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“Don’t Call It ‘Magic Realism'”: Andrea Arnold on Returning to Narrative Cinema with Bird
Nykiya Adams in "Bird," courtesy MUBI. (Photograph by Atsushi Nishijima) Shot and set in Gravesend, a town in Kent, England, Andrea Arnold’s new film Bird, starring newcomer Nykiya Adams alongside Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, is a portrait of a young girl coming of age under chaotic circumstances. Twelve-year-old Bailey, played brilliantly by Adams, is bound by poverty and a dearth of options to her unstable father, Bug (Keoghan); she seeks solace in whatever independence she can find. When a mysterious stranger (Rogowski) appears on her doorstep, an uncanny bond is formed between them, altering the course of her life. Bird is currently in theaters from MUBI.
Filmmaker: Your narrative work tends to have a sort of freewheeling structure, but these pieces always feel like they bring the viewer full circle, in some respects, by their close. I’m wondering what the writing process is like for you. Is it improvisatory and more discovery-based, or is there a set outline where you know you want to hit certain narrative points, without necessarily planning the getting there?
Arnold: It’s just my weird way of doing things. I usually start with an image, and that’s how I get into the story. I have an image that comes to me, somehow, and then I ask myself what that’s about. What does that image mean? I’ll ask questions of it, and try and figure out what the world is, who’s in the world. Usually, not always, but usually, the image will then occur in the film at some point. So it’s a key image in a way. I don’t start at the beginning. I start in the middle and work my way out. Other images present themselves, and it’s like a jigsaw puzzle. When I feel like I know enough about the character, and the world, then I’ll go back to the beginning. And when I’m writing, it’s just my own peculiar way of doing things, but I just ask myself, ‘What happens next?’, and never really follow any rules of structure or the received wisdom of screenwriting. I went to film school, but you’d never know it. People tell me they never know what’s going to happen next in my films. I don’t know why that is, but it is the case.
Filmmaker: What was the key image for Bird?
Arnold: I’ve blurted it out before, in Cannes. I’d had two hours sleep and just premiered the film, and it just came out. But I usually try to keep it a secret. It was a man standing on the edge of the roof of a tall building.
Filmmaker: You’ve dealt with the concept of a young woman confronting challenges and coming into her own in your previous work — Mia in Fish Tank, Star in American Honey. What was the flashpoint for this project, this character of Bailey?
Arnold: It’s way more mysterious than that. Whenever anyone asks me about themes or grand plans, I don’t really have any. I don’t know why I make anything that I make ahead of time. I never say to myself: I’m going to make a film about a teenage girl. It just comes about from asking, “Who’s in this world? Who is it?” It just comes. I didn’t plan it, and I didn’t set out to make a ‘coming-of-age’ story, or whatever. I just jigsaw it. Start with that one image and continue on from there. I’m not even aware I’m working in genre. I just dig around in the image and see what comes from there. When people talk about what I’ve been doing, trying to sense a theme or make connections between my films, it’s not something I do. It’s truly quite unconscious. I don’t think in themes or plans.
Filmmaker: Like in your previous work, Bailey follows a path of curiosity, which leads to her eavesdropping, spying, following people. Again, in Red Road, the Jackie Morrison character finds herself in a similar dynamic, as does Mia in Fish Tank, specifically when she follows her mother’s boyfriend Connor and discovers he has another family. Bailey takes on this sort of amateur detective role, and I haven’t really been able to find anywhere in print where you’ve addressed these parallels or unwound this kind of trajectory, and maybe interrogate if there are any parallels between these characters, their paths, and your own experience as a filmmaker.
Arnold: I kept thinking as I was making this film, ‘I’m obviously digging around in something that I’ve explored before’ — you know, masculinity, what it means. But I really don’t intentionally chase any one idea. I know a lot of filmmakers who claim not to realize what they’re doing half the time as they’re doing it. I remember hearing [novelist and screenwriter] Guillermo Arriaga asked by an interviewer, “Why do you always have characters trying on each other’s clothes?” He said, “Am I doing that?’”And I thought, he’s like me. I was really relieved to hear it. I’m not sitting outside of my world, looking in and deciding on my subjects. I get sucked in, and once I’m in it, most of what I’m doing is quite unconscious. I’m trying to figure something out in my own psyche. The common themes are probably all things I need to figure out for myself — but I’m loathe to say what they might be, as I don’t even know myself half the time. Making a film, every time, I feel like it’s a growth. But I try not to talk about these things because it doesn’t leave much room then for the audience to have their own relationship with the films themselves. I hate explaining things. The film is the thing, and to explain it takes away the fun for those watching it.
Filmmaker: But by creating these narratives where there is an aspect of investigation, no matter how “un-dramatized” or “un-staged” they might feel, you are putting the audience into a one-to-one relationship with the character and with you as the storyteller. It’s interesting, especially if it’s not intentional. You invite the audience into a surrogate relationship in that way.
Arnold: I know that one of my very strong feelings is to try and be with one character [in each of the films] so that the audience can really start to understand them and get under their skin. See what matters to them and find this internal thing where you start to use your imagination about what they’re thinking and feeling. I’m quite fascinated with how we see the world, how we see each other, because none of us — despite our common experiences — know what anyone else is thinking or feeling. I’m trying to give the audience a window into these people. Into one person, their inner world. It’s as much about my curiosity as it is about the audience’s. Let’s see if we can understand this person. Let’s have a look. And I don’t know if that’s me trying to understand myself or what. But by sticking with one person, one character, I try to ignite people’s imaginations, see if they can glean insight just from watching and following the same person for an extended period of time. I have this theory, that if you look at anyone long enough — and I mean anyone — you can have empathy for them.
Filmmaker: This film has a metaphysical aspect that stands out from your previous work. I really don’t want to give anything away, but how did that come about?
Arnold: Well, the film is set in or near the area where I grew up. The sort of magical quality just started happening in the writing, and I didn’t stop myself. I allowed myself that imagination. I’ve operated with fairly robust rules to my filmmaking up to now, rules I made for myself. And on this one, I felt, maybe I’ll just bust the rules. I mean, they are my rules. I can bust them! But it just happened naturally. I gave myself permission and went along with it. It felt brave, and I knew it was going to be pushing it, but because it felt natural to me, I allowed it. I didn’t judge it. I didn’t get in my head about it. And to be honest, it felt liberating to extend myself in a direction I hadn’t before but also continue something that I have done before. If you can push yourself, and it comes naturally and feels right, then that’s all you need.
Filmmaker: How have audiences responded to the more fantastic energy that exists in this film?
Arnold: Well I’ve had people ask me why. And the answer is only, because I can. It felt like an extension of what I do with nature anyway. There were more instances of magic in the script, more magical things, and we actually took a number of them away.
Filmmaker: It didn’t feel of a different piece from the rest of your work, though. It felt in line with the same aesthetic. And you’re portraying a wide open part of a young person’s life, where their mind might perceive things to have greater meaning, or with a greater degree of poetic majesty, than they might once they’ve matured.
Arnold: I think people find it a bit cheeky, but then, maybe I am a bit cheeky.
Filmmaker: There’s a relationship with animals that courses through some of your other work as well. I’m thinking about Mia with the horse in Fish Tank, the turtle in the water at the end of American Honey. Now in Bird, there’s this anthropomorphic title character, this mysterious interloper whom Bailey befriends, and who comes to rescue her in a way, to give her permission to be herself, and more literal examples as well. I’m thinking about the crow who carries her brother Hunter’s note up to his girlfriend’s balcony, the fox who appears and almost seems to smile at her at Bug’s wedding…
Arnold: Well there’s nature in my films for the very same reason that there’s magic in this one. When you look at anything close up — a moth, a worm — they’re alien anyway. It feels magic because it is. But in Bird, I also have very specific ideas about all those [magical] things and what they mean to me. I’ve been waiting for someone to guess what it’s all supposed to be, to know what I mean by it all, and I’ll never say, but I am waiting for someone else to figure it out. I hate explaining things, and don’t want to spoil the fun. It’s just no one’s gotten it right yet. My favorite part of the film is afterwards, in the pub with your friends, arguing about what it all meant. When I go to an art exhibit I never look at those [description cards] on the wall. I don’t want it all told to me. I want to have a relationship with the work. With Bird, I didn’t even want to put Franz [Rogowski] in the trailer. But it was impossible to keep it a secret.
