Andrea Arnold returns with a story about a distracted father Bug (Barry Keoghan) and his lonely and imaginative 12-year-old daughter Bailey (Nykiya Adams), who must seek attention and adventure elsewhere. When Bug informs her that he’ll be marrying his new girlfriend soon, Bailey is furious and hurt, and retreats to the open fields on the outskirts of her hometown to seek comfort. It is here she is most herself — with an uncanny ability to communicate with animals and experience nature in a profound way. It is on one of these walks that Bailey has a mysterious, yet deeply meaningful, encounter. Enter avicular human Bird (Franz Rogowski). This latest film from renowned English filmmaker Andrea Arnold is a compelling, ultimately joyous story that tackles themes of identity, sexism, loneliness and class struggle. The director’s empathy and skill at showing us beauty despite dire circumstances elevates BIRD beyond its roots. Add to that a crystalline thread of magic realism — and the result is an ode to the wondrous transition from childhood to adolescence.
“Beautifully threads the line between the real and the surreal…. There is so much beauty in BIRD, both within the relationships unraveling onscreen and on the screen itself — bright reds and whites and blacks lusciously captured in the film, the edges of the image burnt and remade, almost like yet another bird, the phoenix.” —Rafa Sales Ross, The Playlist
“Arnold’s 2009 feature FISH TANK was also about the journey of a lost young woman from a broken home on the edge of London who finds some solace in the scrappy nature on the edge of town. In BIRD, the animal world seeps into every crevice of a film that eventually does something entirely audacious and unexpected with the theme — one that asks a lot of the viewer, but amply repays our indulgence.” —Lee Marshall, Screen Daily
“What the film finds in Bailey’s journey is messy, melancholic, and, following one quite significant leap by Arnold, tied to something closer to magical realism. This may throw some of those expecting it to remain grounded, but that only makes the moment it takes flight all the more arresting. It’s a big swing.” —Chase Hutchinson, The Wrap
“This is what Arnold is so great at capturing: people just doing their best, which often means they surpass every expectation without even knowing it. Her generosity toward her characters is also generosity toward us. She hands us nothing, even as she gives us everything.” —Stephanie Zacharek, TIME