How Andrea Arnold’s Bird reclaims magic for the marginalised

• Spoiler warning: This article gives away elements of the plot

Andrea Arnold’s latest film is steered by a sense of wonder you don’t find in your typical family drama. The story of a young girl on the brink of coming of age navigating a hostile family life in north Kent, Bird is anything but one-dimensional.

Throughout her career, Arnold has often been pigeonholed as a social realist. Although her skills as a director shine in social realism, reducing her to that label oversimplifies her talents. Whether it be hazy Americana in American Honey (2016) or documentary filmmaking in Cow (2021), Arnold’s strengths lie not in a particular genre but in the sensitivity of her storytelling. Her newest entry continues this exploration by dipping into magical realism as she questions who we allow the fantastical to apply to.

Despite being widely popular in literature, magical realism has yet to find a defining identity in cinema. The pioneering literary texts, such as Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) or Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate (1989), may be remembered for their fantastical occurrences but are deeply grounded in the economic and political conflicts that our characters live in. It is the highly detailed, realistic settings, invaded by something too strange to believe, that has made these stories so resonant. But this quality has often been absent in many magical realism-tinged films.

Aside from Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), arguably the genre’s most successful cinematic example, magical realist films don’t seem so interested in exploring the political tension between fantasy and reality. What started out as an aesthetic organically belonging to marginal cultures is – in the cinema – more typically stripped of social nuance. Films such as Birth (2004), Midnight in Paris (2011) and Birdman (2014) all neglect this aspect to instead focus on the magical as it pertains to character studies, usually centring on affluent protagonists. As a result, magical realism, as a film genre, has morphed and diverted from its literary counterpart. 

No longer are these stories led by passion-fuelled characters living on the margins of society, but rather by privileged individuals going through emotional turmoil. Whether it be Michael Keaton playing a washed-up actor in Birdman or Nicole Kidman as a grieving housewife in Birth, these characters’ conflicts always lie in interactions with themselves, not their environment. So while these films are often given the magical realist label, in fact Arnold’s Bird shares much more in common with the original sentiment behind the genre.

The film follows 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams), who lives with her caring but chaotic single dad Bug (Barry Keoghan) in a squat in Gravesend, north Kent. We see how her fractured home life is transformed when she encounters Bird (Franz Rogowski), a mysterious stranger looking for someone from his past. Arnold paints a portrait of Bailey’s life where teen gangs, hallucinogenic frogs, violent stepdads and magical birds all fit in.

Abandoned buildings and grey roads act as the characters’ playgrounds. Throughout most of the film, Arnold’s hand-held, almost documentary style invites us to hop on the back of Bug’s electric scooter and be part of the town, where parents casually snort lines in front of their children, where injustice is seen as something that you ‘sort’ through your own will, and where kids have been left behind by the systems in place, and so are briskly pushed into adulthood. 

But Bailey also encounters acts of kindness here, be it some period-cramp medication given by Bug’s fiancée, a favour from her half-brother’s friends, or even sympathy from a mysterious stranger. Arnold harkens back to the fundamentals of magical realism: the interplay between harsh conditions and fantastical release. The socioeconomic effects on the community at hand are never explicitly stated but are always lingering in the characters’ interactions. These tensions inform the story’s magical elements. The fantastical doesn’t act as an escape from the harsh reality Bailey is living through but as a direct manifestation of her desires for freedom and adventure as she confronts more adult responsibilities.

The magical moments are deeply connected with themes of nature that run throughout the film. The peaceful moment out in the field, before Bailey first meets Bird, is anticipated by a rush of winds blowing back and forth. The way Arnold heightens the natural elements through sound design and cinematography integrates the magical with the natural. Franz Rogowski’s masterful physicality throughout the film also looks to imitate nature. We catch glimpses of Bird standing on the building’s terrace as he walks back and forth through the railing. The natural world not only mixes in with the fantastical but even acts as a spiritual guide or guardian angel for Bailey. 

So often in the media, British working-class worlds are portrayed as dull, urban and grey, so Bailey’s access to nature and magical interactions with Bird almost seem like a privilege. These aspects of Bailey’s life don’t fit in with the societal narrative assigned to her. Arnold’s subversion of these norms is refreshingly humanising.

Arnold’s impeccable tact in telling stories about working-class Britain doesn’t come from her films’ grittiness but rather from a keen interest in capturing life in all its complexities. When light and darkness coexist, so can the real and the fantastical. Bird reclaims magical realism for the system’s outcasts, granting the marginalised a sense of release and wonder. Here the magical is no longer a commodity only the privileged can enjoy.

Bird, backed by the BFI Filmmaking Fund using National Lottery money, is in cinemas now.