‘Bird’ review: Barry Keoghan stars in a divisive, life-enhancing masterpiece

When British filmmaker Andrea Arnold made waves with her second feature Fish Tank, a 2009 drama set on an east London council estate, she found herself posited as the new Ken Loach. Yet here is a director who can’t be pigeonholed: consciously or not, she spent the next 15 years railing against the social realist tag with gothic romance (Wuthering Heights), hazy Americana (American Honey) and a brutal, experimental documentary about industrial farming (Cow).

Now she’s created something new entirely. Bird is – yes – an unflinching social realist drama, though one that’s streaked with colourful moments of magical realism; an unclassifiable film with a dayglo aesthetic and an ambiguous, porous narrative that invites you to fill it with your own meaning. In fact, the most comparable recent reference point is arguably not another movie but the elliptical music video for Fontaines D.C.’s ‘Starbuster’. It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that the band’s music features heavily and their guitarist Carlos O’Connell loiters in the background of a few scenes.

Bailey (Nykiya Adams in her first on-screen role) lives in a north Kent squat where children are forced to grow up fast. “I’m not a kid,” she insists in one casually heart-breaking moment. “I’m 12 years old.” The closest thing to a guiding hand here is Bailey’s spectacularly tatted dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), a small-time hustler whose surreal latest wheeze is to sell hallucinogenic toad slime. Portrayed with a winning combination of menace and mischief, he spends much of the film cruising around town on his electric scooter looking for trouble.

The graffiti-covered squat is a free-for-all, with dad’s mates leaving no private space for his two children (Bailey has an older half-brother, Hunter, played by Jason Buda). Everything is so out in the open that Bug absent-mindedly racks up lines in front of his youngest. As the action builds towards his controversial marriage to Kayleigh (Frankie Box), a mysterious grown-up (Franz Rogowski) enters the picture. Nicknamed Bird, he claims to be originally from the area and now searching for his long-lost family. Could he be the boy who disappeared decades ago?

Things soon get super-weird and it’s no surprise Bird has already divided audiences; this is a dream-like world that sees the writer-director bend the rules as she sees fit. The soundtrack might be the best of year (Sleaford Mods and Blur also feature sensationally), Mods frontman Jason Williamson excels in a pivotal cameo and the scenes of Bug on his scooter are so instantly iconic, they’re ripe for parody. Arnold’s in such a playful mood there’s even a nod to ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’, which Keoghan unforgettably got his tackle out for in last year’s Saltburn.

With scenes of harrowing violence, the film often feels totally unsafe: no adult’s motives are beyond reproach. In true Andrea Arnold style, though, it’s also a life-enhancing tale that soars with unexpected grace, optimism and faith in humanity. Make sure you stick around for the joyous closing credits sequence, which boasts yet more Fontaines and a sense of freedom and release that sums up this extraordinary movie.