Writer director Andrea Arnold packs up her brand of kitchen sink British style and takes “American Honey” to the United States, where a van full pack of kids symbolises the numerous conflicts of the 21st century, eight years ago. The movie, produced in a manner I interpreted as a hip hop version of the Dardenne twins, was such an indie explosion that it could be considered one of the most notable achievements of the Indie genre. But now, in “Bird,” the first fictional film that Arnold made after (in the meantime, she worked on ‘Big Little Lies’ and ‘Transparent’ and made a documentary ‘Cow’), she seems to be focusing again on the life and times of the aimless, ratty British youth who view their life as a wasteland. Forgive me for wishing she hadn’t walked out of the party this early pity it is against her age to make such a disdainful gesture.
For years Arnold has been embraced and adored by the audience and as well the critics at Cannes film festival. Hence I expect to be called out of context when I state that tone film premiered as best at Cannes, ‘Bird’ does not quite feature as a film. It definitely bears Arnold’s understanding and honesty, as well as stylistic, somewhat futile. It also stars a few of the up and coming stars in good main roles.
Having previously been quite oblivious, Barry Keoghan, who now seems to have a strong sense of who he is as an actor, stars as Bug, a father of two whose life revolves around being a squatter in Kent, neglecting his kids altogether. What Bug has devoted too much time to is hanging out with the boys in the tattoo parlor. His white torso is an anthill with bugs tattooed on it: a fly, a spider, and, beginning from the right cheek, a large patterned legged centipede winding down the neck. Yet children are what Bug finds the most irritating.
For some reason, this thirteen year old girl who is supposed to be the heroine of the film, Bailey (Nykiya Adams), looks rather older than her age. It seems both a sophisticated trait and a negative interior, since she remains quiet and judgmental. Bailey’s mother is located in another neighborhood, above a crack house, with a boyfriend, who is, unsurprisingly, an extremely abusive psychopath. Arnold, in her indie rock Dardenne fashion, gives us dozens of moments when Bailey is showcased performing heart shaped movements while crossing a wire mesh bridge and this very performing captures her troubles. The film in its later parts also introduces the audience to the images captured on the cell phone camera by Bailey, mostly birds on her projection that she views on the wall.
This girl had trees of braidings articulating her head, but after losing her temper she cut them off and that gives her a certain ‘zoned out’ quality. Hunter (Jason Buda), a half brother of hers, also appears to be a member of some organized youth vigilante gang that uses badly fitted masks to wipe the floor with locally known scumbags. These children from this mini ‘Clockwork Orange’ gang (one gang member even says ‘Slice him!’) seem to disturb the peace even more than the original sin being avenged.
Nevertheless, there is a specific niche in the world, and sometimes a pertinent one, for a picture like “Bird”, which is redolent of the zeal of the miniature Arnold’s works like “Fish Tank”. Yet it is my belief that Arnold, at this production, is not shooting another coming of age screen that revolves around lost lives she is shooting whole aged sadness in her disasters. The role played by Keoghan is quite major for him and is a showboat kind of stunt (he does this as a role where he is to play a terrible father but looking at him, he doesn’t appear as a father at all). And while Bug is trying to get the ear of the rude girl that he has known for barely three months (Craig will pay for the wedding by marketing toad mass which is thought to be a substance to induce hallucinations), Bailey’s angry opposition to this scheme is somewhat excessive. Oh, she is twelve but she simply will not agree to wear a purple catsuit even for the sake of becoming a bridesmaid. That is “independence” carried to unrealistically youthful proportions.
Bailey is in a field when a man in a skirt and suffering sensibilities locates her. Bird is the name, and he has an ‘outstanding’ portrayal of the prima donna filmmaker turned sociopath, a role played by German actor Franz Rogowski in Ira Sach’s Passages which utterly ruptured the film. In terms of character, Bird is completely the other side of the pendulum. He is gentle and soft hearted, a man who has the tenderness of crushed velvet and the finesse of Joaquin Phoenix and Klaus Kinski combined. Everything about him is soft. On the one hand, Bailey and Bird become friends not because of any magical convergence of their temperaments but because that is the pitched idea of the movie. Bailey assists Bird to find his biological father (who has disassociated himself from him completely). And she in turn helps him by…well, we can leave it at this, he does live upto his name.
Bird’s narrative moves between a well balanced realm of emotional poverty and a sugary fantasy tale. It is a film that will appeal to fans of Andrea Arnold, but in the context of wider appreciation I am not so sure. Arnold adores fantasy and miraculously maintains her severity at the same time in ‘Bird’. In fact ‘Bird’ is the opposite of what you might expect looking at its title. Arnold’s latest film is a drama about failure that turns into a heartwarming success story. But, it does not aspire to be a true to life movie in the first place.
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