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By fragmenting conventional narrative smoothness, the filmmakers also fragment any possibility of a smooth descent to a conventionally sentimental conclusion. As Chan Parker, Diane Venora is no orchestra wife. She is stern, protective, forgiving and touched by an awareness, never openly acknowledged, of how short Bird's passage is bound to be. Samuel E. Wright as Dizzy Gillespie, for whom Conscience might have been a better nickname, and Michael Zelniker as Red Rodney, the white trumpeter who shyly insinuates himself into a black man's world, make splendid sidemen to this life.
There is not a cheap note or a careless image, not an easy judgment or a forced emotion, in the 2 hr. 43 min. of Bird. It permits a man's life its complexity. It invites us to experience the redeeming grace of his music. And with its passionate craft, it proclaims that Eastwood is a major American director.