A uncooked fable about wanting up as a substitute of feeling down, “Bird” reveals writer-director Andrea Arnold again in a well-recognized milieu of cramped youth on the periphery, making do with what little is on the market, seesawing between explosive anger and playful respite. And but this time, her story, constructed round a tricky, observant 12-year-old named Bailey (newcomer Nykiya Adams), is shot via with a hopeful streak that seems like a brand new register for Britain’s doyenne of social realism.
You see it within the exhilarating pace of a motorscooter tearing via blighted and exquisite Kent, and, slightly later, in hot-headed Bailey operating from the chaos of her life dwelling in a graffiti-strewn squat together with her too-young dad Bug (a tatted-out, laddish Barry Keoghan) and in search of acceptance in a roving vigilante gang.
But it surely’s additionally current within the luxurious tempo of the sweeping Blur ballad “The Universal,” which Bug performs incessantly in lovestruck preparation for his upcoming marriage ceremony to a cheery gal, Kayleigh (Frankie Field). She’s a lot pleasant however considerably new to the scene, neither Bailey’s mother nor that of her older brother Hunter (Jason Buda). There’s additionally a toddler on this ramshackle flat, so you should definitely desk your judgment about youth elevating youngsters from a number of companions. (Then once more, you wouldn’t be watching Arnold in case your sensibilities had been so simply flustered.)
Incessantly, swooping seabirds and crows crowd the sky, following Bailey in every single place, drawing her adoring consideration as topics of clever telephone movies. Are they watchful protectors? Or symbols of freedom for somebody rebelling towards nuptials she desires no a part of? And who can blame her? The bridesmaids are anticipated to put on a ghastly purple leopard-print jumpsuit. Bailey lets her displeasure be identified by having a pal shave off her lovely spray of kinky hair.
Barry Keoghan within the film “Bird.”
(Robbie Ryan / Mubi)
Dad’s too preoccupied to totally react, nonetheless: Bug is busy making an attempt to pay for the marriage with an unique toad from Colorado. He’s heard that by exposing it to the right cheeseball pop tune — upbeat, honest — it would excrete a pure hallucinogenic: a worthwhile slime. If there may be such a factor as an ideal goal for a Keoghan character, Arnold could have discovered it. (And all you “Saltburn”-ers, prepare for a cheeky in-joke about one of many tune potentialities.)
Bailey’s coming-of-age turbulence begins to ebb when she meets an eccentric, mild wanderer (Franz Rogowski) in a kilt, who calls himself Chicken and whose presence appears to assist Bailey coalesce her outsider emotions into an abiding tenderness. Little is defined however a lot will be guessed about Rogowski’s character, whom the nice German actor can’t assist however make right into a mesmerizing determine of storybook fragility.
Arnold’s work has at all times naturally drawn comparisons to that legendary chronicler of the downtrodden courses, Ken Loach. However with “Bird,” which deploys the luxurious vérité intimacy of her longtime cinematographer Robbie Ryan, Arnold appears intent on explicitly acknowledging a debt to Loach, forging an exuberantly poetic dialog with the director’s boy-and-his-falcon 1969 traditional “Kes.” Arnold has made the lingering magnificence and vulnerability of the animal world a trademark of her tales and “Bird” is not any exception: There are many different creatures getting close-ups — horses, butterflies, canine, snakes — moreover metaphoric avians and that slimy toad (one which’s actually, if you concentrate on it, a mule).
It’s the people, although, that you just’ll bear in mind from the bottom up: Adams’ camera-friendly vitality and hard-won serenity; Keoghan’s cockeyed heat, simply this aspect of menacing; Rogowski’s unusual, commanding woundedness. If it’s an excessive amount of to ask of Arnold that her bid for heightened naturalism make a ton of sense, “Bird” a minimum of maintains a heartbeat of ache and affection for youth in all its rudeness, revealing a filmmaker who isn’t afraid of shedding her claws if she traffics within the factor with feathers.
‘Chicken’
Rated: R, for language all through, some violent content material and drug materials
Operating time: 1 hour, 59 minutes
Enjoying: In restricted launch Friday, Nov. 15