After learning that her father, Bug (Barry Keoghan), has become engaged to his girlfriend of three months, twelve-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) spends the week leading up to her father’s sudden wedding rebelling in small ways—she cuts her hair, starts wearing eyeliner, etc.—but also coming into her own through a number of deeply meaningful, if awkward situations—like when she gets her first period and has to endure the humbling experience of sheepishly asking her soon-to-be stepmother for a tampon. Bailey withstands these small dramas because she has to, she has no choice, but not without putting up a fight. When she encounters an odd drifter called Bird (Franz Rogowski), who asks her for directions, she soon becomes involved in his search for the family he lost as a young boy. Through this new and unexpected friendship, Bailey embarks upon her own journey toward finding the strength to grapple with the many changes hurtling rapidly toward her.
In her new film, Bird, Andrea Arnold chooses to embrace sincerity rather than cynicism—and the film alerts us to its intentions early on. This sincerity shows up in Bug’s dancing in their apartment, or in his tone-deaf singing as he prepares a song for his wedding—but also in his complete earnestness about what he wants and the surprisingly genuine advice he imparts upon his teenage children. As a teenage father, Bug still looks like a kid himself: tattooed all over, zipping around town on an electric scooter. His quick money-making scheme revolves around a Colorado toad whose slime supposedly contains hallucinogenic properties—but it will only produce this slime in response to “sincere” music. It’s a comical premise that might, in a different movie, turn sour once the golden toad fails to produce the golden egg. Instead, we’re led to believe sincerity as a valid mode of making that transition from imperfect childhood to imperfect adulthood. It’s okay to be resistant to change, to feel overly sentimental about the past. But it’s also okay to revel in life’s little moments of celebration, even when that celebration marks the end of one way of living, and the start of a new one.
Bailey dreads her father’s wedding because it will force her to embrace her future in all its uncomfortability. She’s being asked to step into a new role in the relationship between parent and child, and one that she clearly has not anticipated. When she refuses to stand up as a bridesmaid, Bug asks Bailey if she cares at all about his dream—a moment which returns to Bailey’s mind later in the film as well. He’s asking her to view him not merely as a caregiver, but as a fellow human being. Her responsibilities now extend beyond the realm of merely receiving love—they now also require giving it in return, and that includes making sacrifices.
Bailey—and perhaps Arnold herself—holds a fascination with filming movement. Bailey films birds flying across the sky as well as houseflies dawdling at her windowsill. She films Bird dancing in an open field, as well as her mother’s boyfriend violently threatening to hurt the family’s tiny pet dog. When she projects these videos onto her bedroom wall, the image acts like a window to another world, and perhaps provides a semblance of escape from her own. Recording these videos serves as an outlet as well as a mode of self-defense: she uses her camera to capture beauty as well as shield herself from danger.
After first meeting Bird, Bailey films him as he dances, and her reluctance to interact with this stranger begins to melt away. She discovers a kinship between them—not because they can relate to each other in any very explicit outward manner, but because they both feel particularly adrift. Bird seems more secure with this adriftness, as he’s known it for so long. But Bailey is only now discovering what it means to be a person cut loose in the world; how one comes to grips with this unexpected freedom but also with the responsibilities that keep us tethered to it. In tandem, she begins to embrace a new role as an additional caregiver to her younger siblings, as well as a confidant to her older brother as he deals with his own challenges. As she stretches her muscles as protector over the ones she loves, Bailey begins to understand the significance of supporting Bug’s marriage—even if it means wearing a gaudy purple jumpsuit and doing her hair in a way she can’t stand—and to recognize her young father as coming-of-age in his own right, seeking his place in the world, and hoping to make the best of what life throws his way.
Arnold’s film reminded me of what it feels like to be a twelve-year-old girl in a way that few stories—let alone movies—have ever managed to do. Bird provides a refreshing coming-of-age narrative centering a girl who is both smart and naive—simultaneously mature and childish in her dealings with her family and in her navigation of the world; the film asserts that it is possible (and acceptable) to be both at once. It’s a rare coming-of-age story that doesn’t underestimate its protagonist’s intelligence, but rather recognizes that the root of so many of our insecurities lies in fear.
If the movie ties up too neatly, it does so in a way that dares its audience to challenge that sincerity, and perhaps asks us to embrace this slightly saccharine conclusion as valid not despite of but because of this sincerity. The inclusion of an unexpected magical element feels like a departure for Arnold; Bailey becomes empowered by a typically unseen force made strikingly visual for the film—one that courses through her new friend Bird, and eventually through her as well. This hint of surreality, if at first jarring, locates us firmly within the emotional experiences of these characters and allows us to keep hold of a shred of that imaginative interior life that makes childhood so profound and wonderful. Bird asserts that as we grow, we learn to develop strength from within as well as from without—from the people we surround ourselves with, whom we don’t always choose, but rather choose to embrace through our actions: by simply receiving their help and support and by giving ours in return.