Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024)

 

By conventional measures, the father in Andrea Arnold’s quietly extraordinary Bird, Barry Keoghan’s Bug, isn’t much of a parent (his best idea for making money is to cultivate psychedelic toad venom), but his affection and engagement are real, and he’s at times hilariously pragmatic and non-judgmental; his 12-year-old daughter Bailey, with whom he lives in a somewhat dilapidated building, is deprived or neglected in some ways (the movie doesn’t mention school at all) but has preternaturally strong instincts, and an acute connection to the natural world. As the movie continues, this becomes the foundation for a near-catalogue of possible modes of growth and transcendence, encompassing everything from a local vigilante gang that seeks to make the world better by beating up one unworthy person at a time, to deeper appreciation for music (useful in getting the toad to do its stuff) and family, to magic realism elements ranging from wild birds doing Bailey’s bidding to the title character, a stranger who latches on to her and whose presence, backstory and even basic nature defy any clear explanation. And it’s an explicitly and complexly female vision, with the androgynously-named Bailey early on cutting her hair and thereby seeming more superficially masculine, but from there experiencing her first period, experimenting with make-up, embracing her role as older sister to the siblings that live with their mother, and even agreeing to attend a wedding in a hideous catsuit she’d earlier spurned, and yet despite all these markers of growing womanhood becoming someone more evidently self-defined and unreadable. The choice to run the end credits alphabetically by first name, making no distinction between large and small contributions, accompanied by various snippets of goofing around, ends the film on a note of celebratory inclusivity, and it is indeed a thrillingly uplifting viewing experience, even as one remains aware of the underlying financial and social precariousness.