The Thing About Barry

As a film enthusiast who has been following Barry Keoghan’s career since his chilling performance in “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” it’s a delight to see him thrive and evolve on the silver screen. His ability to balance the fine line between acting and celebrity is truly impressive, much like trying to ride a unicycle while juggling flaming batons – not an easy feat, but Keoghan makes it look effortless.

Over the past two years, Barry Keoghan has transformed from an actor relatively unknown to many, with his name still puzzling some, into a highly visible young performer. Following his Oscar nomination for “The Banshees of Inisherin” in 2022 and the storm of memes, comments, and discussions surrounding “Saltburn” in 2023, Keoghan has transitioned from being “That kid from Dunkirk?” to one of the rodent boyfriends of 2024. This meteoric rise is amusing if you’re among the select few who have been tracking Keoghan’s career since his chilling performance as the potentially poisonous child in Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2017 film “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” Keoghan garnered admiration from film enthusiasts for the enigmatic intensity he displayed there, which could be amplified for movies like “The Green Knight” or toned down to meet the quick-witted superhero demands of “Eternals.

Three years following his Marvel introduction, Keoghan graced the Toronto International Film Festival with not one but two films. “Bird,” his latest collaboration with director Andrea Arnold, was initially screened at Cannes in May to positive feedback, however, it was overshadowed by more captivating films like “Anora” and “Emilia Pérez.” Despite this, “Bird” was selected as a Canadian premiere by TIFF, similar to their practice with Cannes titles. Additionally, the world premiere of the Irish film “Bring Them Down” was also showcased at the festival, starring Keoghan and Christopher Abbott as adversaries in a longstanding family feud on neighboring farms.

Experiencing both “Bird” and “Bring Them Down” together at a film festival offers a comprehensive Barry Keoghan film experience. He’s well-known for his charm, gracing the cover of magazines like People, but he’s also an exceptionally talented actor. His performance in “Bring Them Down” is as intense as any Arnold movie, and he holds his own against powerful actors like Abbott. The scene where Barry cracks an egg on his forehead in “Bring Them Down” will undoubtedly end up in my collection of reaction GIFs. However, it’s in “Bird” that we truly see Online Barry shine. In this film, he plays a heavily tattooed father living in a dismal English tenement – even for an Arnold movie – and his character, Bug, makes a striking entrance on a motor scooter, wearing a gold chain, newsboy cap, and covered in various insect tattoos, including a centipede winding up his neck and onto his face.

The movie primarily focuses on Bug’s daughter, Bailey (played by Nykiya Adams), who is unexpectedly involved in Bug’s sudden wedding to a woman she has never met. Interestingly, this woman seems to have a fondness for an animal-print bodysuit that Bailey recently purchased. However, there’s another significant portion of the film involving Franz Rogowski, but I won’t reveal any details about it. Here’s a taste of some of the antics Barry engages in in “Bird“:

He gets hold of a hallucinogenic toad, intending to sell it illegally to fund his upcoming wedding. (I apologize for any confusion; I meant “purposes” instead of “porpoises.”)
➼ He practices for his wedding dance when he thinks no one is watching.
Instead of asking “Why can’t you be chuffed for me?”, he could ask, “Isn’t there a bit of joy you can share with me, given your feelings about the surprise stepmother?” This way, it communicates the same idea but in a more sensitive and considerate manner.
He listens to “father’s tunes” as he believes it encourages his psychedelic toad to produce a greater amount of its potent substances.
➼ He calls “Murder on the Dancefloor” a “shit song.”
He takes charge of a lively karaoke performance of Coldplay’s “Yellow,” all the while clutching his psychedelic toad.
➼ He jumps a turnstile while wearing a green nylon track suit.
➼ He asks “Where’s Scotland?” while looking at a map of Britain.
He serenades “Lucky Man” by The Verve as he rides a scooter alongside his daughter and son. (He happens to have a son too.)
➼ He says, “Fuck Scotland … fuck haggis.”
At his wedding, he donned a midnight-blue tuxedo, trimmed with lavender interior, and danced to “Cotton Eye Joe” while also serenading the crowd with Blur’s “The Universal.

In his “meme king” mode, Barry excels at portraying a character. He skillfully blends an endearingly inept dead-end dad with a fondness for unsophisticated aesthetics, yet he also shows affection towards his children and cherishes his new spouse. Every time the camera focuses on him, he perfectly captures the sweetly seedy vibe that the movie requires.

If “Bird” symbolizes Barry’s freedom to express himself unrestrainedly, “Bring Them Down” represents a time when Barry must suppress his emotions, playing a character heavily influenced by the allegiances and animosities bequeathed by his parents. In many scenes of the film, Keoghan’s character Jack seems more like an observer than an active participant in the narrative; he passively watches as his father (Paul Ready) and mother (Nora-Jane Noone) argue over their struggling farm, and when his father makes the decision to retaliate against Abbott’s neighboring farm, Jack simply follows suit.

This is what gets lost in all the fun we have with his red-carpet expressions, his high-school-senior-who-just-got-hot fashion sense, and his accent: the fact that he grabbed our attention by being incredibly good at his actual job. “Well, there goes that dream” isn’t a funny line on its own; it resonates because of Keoghan’s ability to play disarming vulnerability. Saltburn, for all its provocations and eyebrow piercings, grabbed attention not because of the plain existence of a cum-slurpy bathtub scene but because Keoghan delivered the creepy possessive longing necessary to sell it. Some performers are fine teetering along the high wire that separates acting from celebrity without falling on one side or the other lest they lose the critics or the stans. For the moment, Barry Keoghan is staying upright, riding his scooter, and getting high off the hallucinogenic toad that is popularity in the 2020s.

2024-09-11 20:54

The Thing About Barry

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