The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill Movie Review
Judy Irving'due south The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Colina is the third intriguing nature documentary of 2005, a charming sleeper hit that focuses like March of the Penguins on the life challenges faced by a population of exotic birds, and also, similar Grizzly Man, on an eccentric California man'due south intimate involvement in their lives.
Directed by Judy Irving. Marking Bittner. Shadow.
Caveat Spectator
Some documentary footage of dead, injured or sick birds.
The difference here is that the dangers faced by the moving picture'south subjects, a small flock mostly made upwards of scarlet-headed conures, aren't those of their native environment. As for Mark Bittner, a middle-aged, unemployed San Francisco human being with a waist-length ponytail that he says he'll cut if and when he finds a girlfriend, he's no Timothy Treadwell, driven to flee civilisation for some exotic location and insert himself into the lives of creatures living in the wild.
These tropical birds, native to South America, live in San Francisco. Like many of the city's residents, they're immigrants — in this case escapees from captivity, though no 1 knows exactly from where or when. In many ways they still behave like pet birds, flocking to Bittner as he brings them gratuitous meals. Still Bittner assures a skeptical bystander that they are wild birds, many of which were born (or hatched) in the wild and are now raising families of their own in freedom.
Like Treadwell with his bears, Bittner assigns his wild friends names and becomes intimate with their personalities, from homebody Mingus, a pet at heart, to flinty Connor, a blue-headed loner who takes his share of abuse but doesn't similar to see other birds picked on. On the other mitt, where Treadwell saw his own role in quasi-messianic terms equally the champion and defender of his beloved bears, Bittner, who really seems to be helping the birds, self-deprecatingly minimizes his identify in their lives: The flock, he says, would fare just fine without him. And, of course, information technology helps that the birds can't eat him.
Shooting in 16mm without the benefit of the special equipment and big budgets that made March of the Penguins and particularly Winged Migration so heart-popping, Irving captures some memorable images — a hilarious shot of a bird clearly grooving in time to music; lump-inducing footage involving a red-tailed hawk — merely more often than not relies on the birds' natural photogenic charm besides as the homo dimensions of the drama to sustain the 83-minute film.
The conures take been the subject of some controversy, in office due to concerns that as a non-native species they could pose some threat to the ecosystem. Non-indigeneous species sometimes become invasive and harmful in a new surroundings, where, in the absence of specific natural checks and balances from their native environment keeping their numbers nether command, they brainstorm to rapidly multiply, competing with and crowding out native species. (For example, any keeps the Chinese Ailanthus tree or "tree of heaven" in check in Prc isn't a factor in the New York area where I live. Originally established in Primal Park for its exotic tropical look, the "tree of heaven" has become the tree from hell, inexorably marching up and downward the Eastern seaboard displacing native trees.)
In this case, though, the conures don't show any signs of taking over San Francisco. On the contrary, as smart and savvy almost local dangers as they seem to be, the conures evidence just as susceptible equally native species to hawks and dangers such as viruses. Yet, they may exist holding their own; and the movie'south triumph is that you want them to hold their own, to remain a bold splash of local color in a metropolis that already has more than its fair share.
Source: http://decentfilms.com/reviews/wildparrots
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