of Bird during London Film Festival who spoke about what makes Arnold such a special filmmaker, getting to bond with veteran star Keoghan and the beating heart at the centre of the movie.

Sarah Bradbury

Bird is released nationwide on 8^th November 2024.

Watch the trailer for Bird here: