Film Reviews: Three Powerful Dramas Highlight the Strength of Individuals During Stressful Times: Current Day England (“Bird”), 1930s America (“The Piano Lesson”) and 1980s Ireland (“Small Things Like These”)

Bird (c) MUBI

Film: Bird 
In Cinemas 

Earlier this year, we had a bird representing Death in the Julia Louis-Dreyfuss drama Tuesday. Now, in Andrea Arnold’s remarkable Bird, we get a human named Bird, who here represents life, at least in the eye of 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams), a product of a lower British class upbringing. Bird is embodied (the only verb that works) by the idiosyncratic and chameleon German actor Franz Rogowski. On the other end of the animal metaphor spectrum is Bailey’s father Bug who is played by the always interesting and risk-seeking Barry Keoghan, a loser of a provider but somehow making it as a responsible (if not diplomatic) parent. Bailey’s adventures also involve her violent half-brother Hunter (Jason Buda), whom she looks up to, as well as her mother (Jasmine Jobson) and her many other half-siblings living in equal squalor across town with her mum’s current boyfriend, a violent nob named Skate (James Nelson-Joyce). Although her hometown of Gravesend is mostly an urban city, Arnold surrounds Bailey with nature, not only in the farmlands nearby but also in her apartment where Bug’s latest get-rich scheme is buying a frog with lickable, psychedelic secretions.