Bird (2024)

Bird-(2024)-123Movies
Bird (2024) – 123Movies

Some of the critics have sometimes stated that there is one ingredient that ruins the entire film, or that once it reaches the climax, the third part of the film is no longer working. But more often than not, films are not cut into such distinct ‘acts’ and thus any attempt to cut such a motion picture into three sections exposes the limitations of the formal level of analysis. Others will contest, but that is Academy for you, it is what most of us are taught and we all accept it as an undeniable truth regardless. You have to think differently about how movies are shaped when filmmakers like Pablo Larraín present a film in ‘three acts’ and immediately break the notion of how an ‘act’ is supposed to work in his film with Maria. Mostly, screenwriters do not worry about ‘acts’ or three acts that appear to quarter the story, instead, they see the end goal, the meaning behind their project, which speaks to how they may want to treat the material in the first place.

This rings true with the social cinema of Andrea Arnold who, for instance, never ever employs what the scholars call a three-act structure and instead literally immerses us into the already populated, humanistic worlds.

The handheld quality of a film takes you through the often sad but heartwarming tales of its characters, making you open-minded about how life on this otherwise dull planet feels like. The climax of the film in question which is American Honey- 2016 best depicts her in her directorial trait where she gives space for the characters to live into the world she is projecting coupled with first person style of camera that makes viewers feel like they are in the midst of the action.

With Bird, her previous film, Arnold makes a huge move at the end of the film (not what one would refer to as a third act because that would be an absurdity) which yeah very much destroys her argument. The film begins with Bailey (Nykiya Adams), its lead character in the same way she has begun her other fictitious films, which she does by using handheld cameras that take us deep into this underdeveloped countryside of hers (though in this case, it is cut with videos taken by a digital camera belonging to Bailey talking about her thoughts regarding life). For most of her life, Bailey (Baren Keoghan) has been raised by her father Bug. She holds grudges against him for abandoning her mother (Jasmine Jobson) and marrying a woman he has known for only three months (a role played by Frankie Box).

They share a home with her brother Hunter (Jason Buda), but they hardly know each other. However, it is rather Bailey who develops a bond with Bird (Franz Rogowski), a boy who is searching for a family after being abandoned by his own. Of course, ‘Bird’ is a figurative term of a real bird, be it the continuous cameos of the creatures or the parts where water bodies posing as Bird are shot beautifully by Robbie Ryan’s camera. This is a mere metaphor; the narrative is approached in the same manner.

Bird is a lost wolf who seeks companionship and returns to the possibility of having a pack after years of loneliness. One can only look at his physique and assume that he’s lost in habits, and imagined himself as a child while in a man’s body. This is a strong allegory, and the viewers can quickly link the metaphor to Bailey’s pursuit and ambition, wanting to escape from her current status – a powerless, lonesome child. To finally have someone help her escape while ushering a new phase in her life.

Here, Bird analyzes how a person moves from teenage to older years, or more suitable, how a person moves from being a child to a teenager. In honor of her famed sculptor Brian, Carrie Arnold makes Bailey the only person who can encourage a newly processed mother who has never been appreciated and who finds herself in a harmful and nearly fatal marriage with a man named Skate (James Nelson-Joyce). And yes, for some time, the metaphor does have a realistic basis and remains close to the bone. It is paradoxical how Bird’s vision of himself with Bailey is presented to viewers who never escape from Oliver Ryan’s textured photography that Arnold offers the public.

That’s how we are when we recount the details of the screenshot in Bailey’s account. It seems that all her suffering is full of bitterness and it is hard to relate to her in the process as she in this instance spreads out her wings. In this film, Adams is an absolute surprise, perhaps among the most remarkable first-time performances in an Arnold film. No matter how the movie develops into a completely different proposal than the one Arnold outlines for herself throughout all the hours of the film, Adams’ delivery remains constant.

At the center of it all is a focus on stark realism that is always effective, whether through her tender exchanges with Bird or her courage against her deadbeat dad (Keoghan is also superb, in a shockingly subtle performance, as Tom) and her mother’s abusive boyfriend.

But as the film approaches much more disturbing areas, for instance when Bailey hisses at Skate, the most troubling (and bloody) moment of the film, Arnold simply changes its politics, mending its social realism story to a magical realism and completely ruins the calm and yet intriguing development of the relationship between Bailey and Bird. The movie then transforms into something like a second part of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman and discards all of the naturalism and grittiness of human conflict which added at least some interest in the film. She did not really comment much on the early stages of Bailey, Bug, or Bird shapes during the first hour of things, but in this case, something real and intense seemed to be heading somewhere certainly.

Nevertheless, this alteration in the tone and the mood of the film makes all its dramatic variety meaningless. rather, it appears that Arnold did not have anything to say about Bailey or Bird for that matter.

In light of where it ends, the metaphor appears to be, needless to say, an interpreter but neither is it more than what the audience expected. While making Bailey’s routine the setting of her narrative, Arnold, though not as electrifying as in some of her other movies, sustained Adams and Keoghan’s hold. They are both great to watch, and their discussion organically makes it to some of the most touching conversations of the year. Still, such praise cannot be extended to Rogowski who comes off as disappointingly miscast. Although he has potential and good looks, he seems completely unsuitable when it comes to portraying Bird and his journey to becoming his own man and finding his lost family. While not ideal, there is no denying the amount of feeling he brings forth in his portrayal. Still, his feeling eventually drowns out, as it does when an unjustified resolution not foreshadowed to an audience when Arnold shows the environment of her film as real and unembellished, is reached.

However, the film still has some redeeming features, one of them being Arnold’s well-justified shot at Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, where he incorporates Keoghan’s naked dance from Murder on the Dancefloor into the film. While the critic still admires the sickest delights of Fennell’s sequel to 2020’s Promising Young Woman, the image of her new work, a sacrilege of Wuthering Heights for the TikTok audience, fills me with a violent rage. This is especially so when Arnold presented us not only with the most awesome film interpretation of Wuthering Heights but with one of the best adaptations of a book into a movie we have seen so far.

Arnold does not hold back her anger at this blatant distortion of Wuthering Heights (first, she casts a white man to play Heathcliff, after Arnold settled a centuries-long debate as to what Heathcliff looks like when he is depicted as a multi-racial man, just as Bronte intended). Perhaps it was a bit of an accident, and I am reaching some unreasonable conclusions. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that Arnold creates a reading of Brontë’s text that is so broadly conceived that no film now or ever could realize Arnold’s vision that the time has come to truly engage with Wuthering Heights.

But Bird is the place where one can get a sense of imitation of Arnold’s previous (fabulous) works rather than any reasonable narrative in the sharp visuals or expressive narration.

Since the movie that we have been watching only fifteen minutes ago comes to an abrupt end, Arnold has nothing very much to say after having dealt with social realist, pressing tales ever since the release of Wasp. After all, the goal is to find new methods of translating reality into images. It does not, however, seem to be as imperative at this point to provide us with characters so vividly drawn to enable us to be invested in their stories which are real and relatable on many levels. One thing she does well in keeping with her hallmark is the non ‘act’ structure – a characteristic that most will use in the description of the film. But then again, Bird’s change of tone in the film places this idea towards the primary of her film, that maybe films do not have ‘acts’ at all. In my opinion, such a trend could be a useful one to ponder.

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