.jpg)
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.
Bird (c) MUBI
And then there’s Bird, the eccentric stranger Bailey meets and bonds with as he tries to find his parents, whom he has traced back to Bailey’s old home. There’s a lot of plot to digest in Bird, including unwanted pregnancies, violence against women and drug use, but it’s mostly in service to Bailey’s burgeoning need to rebel in this underbelly of society Arnold is known to gravitate towards. It might feel like hopeless poverty porn, especially when we glimpse into her younger half-siblings’ situation, but Arnold has also provided a glimmer of hope in Bird, who immediately takes a protective stance towards Bailey. How it all ends takes a bit of narrative leap that may feel too fantastical for a movie so entrenched in stark realism, but through a lens of a modern fairy tale, I took it both on face value and as a compelling allegory. Bird is a spiritual British cousin to Arnold’s most famous film, “American Honey,” about a caravan of free-spirited but lawless young people, but I found “Bird’s” ending much more optimistic and palatable. Both better-known actors Keoghan (Saltburn) and Rogowski (Passages) are generous to co-stars Buda, and, especially, Adams, making their impressive film debuts.
The Piano Lesson (c) Netflix
Film: The Piano Lesson
In Cinemas, To Stream on Netflix November 22
Denzel Washington’s drive to commit all of August Wilson’s 20th century play series to film (he directed and starred in Fences in 2016) has led us to the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Piano Lesson, the third of Wilson’s plays to make it Broadway (in 1988) and the first to heavily lean on the supernatural and spiritual elements that will occur more frequently in later plays, like Gem of the Ocean. Charles S. Dutton and S. Epatha Merkeson starred in the original Broadway production before they became TV stars in Roc and Law and Order, respectively. Their roles are played on film by John David Washington as Boy Willie and Danielle Deadwyler as Berniece, two siblings at odds over their family piano. Boy Willie has come to Pittsburgh to sell the piano to buy land in Mississippi, but Berniece insists the instrument stays in the family because not only did their slave father carve their family history into its frame, but also all he had to go through to acquire it back from the white plantation owner.
The Piano Lesson (c) Netflix
Also in the story is the usual August Wilson secondary cast of colorful and full-of-stories characters, including Boy Willie and Berniece’s two uncles (Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Potts), Berniece’s preacher boyfriend (Corey Hawkins) and Boy Willie’s friend from down South, Lymon (a comic relief Ray Fisher). Many of these actors reprise their roles from a recent Broadway revival, which explains the lived-in feel of the acting, including Washington, who brings enthusiasm and anger to Boy Willie, but lacks gravitas as the ghosts that haunt the family invade the story. Deadwyler, on the other hand, new to the troupe, gives her whole body and soul to Berniece, who not only has to juggle Boy Willie’s nonsense, but is also raising a daughter (Skylar Smith) and having mixed feelings about love and settling down. Jackson gives a nicely restrained performance as Uncle Doaker, who seems to be the voice of reason in the family. Denzel’s other son Malcolm Washington directs his first film with a bit too much flash, leaning too heavily on the supernatural elements for jump-scares and an over-the-top score (this is a rare misstep for composer Alexandre Desplat). Still, this is worth the watch for Deadwyler alone, but also to grasp the importance of August Wilson’s voice in the American theater.
Small Things Like These (c) Lionsgate
Film: Small Things Like These
In Cinemas
A lot has been written about The Magdalene Sisters of Ireland, who, for most of the 20th century, would take in fallen and pregnant girls (many in their teens and unmarried) in what seemed like charity to their Catholic families but make them work hard manual labor while giving their babies up for adoption, usually for a profit. This shameful chapter in the Catholic Church’s history may have made it into song (Joni Mitchell’s “The Magdalene Laundries”) and many a drama and documentary film, but it still has the power to shock with the church’s audacity and the complicity of the churches’ congregations, who surely knew what was going on. This latter group is explored in Small Things Like These, Belgian director Tim Mielants’s eloquent and angry film (based on a book by Claire Keegan) that takes place during Christmas time in the early 1980s (!), where hard-working coal worker Bill Furlough (Cillian Murphy) is barely getting by supporting his wife and daughters, let alone paying for presents, finds himself delivering coal to the Good Sheppard church, turning a blind eye to the poor girls working the laundry near the school his daughters attend. Seeing this so close to the holidays reminds Bill of a Christmas with his poor Ma (Agnes O’Casey), seen in flashbacks (with an expressive Louis Kirwan as the young Bill), who was spared the laundries because of a rich patroness, but always carried the societal stigma both Bill and his mother had to endure. When a girl brazenly approaches Bill, begging him to take her away, it lights a fire in Bill, although unsure of what he could do. Recent Oscar-winner Murphy (for Oppenheimer) is heartbreaking as the lowly David-figure to the church’s Goliath, embodied chillingly in just a few scenes by Emily Watson as Sister Mary. That it’s Christmas is unsettling for a film about children in danger, but the ending ties it all-together poetically. If ever there was a time for a film where an ordinary man finds the courage to stand up to a powerful tyrannical institution, Small Things Like These is both morally inspirational and aspirational.
If you want to comment on these reviews, please do so on my Instagram account. All reviews have their own post. And please follow to know when new reviews are released.
