Shot with bright, evocative colours and always keen to capture magic-hour skies, Bird lives within the perspective of its restless protagonist, Bailey, a 12-year-old girl played by Nykiya Adams. In Kent, Bailey lives with her father, Bug (Barry Keoghan), a heavy partier who behaves more like an older brother than a parent; in contrast, she encounters a mysterious, soft-spoken stranger in a field called Bird (Franz Rogowski, who recently appeared on the cover for Another Man). With Bug sporting numerous tattoos across his face and Bird floating into the frame wearing a kilt, each character has a fashion sense as idiosyncratic as their name.
Scored by Burial and 90s Britpop, the coming-of-age drama is a mood piece that’s as much about Bailey witnessing violence that will traumatise her for life, as it is the moment Bug serenades a Colorado River toad with Coldplay’s “Yellow” in the hope it’ll secrete psychoactive saliva. All of it’s held together by Adams, an instinctive performer with no background in the arts. “Nykiya was quite different to the Bailey I had in mind,” says Arnold. “I rewrote the script for Nykiya.”
Arnold’s initial vision of Bailey was based on a photograph of a “wild, little kid standing in the rain, screaming”, which Arnold re-enacts for me. After she and Lucy Pardee, the casting director behind Aftersun and Rocks, were unable to find a similar figure, they chanced upon Adams when scouting schools. “I often work with non-actors, and there’s no guarantee it’s going to work,” says Arnold. “It’s always a risk.” Is the risk part of the excitement or an unfortunate byproduct? “I hate it because it’s scary. But it brings potential.”
In a separate conversation, Adams, now 14, admits she was more into sports than movies when Bird came along. “Lucy, the casting director, came up to me and was like, ‘Do you want to come to this workshop on Thursday?’” recalls Adams, who’s missing school to do interviews. “I was like, ‘Yeah, why not? It gets me out of lessons.’” Prior to that, Adams’s only acting experience was in a minor role in a school production of Matilda. “At the workshop, they interviewed us: ‘What’s your name? When’s your birthday?’ Me and my friends were just messing about.”
After callbacks, Adams was invited to Essex where she read out scenes from Bird, not knowing any of the context. “A woman was in the corner, writing notes,” says Adams. “I thought she was an acting coach. Then when I got to the last two, she was like, ‘My name is Andrea Arnold. I made Cow and Fish Tank.’ Me and my mum were starstruck.” For the shoot itself, Adams describes having no nerves. “We got the script day by day,” she says. “We’d improvise if we forgot our lines. If you got it wrong, it didn’t matter. You’d just try again. I can relate to the character. I was just reacting to things that were being said.”
“I often work with non-actors, and there’s no guarantee it’s going to work. It’s always a risk… I hate it because it’s scary. But it brings potential” – Andrea Arnold
As Bird features so many non-actors, Arnold opted to shoot the film chronologically to minimise confusion. In doing so, she hid the ending from Adams. “There was stuff I needed Nykiya to show early on, but I didn’t want to tell her what it was for, because it was going to be a surprise,” says Arnold. “But sometimes she didn’t want to do things – small things that were beyond her comfort zone. I was thinking, ‘How are we going to do this? I need this to be something that happens at the end.’ But I will never make actors do something they don’t want to do. If it’s not comfortable for her, that doesn’t feel right for the film or for her.”
On Fish Tank, Katie Jarvis was cast after she was spotted having an argument with her boyfriend in public, while Sasha Lane was asked to audition for American Honey after Arnold noticed her sunbathing on a beach. “I love that Nykiya has her own mind,” says Arnold. “Sometimes actors try anything you ask, whereas non-actors go, ‘Nah, I’m not doing that.’” She laughs. “On American Honey, sometimes they wouldn’t get out of bed. I’d be like, ‘Oi, we’re making a film.’ And they’re like, ‘No. Tired!’”
In 2019, Arnold did the opposite of casting newcomers by directing the second season of Big Little Lies, an HBO show starring Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman. The key difference turned out to be the budget. She recalls an unused scene in which a car sinks into water at night. “I was looking at this ocean, thinking we could light it with fishing trawlers,” says Arnold. “One of the producers said, ‘What about a moon?’ I said, ‘A moon?’ He said, ‘We’ll get a ship on the ocean, put a crane on it, and we’ll hang a moon.’ I went, ‘I’ll have a moon, thank you very much!’ On big-budget TV, I realised you could do whatever you liked.”
In contrast, Bird conveys the exhilaration of Arnold and her regular cinematographer, Robbie Ryan, navigating Gravesend to showcase the natural beauty of the environment, as well as its rampant wildlife. If there’s a moon in the frame, it’s real. For some scenes, the crew were tasked with tracking Adams, who ran so quickly that a car was required. The actor describes the shoot as a transformative experience, not just because it required a drastic change in her hair. “People would kill to be in my spot,” says Adams. “And I got it from just being myself. It’s crazy how fortunate people can be.”
“It’s a big eye-opener to see the people that are now trying to talk to me,” says Adams. “I just know who my real friends are” – Nykiya Adams
Two days earlier, in an English lesson, Adams’s teacher played the Bird trailer in the classroom to a rapturous response. What’s it like walking the red carpet at Cannes, doing the festival circuit, and then returning to school? “It’s a big eye-opener to see the people that are now trying to talk to me,” says Adams. “I just know who my real friends are.” Adams hopes to act more, and even has a wish list. “There are two people: Ashley Walters and Rapman. And I would love to be in a horror film.”
As Arnold is keen for Bird to be known as a team effort, the end credits list everyone’s names in alphabetical order without revealing their specific role. “I did it on American Honey as well,” she says. “You can go on IMDb if you want to check. But we’re a gang of people who made a film.” As for the gang aspect, Arnold referred to Bird at the Cannes premiere as being “the hardest film I’ve ever made”. Could she elaborate?
“We had a lot of challenges and things that went wrong,” says Arnold. “So much went wrong. Because it’s a low-budget film, sometimes you go out for a day, lose something, and don’t pick it up again. The film reached probably 70 per cent of my intention. No one sees the things I feel bereft about, but I do feel bereft about them. It’s like a grief when you lose things that you’ve nurtured for a long time.”
Still, what Arnold really wants viewers to know is that the film’s inspiration – the image of a naked, well-endowed man atop a building – shouldn’t be taken lightly. “It sounds like a joke about the long penis,” says Arnold. “But actually it’s a metaphor for something important in the film. It’s serious.” She adds, “I don’t like to explain it.”
Bird is out in UK & Irish cinemas on November 8
