Dir. Judy Irving, USA, 2005, 83 mins
Featuring: Mark Bittner, Connor, Olive, Mingus, Picasso, Sophie, Tupelo, Pushkin etc
Review by Peter Fraser
This amiable documentary about Mark Bittner, a Dharma bum living in San Francisco who found an extended family of wild parrots perched in the trees outside the house where he was staying, will please all those nature lovers out there who feel undernourished by tooth and claw reportage from the bird and animal kingdoms. As benign but gently insistent avian propaganda the film has a tender charm.
Ok, the viewer might pause to wonder whether the personalities that Mark ascribes to the parrots – that he has taken care of for four years at the start of the documentary – reveal more about the birds or about him. We’re watching a nature documentary alright but who is the real subject? An eyebrow raising, yet rather satisfying, twist in the tale suggests that in a sense it was always Mark. But the birds are pretty fascinating too.
Either way it’s more of a character study. Mark introduces us to the principals among the Cherry-headed conures (also known as Red-masked parakeets). There’s Mingus, the agoraphobic parrot with the split personality; Picasso and Sophie, he’s the ‘big dumb lug’ and she’s the smart squawk who made the first move; and Tupelo, the original feathered friend that Mark took care of who has a special and rather poignant place in his heart.
‘How do you become so attached to a bird?’ Mark says in wonder. He himself admits that just a few years previously he would have found the idea extremely strange. It’s to the film’s credit that any sense of spectacle swiftly diminishes, except when looking through the eyes of other people, such as the tourists who stop to see ‘St. Francis of the birds.’ I have to say that despite the film’s publicity Mark never comes across as a saint.
Homeless and musically minded for nigh on fourteen years, Bittner seems a good match for these incandescently emerald parrots who have at some point been smuggled across the Mexican border and found themselves overlooking the sun-saturated vista of Golden Gate Bridge. Not a bad nest to end up in either for them or for Mark. The director Judy Irving makes the migratory parallel explicit through Mark’s affection for Connor, the outsider of the flock, through an impressively understated and elliptical narrative.
It seems that the parrots meet some spiritual need in Mark and the film is infused with his, and I suspect, Judy’s belief in the oneness of nature. Mark refutes the charge of anthropomorphism that will immediately spring to mind when he speaks about parrots that are jealous or in love. Hardly scientific, his study of the birds has its own kind of integrity and it’s amusing to see someone who’s spent most of his life bumming around finally find the meaning he’s been searching for in someone else’s backyard. Not for the blockbuster crowd but as a vision of San Francisco it sure is an antidote to Bullitt.
