Bird

 

Director Andrea Arnold

Arnold with Jason Buda and Nykiya Adams

Arnold with her lead cast at Cannes

Cinematographer Robbie Ryan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIRD                          B+                                                                                                        Great Britain  USA  France  Germany  (119 mi)  2024  d: Andrea Arnold

This is the next century
Where the universal’s free
You can find it anywhere
Yes, the future has been sold

Every night we’re gone
And to karaoke songs
How we like to sing along
Though the words are wrong

It really, really, really could happen
Yes, it really, really, really could happen
When the days they seem to fall through you
Well, just let them go

No one here is alone
Satellites in every home
Yes, the universal’s here
Here for everyone

Every paper that you read
Says tomorrow is your lucky day
Well, here’s your lucky day

It really, really, really could happen
Yes, it really, really, really could happen
If the days they seem to fall through you
Well, just let them go

—The Universal by English alternative rock band Blur, 1995, inspired by Alex and his Droogs from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), Blur - The Universal (Official Video), Full HD (Digitally ... YouTube (3:55)

From the director of social realist films like RED ROAD (2006), FISH TANK (2009), and American Honey (2016), each of which won the Cannes Jury Prize (3rd Place), winning an Academy Award with her short film WASP (2003), converting to an overly abstract, experimental style in both Wuthering Heights (Arnold) (2011) and Cow (2021), this is a return to form for Arnold, an adrenaline-laced, kitchen sink exposé of a British underclass in the north Kent region (the same area where Arnold grew up) that feels like FISH TANK on steroids, where this is an aggressive, in-your-face assault to the senses, almost as if time and the film speed itself was sped up.  The raucous music adds an underlying layer of unbridled punk ferociousness, while the abstract, psychologically fractured style is unique, minimizing narrative form, instead creating a hallucinogenic atmosphere of drug-induced ferocity balanced against the internal world of a coming-of-age 12-year old Bailey (newcomer Nykiya Adams), who is vulnerable yet resilient, mature beyond her years, navigating her way through a suffocating atmosphere and a seemingly endless series of labyrinthean challenges, an extension of the young female protagonists in both FISH TANK and AMERICAN HONEY, where the creative sound design is phenomenal, making this one of the best edited films of the year, where you never really know where this is going.  As is Arnold’s style, rarely working with established actors, she allows an unknown lead character to literally carry the film, and Adams is electrifying, onscreen for nearly the entire film, yet this film defies expectations, adding surreal elements that simply alter the landscape, creating tonal shifts that are as wildly expressive as the furious post-punk of the Irish rock band Fontaines DC, where a punctuating opening song Too Real asks “Is it too real for ya?,” BIRD | Official Clip | In Theaters Now YouTube (1:36), a theme that permeates through every frame of the film, challenging viewers at every turn, upending any idea of what we’ve seen before, creating something entirely new, a brash expression of the new world order.  Bailey, who is black, straddles two families, one that is white, living with Barry Keoghan playing Bug, a mostly shirtless, perpetually loud and chaotic father to Bailey, literally adorned with insect tattoos, and her equally troubled older half-brother Hunter (Jason Buda), a family marked by dysfunction and hopelessness, and one that is black, as her mother, Peyton (Jasmine Jobson), lives in a decrepit drug house with three younger siblings on the other side of town, where the brazen abuse of her terrifying boyfriend Skate (James Nelson-Joyce, the nastiest piece of work in any Arnold film) and the paralyzing fear he generates, especially towards the children, adds a brutal dimension of extreme psychological harm in a tumultuously exploding world.  Bug, who doesn’t look much older than his kids (a father at 14), is a troublemaking knucklehead and drug dealer who doesn’t really concern himself with parenting in any real sense, as his virtually unemployable, irresponsible life is so out of control in their graffiti-strewn neighborhood that his constant diversions and distractions allow them to pretty much run their own lives, where in this world unsupervised children are the norm.  Featuring an extraordinary selection of music, Bird by Andrea Arnold (Soundtrack), so integral to the enveloping atmosphere, where Bug seems to have a particular affection for singing along with Blur - The Universal (Later... with Jools Holland 1995) - Full ... YouTube (4:01), a dystopian song that oozes a fake optimism, synonymous with an elated sense of Britpop promise in the 90’s that was subsequently crushed under a wave of conservatism, yet when he makes a surprise announcement that he’s going to get married, introducing Kayleigh (Frankie Box), who is a complete stranger, and Kayleigh’s baby daughter into their lives, Bailey is thoroughly disgusted by the idea, as their lives are already complicated enough.  “There’s no place like home” this isn’t.    

In an article for The Guardian in 2021, We are animals. We need to connect to the millions of non- ..., Arnold wrote:

Whenever I have felt troubled or lost or overwhelmed with life I have always sought nature.  It has always grounded me and put me in touch with myself again.  No one taught me this.  It came quite naturally.  Like some innate knowledge.  Partly I think because I had a very free childhood.  My mum had me very young, at 16, and three siblings followed by the time she was 22.  My dad was only a few years older.  I never saw him that much in my early years and he was gone completely by the time I was 10.

So, unsupervised most of the time, I lived a fantastically wild life.  I grew up in north Kent on an estate surrounded by liminal wilderness.  From early, I would spend entire days roaming wherever the fancy took me.  Between estates and chalk pits and deserted old industrial spaces and woods and motorways.  Out of this grew a deep love of insects and birds and animals and plants.  Stray estate dogs, the Traveller ponies chained by the motorway, the fish and frogs in the water-filled bomb site, wild strawberries on the banks of the chalk pits.  I can conjure up these places vividly now.  The smells and sounds and feels and colours.             

At Cannes the film won the Carrosse d’Or, or Golden Coach Award, bestowed by the Society of French Directors showcasing “innovative qualities, courage and independent-mindedness,” joining a distinguished group of past winners including Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, Jia Zhangke, Jane Campion, Jim Jarmusch, Kelly Reichardt, and Clint Eastwood, with Arnold tearfully indicating it was the toughest shoot of her career, and the most painful, with many more challenges than usual, making it particularly difficult to find the film she envisioned from the footage she shot, which may explain the kaleidoscopic editing structure that continually keeps viewers on edge.  Yet this also may be the most cinematic film she’s ever made, as Arnold fearlessly refuses to be pigeonholed as a social realist, capturing the extremes of the fantastical with the unending challenges of living in a world that is literally crumbling under your feet.  What’s different about this working class exposé is that nobody is actually working, or even going to school, leaving them precariously vulnerable to the violence that is seemingly everywhere, with no love in sight, where an escape from reality is a necessity, opening up a crack of light in an area otherwise consumed by rampant poverty and social decay.  Bailey is a sensitive and rebellious girl who lives in Gravesend, a Kent neighborhood mentioned in several Charles Dickens novels characterized by apartment blocks covered in graffiti and dysfunctional families, who doesn’t even have a bed, just a sleeping bag that she curls up in, spending much of her time alone, or sometimes with a group of young thugs in the area who view themselves as the “protectors,” targeting domestic abuse offenders with their own extremely violent, vigilante justice style brand of retribution.  But her life changes when she meets Bird (Franz Rogowski), a mysterious wanderer who appears out of nowhere doing a twirl for her camera dressed in a kilt in search of his birth parents he has never known, and while she’s initially wary, keeping her distance, she ultimately decides to help him in his search, as he seems to have a special connection with children, eventually making a deeply profound personal connection, where he takes on the role of her guardian angel.  Her innocence stands in stark contrast to the shadowy underworld dealings of her manic father, who spends a good amount of time attempting to persuade a Colorado River toad to secrete a slimy hallucinogenic substance, something he thinks will make him a fortune, or at least pay for his wedding, but this only seems to happen when he plays “sincere,” old-style “Dad music” that he hates, hilariously turning to Coldplay’s rendition of Coldplay - Yellow (Official Video) YouTube (4:32), which seems to work like a charm.  Bailey has a habit of filming what she sees on her phone, including the flight of birds, butterflies, horses, or disturbing moments of violence, as well as her initial meeting with Bird, all of which comprise a personal journal, like diary entries that document her evolving life, projecting her videos on the walls of her room at night, though sometimes they just run through her mind, showing us the world through her eyes.  Captured through a dizzyingly frenetic handheld camera, reflective of the emotional inner instability of these lives, so fragile against the eruptive violence that surrounds them, yet there is poetry to be found in the wretched ugliness of life on the poorest margins of society, where there are flashes of mysterious and dreamy moments, like the camera pointing upwards to the sky, or seeing Bird continually standing atop a high-rise building, recalling the reckless impulsiveness and daredevil games of the alienated high school youth in Toshiaki Toyoda’s Blue Spring (Aoi haru) (2001) or the angels perched atop the ledges of skyscrapers high above the city in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) (1987).   

With references to Vittorio De Sica’s MIRACLE IN MILAN (1951), where protagonists escape the misery of postwar ruins by broomstick, a neo-realist fable that no one complained about, by the way, ranked 3rd on Cahiers du Cinéma’s Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1951, or more overtly Ken Loach’s KES (1969), as both realistically portray, with poetic elements, the daily lives of teenagers who take refuge from their harsh reality through a friendship with birds, this film depicts a turbulent transition from childhood to womanhood, struggling with everyday problems, where nothing is remotely straightforward, continually taking strange detours along the way, becoming, in essence, a metamorphosis in action, where the ideas just keep coming.  Despite her tender age in a time of transition, Bailey has to deal with much greater conflicts and responsibilities, where we are literally lured into her child’s-eye view of the world, showing the brutality of forgotten environments that children are forced to live in, where there is seemingly no place for them, as the entire system has failed them, suggesting they are able to dream of freedom (“It really, really, really could happen”) beyond the squalor that surrounds them.  Shot on 16mm by Arnold regular Robbie Ryan, who also works with Ken Loach and Yorgos Lanthimos, this rich and layered film is most of all an exhilarating experience, easily her most “out there” film, as the audacity of the “what the fuck” factor screams originality, skillfully told with striking empathy and ingenuity, where some have criticized elements of CGI magical realism mixed in, something never seen before in an Andrea Arnold film, but they feel more like surreal moments, as the transformations are completely in character, initially manifested with relative subtlety until the film explodes with the full force of unleashed creativity, where viewers need to keep an open mind on the power of cinematic suggestion.  Having the courage to make outrageous narrative choices leads the film on unexpected paths, like the perilous side journeys Odysseus takes in The Odyssey, while also grasping a child’s state of grace and wonder that recalls Benh Zeitlin’s 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #1 Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), as otherwise this might be mired in miserablism or poverty porn, yet this feels elevated and empowering, completely grounded in a grim reality, yet it’s so much more rewarding, both bleak and hopeful all at once, literally transcending the material, as there’s a surprise in nearly every shot.  Arnold seems to specialize in stories of neglected and endangered girls on the verge of becoming young women while living in brutal or inhospitable environments, yet this adds another layer, namely Bailey’s fascination with birds, while she also may be queer, or at least leaning in that direction, showing an aversion to girly things, where her self-absorbed father is just too oblivious to notice, or care.  Yet one of the featured aspects of the film is a parallel curiosity about parenting, as Bird is as interested in his journey of discovery about his missing parents as Bailey is with unlocking the buried secrets of hers, leading to a powerfully dynamic and emotionally riveting conclusion, with these revelations beautifully interwoven into the film, where one of the questions this film asks is whether we can ever really be free of the trauma that shaped our lives.  The raw, unforgiving world of Arnold’s movies and the struggles of these young girls to survive are brutally honest observations that are overwhelmingly truthful and sincere, embracing life’s imperfections, accentuating class disparity and familial neglect while offering resilience in the face of adversity, tenderness in the face of chaos, where the poetic excursions are like an epiphany that only add, not detract, from the film’s overall impact, as it simply refuses to end in tragedy, and continues to play out over the end credits.  Difficult, experimental, and ambiguous, yet exquisite.    

The Banshees of Inisherin

 

Writer/director Martin McDonagh

McDonagh with Brendan Gleeson

McDonagh with Colin Farrell (left) and Brendan Gleeson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN              B                                                                       Ireland  USA  Great Britain  (109 mi)  2022  d: Martin McDonagh

Banshees burrows into the stereotype of Irish people at pubs, guzzling pints to the tune of ebullient folk music, and moulds it into an emotionally resonant character study.  The starting point was to capture the sadness of a breakup, be it a love breakup or a friendship one.  Being on both sides of that is an equally horrible position.  To treat the sadness of both sides as truthfully as possible was the main thing I wanted to get right with this.                        —Writer/Director Martin McDonagh

Winner of Best Actor (Colin Farrell) and Best Screenplay when premiering at the Venice Film Festival, the film received a 15-minute standing ovation, and has received nothing but the highest accolades ever since, with many openly declaring this is the director’s best work, which may be an exaggerated overstatement.  Acclaimed Irish playwright Martin McDonagh reunites fellow Irish actors Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson for the first time since pairing together as criminal misfits in the subversively challenging dark comedy In Bruges (2008).  Many felt his follow up Seven Psychopaths (2012) got derailed by getting overly sidetracked in side stories, while Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) was a huge commercial success, earning more than ten times the cost of making the film, winning Academy Awards for Best Actress Frances McDormand and Best Supporting Actor Sam Rockwell, with McDonagh additionally writing 5 Tony Award nominated plays as well.  For the first time since Shakespeare, he managed the feat of having four different plays running in London at the same time.  Known for hilariously inventive dialogue that often covers for darker themes, this may be his most deeply despairing work, with themes of isolation and ostracization, plunging viewers into a sad tale about the end of a friendship, but it’s also a fight between men who are basically brothers, with ominous overtones on a grander scale, yet what distinguishes this film is its commitment to exploring the Irish identity and character more deeply than his other films, described in such a precise way in their dialect and way of life, filled with eccentric quirks and idiosyncrasies, set on the mythical island of Inisherin in Galway Bay off the western coast of Ireland, where in the background you can hear bombs going off on the Irish mainland, engulfed in the 1923 Irish Civil War - Irish War of Independence, with Irish nationalists fighting for a free state, a conflict that still hasn’t been resolved 100 years later.  Shooting initially began on the sparsely populated Inishmore, or Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands before moving to Achill Island, the largest of the Irish isles and much closer to the mainland, establishing a community defined by its small town nosiness, where everyone knows everyone else and all their hidden secrets, as people are creatures of habit, going about their daily routines, where the women working in town need the latest gossip to spread, while those on the outskirts lead more remote lives, their thatched roof homes situated on cliffs overlooking the sea, creating a picturesque landscape in an idyllic setting, where the story plays out like a Grimm Brothers fairytale, with Carter Burwell’s accompanying musical score accentuating the heavenly tones of the celesta, Colm Takes the Reins - YouTube (2:20), suggesting this darkly allegorical Irish folklore tale is bordering on make-believe.  Yet what immediately stands out is a fractured reality, with lifelong best friend Colm (Gleeson), seemingly out of the blue, refusing to talk to Pádraic (Farrell), dispassionately informing him “I just don’t like you no more,” where the suddenness of this clean break is having a traumatic effect on Pádraic, making little sense to him, thinking there must be some explanation, as the two have routinely met at precisely 2 pm every day for a walk to the pub to share a pint, but now Colm is refusing to sit anywhere near him, avoiding him altogether, which eats at Pádraic, thinking it must have been something he said.  When Pádraic’s sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon) confronts Colm, trying to get to the bottom of what’s wrong, he simply acknowledges that he can’t stand his dullness.  “But he’s always been dull,” protests Siobhán, wondering “What’s changed?”  Apparently Colm has simply had enough of it and decided he no longer wants to share Pádraic’s company, preferring to leave his mark composing music for the violin while sharing time with his beloved border collie.       

Pádraic increasingly despairs from the arbitrariness of this decision, going through an existential malaise, while other community members attempt to get to the bottom of it as well, as this separation has island-wide repercussions, suggesting the stability of their relationship was the one good thing people could count on.  The priest (David Pearse), for example, with Colm sitting in confessional, asks why he broke up with Pádraic, with Colm inquiring if it’s a sin.  Maybe not, says the priest, but it’s certainly not very nice, kind, and compassionate either.  Colm continually has to justify himself to the other members of the community who openly resent the break in friendship, from the bartender to the postal clerk, but it doesn’t change his resolve, if anything it only reinforces it, clinging to his stubborn beliefs, with Pádraic beginning to feel offended, as he’s always been viewed as an easygoing and nice guy, not the kind to rub people the wrong way, so he’s continually befuddled by this thorough rejection, leaving him more than a little humiliated, though much of the real impact comes from what’s left unsaid, still lurking under the surface.  As if to reinforce this rebuke, McDonagh intersperses music by the great Irish tenor John McCormack, Christ Went up into the Hills Alone YouTube (2:55).  Pádraic becomes convinced Colm is depressed and needs his help, yet his clumsy interventions only make Colm resort to drastic, self-mutilating measures in order to convince him that he’s deadly serious, threatening to cut off a finger each time Pádraic speaks to him again, cutting off all contact once and for all, developing new friendships with local music students, spending his time playing the fiddle.  When a drunken Pádraic publicly confronts him in the pub, eloquently standing up for himself, then apologizing shortly afterwards for creating a scene, Colm cuts off one of his fingers and delivers it to Pádraic in a stern rebuke, which only compounds Pádraic’s abrupt isolation, seeking solace with a new drinking companion, the village idiot Dominic (Barry Keoghan), and his miniature donkey Jenny, who is welcomed inside their home, much to his sister’s distress.  Dominic is the son of the local police chief, Peadar (Gary Lydon), who sadistically abuses his own son, with suggestions it could be sexual as well, with incest a lurking suspicion, yet this is never explored, never really part of the overall storyline, but becomes part of a grander theme of fatalistic cruelty, all part of the human condition, adding a darker depth to the story, which some may find overly manipulative, particularly when Peadar slugs Pádraic in the face, knocking him senseless, thinking he is getting too close to Dominic, too close to his inner sanctum, forcing him to mind his own business, where he’s left crumpled on the ground.  In what may be the most quietly affecting scene, certainly the most devastating, Colm calmly helps Pádraic home, but they don’t say a word on their journey, with Pádraic reduced to uncontrolled outbursts of emotions.  Siobhán, a voracious reader and the only level-headed character showing any signs of integrity, is forced to navigate a path through a minefield of inflated male egos, clearly loving her brother and is even fond of Colm, but her patience has worn thin, calling the people living on the island “bitter and mental,” telling Colm, “One more silent man on Inisherin?  You’re all feckin’ boring with your piddling grievances,” leaving nothing but “bleakness and grudges and loneliness and spite.”  As the tensions worsen, the ghoulish local elder Mrs. McCormick (Sheila Flitton), dressed all in black, inhabits the spirit of the banshee in Irish folklore, frequently seen roaming the island, reminiscent of Bengt Ekerot’s embodiment of Death in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) (1957), warning Pádraic that death will come to the island soon, like a Macbethian curse, or a foreshadowing omen.   

First intended as a stage play, having already written plays for the two other Aran Islands off the Irish coast, The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Lieutenant of Inishmore, McDonagh quickly realized the story lends itself more to a film, with a comparable setup as In Bruges, two characters trapped in a seemingly idyllic place, written with the two actors in mind, both with proven chemistry, where one can imagine parallels in Vladimir and Estragon in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, becoming a self-inflicted No Exit parody, where the humor is much more prevalent early in the film, with dripping sarcasm turning ugly, growing more somber and darkly disturbing, escalating into a blood feud that only confirms what we already know, never actually delving into what drives such atrocious human behavior, yet adding plenty of black humor that spices up a story about guilt, forgiveness, and personal purgatory.  Beautifully shot by Ben Davis, set against a magnificent coastal landscape, much like Ryan's Daughter (1970), with interiors warmed by candlelight, the drama is intensified by the constant repetition of the story, as the characters keep making the same mistakes and keep running into walls, where even the simplest things seem unattainable, evoking moods of loneliness, regret, and pathos, as expressed by Jessye Norman from Brahms Six Songs singing Brahms: Sechs Gesänge, Op. 7 - V. Die Trauernde (Volkslied) YouTube (1:33).  Pádraic’s wounded confusion grows in tandem with Colm’s gruff intransigence, with little of substance to show for himself in his life other than an escalating sense of despair, revealing a ghastly darker side, with ambitions and dreams of completing musical compositions that will outlive him, feeling his life is slipping away, where he’s now willing to nullify his lifelong friendship with Pádraic in the name of art and posterity, revealing the artistic ego at its most monstrous and selfishly all-consuming, where the self-inflicted act of losing his fingers drastically limits his ability to play the violin, becoming a macabre metaphor of grotesque human cruelty.  McDonagh’s incessant use of humor often obscures the pain lurking under the surface, becoming less about challenging the audience and more about camouflaging the operatic theatricality of the material, as underneath it all is a mocking tone of cruel absurdity.  The grotesque nature of self-mutilation speaks for itself, even mentioned as a sin by the priest, but Colm scoffs it off with a mocking aside, becoming purely metaphoric, never actually feeling real, yet this dark and mordant humor is no laughing matter.  What are we to make of this human depravity?  Perhaps best expressed by Siobhán, who has no use for it and would rather leave the island for a library job on the mainland than stay and endure any more nonsense.  Gently rebuffing Dominic’s romantic advances, she quickly and quietly informs her brother of her imminent departure, leaving him alone with his animals, the only family he has left, mentally exhausted and slowly beaten down by what’s happened, where his pain is written all over his face, abandoned by everyone, and he can’t for the life of him figure out why that happened.  A simple man who doesn’t expect much out of life, he feels wrongly cheated out of any peaceful existence, where living out his life in harmony with his surroundings is no longer an option, having been challenged, as if to a dual, where his moral standing in the community depends upon his response.  The inability of men to live in peaceful coexistence with sometimes difficult neighbors becomes a predominate theme, with hints of ignorance, vanity, and extreme stubbornness.  All of this can be read as an admittedly cruel parable of the pointlessness of war, living on a supposed paradise island sanctuary far from the seething hatred of the raging Civil War, yet the fatal cost of masculine reserve, as well as the unrelenting persistence of petty squabbles, can easily escalate and metastasize into larger battles that rage beyond Inisherin’s shores, where the sorrowful mezzo-soprano voice of Stefanie Irányi expresses the melancholic futility of loneliness and resignation, 6 Gesänge, Op. 7: No. 3, Anklänge YouTube (1:56).  Ultimately, this may be McDonagh’s least funny film, and also his most manipulative in order to achieve the desired dramatic effect, with suggestions that indifference, not malice, may be the most contemptible offense.