The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
I think all good movies take you somewhere. They may take you a completely fictional, futuristic world or inside another person's life.
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill takes you outside into the trees and makes you curious about the creatures that make their homes there.
It is the story of Mark Bittner, a drifting, sometimes homeless hippie who bears a passing resemblance to Jerry Garcia, who has taken to feeding, naming and doting on a flock of wild parrots which have made San Francisco their home. At the beginning of the film, we seem him as a strange eccentric but we follow him because of the relationship he has with these birds. We learn about Mingus, the cranky one who's afraid of the wild; Picasso and Sophie, a pair of scarred, loyal love birds; and, most closely, Connor, a blue-crowned loner hanging with a red-crowned flock, forever the outsider except when he's coming to the rescue of another parrot. As we come to care for these birds, we also grow to care for this strange individual who has put so much time into understanding them. We find he is much wiser than we originally gave him credit for.
The movie follows several interesting threads as Mark loses the place he's been living in and must find a new place for the parrots he's been taking special care of and the flock faces threats to their survival. The movie ends with some revalations and some surprises which will leave you with a mix of many different emotions and may make you see things in a new light. I know it did for me.
The movie is beautifully shot and extremely well paced. Judy Irving, the director, makes only one bad choice, I think, by inserting a still picture near the end of the film, which goes overboard in eliciting an emotional reaction from the audience. The emotion was already there and well-earned, it didn't need to be stoked even more in such a manipulative manner. A rare false step in a wondeful film.
I highly recommend this movie if you're in the mood for something different, this completely original film. We're definitely in a golden age of documentaries right now and this is my favorite of the ones I've seen.
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill takes you outside into the trees and makes you curious about the creatures that make their homes there.
It is the story of Mark Bittner, a drifting, sometimes homeless hippie who bears a passing resemblance to Jerry Garcia, who has taken to feeding, naming and doting on a flock of wild parrots which have made San Francisco their home. At the beginning of the film, we seem him as a strange eccentric but we follow him because of the relationship he has with these birds. We learn about Mingus, the cranky one who's afraid of the wild; Picasso and Sophie, a pair of scarred, loyal love birds; and, most closely, Connor, a blue-crowned loner hanging with a red-crowned flock, forever the outsider except when he's coming to the rescue of another parrot. As we come to care for these birds, we also grow to care for this strange individual who has put so much time into understanding them. We find he is much wiser than we originally gave him credit for.
The movie follows several interesting threads as Mark loses the place he's been living in and must find a new place for the parrots he's been taking special care of and the flock faces threats to their survival. The movie ends with some revalations and some surprises which will leave you with a mix of many different emotions and may make you see things in a new light. I know it did for me.
The movie is beautifully shot and extremely well paced. Judy Irving, the director, makes only one bad choice, I think, by inserting a still picture near the end of the film, which goes overboard in eliciting an emotional reaction from the audience. The emotion was already there and well-earned, it didn't need to be stoked even more in such a manipulative manner. A rare false step in a wondeful film.
I highly recommend this movie if you're in the mood for something different, this completely original film. We're definitely in a golden age of documentaries right now and this is my favorite of the ones I've seen.