Perhaps Britain’s most significant contribution to contemporary arthouse cinema has been the films made within the kitchen sink realist tradition. Films from the likes of Andrea Arnold, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and many more who have crafted stories of working class disillusionment, tracing this discontent from the depths of Thatcher’s England all the way up to our current period of constant political instability and social stagnation. Though amongst these filmmakers Arnold has always had a distinct sensibility, particularly with Fish Tank (2009), which stood as an incredibly frank and uncompromising portrait of the country’s wayward youth, made in a manner that felt both honest and hyper-contemporary, having a keen awareness of the music and fashion popular at the time which boosted the project’s overall sense of authenticity. Sans a detour into Emily Bronte adaptations, Arnold kept up her neorealist project through American Honey (2016), which likewise perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the time in an uncanny way. In many regards between the soundtrack, which memorably featured Rihanna, Kevin Gates and Migos, and pitch perfect performances from Riley Keough and Shia LaBeouf (who judging from this year’s Cannes the industry cannot seem to shake off) as white gutter trash, American Honey felt less like a product of its time and more so a perfect chunk of amber preserving 2016 for future generations.
Now with Bird (2024) Arnold returns once more to the streets of London with a film conceptually similar to Fish Tank but with about a dozen new ideas folded in. One thing that seems obvious however is that in the 8 years since making a narrative film Arnold has somehow fallen out of the zeitgeist. In some regards this can be seen as a byproduct of how much modern life has changed since she last checked in: with information, trends, fashion, popular artists and discourses moving at a rate so fast that it would be difficult for any filmmaker to catch up. As such, Bird does not feel explicitly like a film of 2024 as much as it feels like Arnold is trying to play catchup to everything she has missed. Formally within her arsenal she has introduced the use of vertical video, particularly smartphone footage from her lead character Bailey (Nykiya Adams) who uses her phone as a weapon to compensate for her own personal vulnerabilities and deficiencies as a child. At various points of the film Bailey uses her phone to hold people accountable and to threaten them in order to de-escalate a situation, a common tactic used during protests and instances of police brutality. At other points Bailey uses it to capture videos of the sky which Arnold organizes as a poetic triptych. Though it is ultimately nothing new there is something refreshing as to how Arnold shows that phones have not merely rotted the brains of the next generation but have granted them a previously unheard of level of both personal and artistic agency. Though other stabs at modernity read as less convincing such as Bailey’s dad Bug (an inspired Barry Keoghan) whose horrible full body tattoos appear reminiscent of Jared Leto’s Joker in Suicide Squad (2016), which suggests Arnold as caught up (as with many people) in an eternal 2016. Even down to the music it appears that Arnold is playing it safe by deferring to a bench of contemporary Dad-rock classics: The Verve, Blur & Coldplay, whose inclusion falls in between being sincere and ironic. There is nary an Ice Spice or Pinkpantheress in sight.
Though these lack of attempts to stay zeitgeisty may seem like surface level issues there is undeniably something lost in the texture of Arnold’s rendering of modern life, though this is ultimately indicative of the various other swings she takes in shaking up her style. Central to Bird is of course the titular Bird (played by Franz Rogowski, who is quickly cementing himself as one of our best working actors), an apparition of a man who flutters in the fields, coming to England in search of his lost parents. It is perhaps not an exaggeration that for Arnold introducing a character like Bird is akin to taking the entire genre of kitchen sink realism out to the back of the barn. The pleasures of previous Arnold films have mostly appeared double edged. Yes there is great value in seeing such a frank depiction of how poverty affects the youth but it comes at the tradeoff of the material seeming suffocatingly and unnecessarily bleak as you are made to sit through horrible scene after horrible scene with no indication of respite for her characters. In some regards I can respect how Arnold sticks to her guns in her prior films being unwilling to compromise for the audience. Though in this same manner the character of Bird seems to only exist to create compromise for the audience, creating a magical realist figure who is meant to stand in for Arnold herself, acting as a balm, an alleviating force to give Bailey the space to live and dream. Though that is not to ascribe a shallowness to the character of Bird as a whole, who is sculpted quite gracefully as a composite of all the lost children throughout Britain, flexing a tenderness that acts as a reaction to the masculine aggression that grips broken homes. The film constantly seems at odds with both sides of itself, between Bailey’s difficult home life and her relationship with Bird, with one necessarily overtaking the other in a way that almost appears to function as a litmus test as to what audience’s want from Arnold, ending with a scene akin to a Dreamworks dance party. Perhaps it is a sign of maturity that Arnold is finally allowing a modicum of grace to be affronted to her characters, or perhaps it has sprung out of exhaustion from operating within constant misery. In spite of all this the film bristles with enough life and detail that once more suggests Arnold as one of our premier British artists, though how these changes to her formula age within her larger oeuvre is a different question to consider.