In the menagerie of independent filmmaking, a world where art so often collides with passion, and is completed on a shoestring, “Bird” is a fine specimen.
The latest feature from British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (“American Honey,” “Fish Tank,” “Wasp”), “Bird” finally lands at Australian cinemas, following the acquisition last year by Mushroom Studios and The Reset Collective.
The film swoops in a full year after its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival where it enjoyed a seven-minute standing ovation.
On this occasion, Arnold isn’t soaking up the applause and feedback.
“It’s very strange,” she tells Variety AU/NZ over a Zoom, “you make a film and it is like your child, your baby, and off it goes. It’s now wandering around in Australia, and I’m not there to hold its hand. I’m letting it loose without actually being there to sort of help. So it’s a bit strange when it goes off and has its own life in other places, but you do have to let it go.”
The separation anxiety is real. Arnold, a critical darling who won an Oscar for 2003’s “Wasp”, is hands-on and fully attentive with her creations.
“It does take a lot of you emotionally and physically,” she tells Variety AU/NZ. “You’re on your feet all day and I’m somebody who likes to be around the camera, so I stand all day and I walk. I’m with all the characters. You almost need to get in training before you start, but of course you’re always so beaten down with pre-production and the million things you have to do that you never have time for yourself on any level whatsoever. It’s a stamina exercise.” Arnold pauses for a moment. “I actually was really tired after. I don’t have quite the stamina of the 50-year-old I was not very long ago”, she says with a laugh.
Also not very long ago, Arnold added to her collection an Academy Award — the most coveted of silverware. “They say that winning an Oscar puts something like three years on your life,” she says, though the night itself was “surreal. I actually felt like I was in a David Lynch film.” Behind the scenes, she continues, “it’s lots of curtains, it’s dark and everyone’s wearing velvet.”
That wasn’t the case on the production of “Bird.”
A gritty coming-of-age flick, “Bird” stars Barry Keoghan, playing Bug, a single father of two who lives in a squatter’s flat in Kent and largely failing in his role of looking after his kids, one of whom is 12-year-old Bailey, played by newcomer Nykiya Adams.
The film, writes Variety critic Owen Gleiberman, has “Arnold’s empathy and integrity, as well as her raw-boned craftsmanship.” The first of those traits was earned in front of the camera. Arnold cut her teeth in showbiz as an actor, an experience that she truly hated. Having been in front of the camera informs her style of filmmaking. “You know how vulnerable it feels, and how courageous it is to be exposing yourself,” she remarks. “That’s a good sort of empathy to have with actors.”
A raw, unflinching slice of British life, accompanied with a cracking soundtrack, “Bird” is now at cinemas around the country.
View this post on Instagram