Guide to Documentary Films
Anthropology
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill(2005) “Are they yours?” asks a young girl as she watches strikingly colored green and red parrots eat out of the hand of a middle-aged man with thick-rimmed glasses and a waist-length gray ponytail. “No,” replies Mark Bittner, “these are wild.”
Throughout Judy Irving’s documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Bittner’s eyes reflect a profound tenderness for San Francisco’s unusual flock of cherry-headed conures. The arrival of these South American birds is a mystery and source of urban legend; the most plausible story being they are escaped (or freed) pets that found a way to survive on the vegetation of the Bay area. Irving’s photography is stunning and crisp, marking the contrast between these tropical beauties and the gray cityscape of their new home.
But the real story is Bittner’s relationship with the birds. Not only does he feed them from his hand, he takes them in when injured, names them, knows their life stories, and even attempts to play match maker for the outcast Connor—Bittner’s own alter ego. Connor’s neck is un-groomed, much like Bittner’s own uncut hair. He takes the bird in to groom him and for a time allows him to come and go from the house, giving him the choice of a wild or a domestic life. But Connor remains outside. “[O]nce he had the opportunity to be wild,” believes Bittner, “he wanted to stay wild. He wanted to be free.”
Throughout the film Bittner equates “wild” and “free”—when talking about the parrots and about himself. He arrived in San Francisco on the coattails of the Beats, hoping to be a musician, living on the streets, and reading Gary Snyder (because he “wanted to get into nature”). Echoing Connor’s choice of freedom, Bittner justifies his life without traditional accouterments of American society: “I was always trying to keep my freedom at the center. Not my freedom to be a bum or a no count or something. But my freedom to move forward.”
Wild Parrots only touches the surface of Bittner’s complicated assumptions. A few residents meet to express concern over the parrots’ welfare and their effect on the native wildlife of the region. Some even suggest exterminating the flock because they are an exotic, invasive species. This is all Irving does to suggest the parrots’ wildness is not the idyllic essence seen by Bittner. She calls attention to our muddied categories of wild and tame, exotic and native, emotion and instinct—but leaves us with no answers.
Ultimately, this film is not about the wildness of the urban parrots, but their lack of constraints, which serves as a symbol of Bittner’s own desires. More than a portrait of nature, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill exposes a man whose failed American dream of fame, success, and love ends with nature as refuge, as the location of freedom and individuality. Akin to a long line of American figures who have sought redemption through nature (Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville’s Ishmael) Irving touchingly portrays Bittner’s quest for the same.
Kelly Enright Rutgers University enright_kelly@mac.com
