Undescribable Perfection

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The buzz about "Wild Parrots" is that it is a heartwarming portrait of a gentle man's bittersweet love affair with beautiful parrots.Well, okay, if that's the movie you saw, great.The "Wild Parrots" I saw was disappointing.The least I expect from any filmmaker is honesty. If you use your camera to ferret out truths that most of us miss, and present those truths articulately and in an interesting way to others, you work deserves a showing, no matter its topic. I love birds and haven't much interest in sports and would rather watch an insightful sports documentary than a movie about birds that plays it safe and fudges its story."Wild Parrots" follows forty something San Franciscan Mark Bittner's relationship with a flock of feral parrots that live on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. Bittner spends much of his time hand feeding the birds and observing their behavior. Bittner, who is of sound mind and body but declines to work, lives rent-free in a cottage owned by people who apparently do work.The documentary's drama comes when the cottage owners decide that they must renovate the cottage. Given how extensively it needs to be renovated, they ask Bittner to leave.Bittner is shown weeping on camera. He gives away Mingus, a parrot he had living in the cottage with him. He says goodbye to Conner, a lone member of a species that is different from the rest of the flock. Conner had never been able to find a mate (a hard thing for a parrot, as they are very social) and Bittner had performed some mate-like functions for Conner, for example grooming him.Mingus is sent to live in a facility for abandoned parrots, and lonely Conner, after appearing to mourn Bittner's departure, dies tragically.The movie wants us to believe that Bittner is being victimized by the couple who asked him to leave their cottage, where he had lived for years without paying any rent. The movie wants us to believe that Mingus and Conner's sad fate is all the fault of the evil landlords.Oh, baloney.Bittner makes it clear that he has long refused to work for a living, preferring what he calls a more "spiritual" and "pure" lifestyle. Jesus was a carpenter . . . but that kind of labor is not good enough for Mark Bittner.Bittner could have gotten a job, enabled himself to pay rent, moved to a new apartment, and taken Mingus with him. After Bittner was evicted, he was taken in by friends in the East Bay. He was a short public transportation ride away from the parrot flock. He could have easily continued to visit the wild parrots; Conner did not have to mourn him.I've lived in the Bay Area. I met many who didn't work, and who didn't pay rent. These folks often announced themselves as above such pedestrian concerns as, oh, paying money for the food they ate, or contributing to society through labor. These folks often sponged off of their parents and friends. They often disappointed their loved ones and children. Like Bittner, they always had quotes from Zen scriptures at the ready to make themselves sound deep.Maybe there is a good reason why Bittner could not work, or live up to his commitments even to a flock of birds. The film never explores that question, though. It accepts, without any curiosity, Bittner's self description as a man too spiritual to work. The filmmaker became lovers with Bittner. Even so, women have been able, in the past, to explore the truths, both the benign truths and the hard truths, of their lovers' lives. That's what art is for, even art about parrots.The film doesn't even look very hard at the parrots it captures in its frame. There are very difficult to watch scenes of parrots attacking an injured flock member. No theory is offered as to why this happens.Any film featuring footage of parrots, other birds, and the sun on San Francisco Bay can't be all bad; "Wild Parrots" is beautiful. I just wish "Wild Parrots" had had a little bit more courage, a tad more curiosity, and some honesty. If the film had been more probing, and more honest, about both Bittner and the parrots, I'm sure I would have liked him, the birds, and the film much more.

I'm not one to rain on anyone's parade, but this feels more like an homage to the film maker's boyfriend than a compelling movie. If all you are interested in is a modest nature film with a few spectacular shots of bird behavior mixed in with a lot of pedestrian shots of the bird flock mixed in with some documentary-style talking-head scenes, mixed in with endless shots of Mark feeding birds out of his hand, well, OK.But IMDb members rate this film 8.0! Didn't any of you get tired of seeing Mark feed the birds? Haven't any of you fed birds yourself? Did any of you feel that if Mark's philosophy was so deep he might have made something more of his life than feeding birds? As a nature documentary, I'd rate it a 5 (compare the photography to March of the Penguins, for example), but as a feature-length film, it lacked a story, it lacked drama, it was repetitive, it didn't take me anywhere I haven't been, and, ultimately, it just didn't persuade me into believing its "animals are just as feeling as people" philosophy.

Before writing this, I took a quick skim over the other comments on this film. I had to smile when I saw there were no comments degrading the movie as much as I might have expected.'Parrots' opens with a skeptic inquiring about Bittner's relationship with the birds. If he feeds them, takes care of them when they're sick, and plays with them, what makes them wild, and not simply his pet flock? This opening scene aptly demonstrates most the preconceived notions one might have coming into the movie.However, Bittner proves to be an articulate, intelligent man, who can quietly laugh and compare himself to 'the crazy pigeon lady'. He cares deeply about these parrots, and we do too. As we meet them, Bittner sheds a bit of his own personal thoughts about the birds. He explores the human characteristics of these parrots, their cliques and love triangles, and even if we might not be enough of a bird expert to tell one red headed bird from the other, we love them all anyways.Judy Irving proves to be incredibly skilled as director, bringing us not just the quirkiness of the parrots and their pet human, but also shows the realities of the birds as wild animals. They are in danger of hawks, even are threatened by activist intervention.As far as documentaries go, 'Wild Parrots' should be remembered. No matter how skeptical or weird you think a person has to be in order to grow so attached to wild birds, this film does what all great films do; it gives you the will and the desire to care.

North Beach poet/writer/street musician Mark Bittner lived rent-free for three years in a small cottage on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill while trying to discover his life's direction, called Right Living in the Buddhist tradition. Instead of going to find it, however, he waited for it to come to him but he was growing impatient. "I've always had a feeling like I was on a path", he states, "that I was following the course of a river, and you don't jump the banks because you get impatient. So that's mostly what I was doing, but I was getting very impatient." His impatience ended when three green conures with red crowns showed up on his stairwell in North Beach. The next day twenty-six came, having either escaped from their owners or been intentionally released.Now they were in the city looking for gardens and parks, and people to feed them and they found their loving caretaker in Mark Bittner, a meeting seemingly meant to happen. All of this is documented in The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, directed by Judy Irving who won a national Emmy and the Grand Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1983. She filmed the pony-tailed Bittner for almost a year, following him from his days trying to scrape up enough money for an espresso at Café Trieste in North Beach to the more comfortable present. The film is not just for or about the birds but about a gentle soul, his bond with nature, and a loving witness to the events. Since its release, it has grossed more than $3 million at the box office and has played in more than 440 venues.After reading Beatnik poets Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder, Bittner took to heart Snyder's admonition to begin expressing your love of nature right where you are. He fell in love with the birds, feeding them, caring for them, and nurturing them when they were sick. Eventually he wrote a book about them that made the New York Times bestseller list in 2004. Bittner started feeding the parrots, photographing and cataloging them, while Irving filmed in 16mm enhanced to 35mm. As Irving narrates, we see the birds eating out of his hand, perching on his arm, and even pecking his ear as he creates a rhythm in their lives and becomes part of their daily routine. Bittner claims that each bird has a distinct personality and he gives them names such as Connor, a blue-crowned conure, Olive, a mitred conure and her friend Gibson, Pushkin who stole Olive from her friend Gibson and was the father of Mingus, Sophie, and Picasso.It is one of the sadder stories when Mark's favorite bird, the only blue-crowned conure who was never completely accepted by the flock, is snatched away by a hawk and we mourn when any of the birds dies. Bittner describes how the birds make it clear to him that we are all one and that our separateness is an illusion, like a waterfall that separates into many drops before coming together at the bottom. After seeing this film, one calls to mind the words of the poet e.e. cummings, "i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes." The beautiful birds opened up a new world for Bittner and Irving and may do so for you as well. They have now found the Right Living together and we are all the richer for it.