Saving the world one bite-or bird-at a time.
In a dull season of post-holiday movie doldrums, along comes a pair of lively documentaries, offering an alternative vision of a world without snow, a place where people eat avocado and mango for breakfast, do yoga on the beach and watch tropical birds flock in guava trees.
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Go Further
documents the pilgrimage of a biofuelled bus (running off hemp oil-it could only be more hippie if it were powered by a hamster wheel full of dreadlocked guys playing hacky sack) acquired by actor Woody Harrelson's environmental nonprofit. The SOL Tour (Simple Organic Living) gathers Harrelson, a raw food chef, a yoga instructor, an activist-lawyer and assorted others who ride their bikes from Seattle to Santa Barbara (the Merry Pranksters' route), stopping at various colleges to preach the gospel of spirulina. Of greatest entertainment value is the conversion of Steve, a production assistant whose Simple Organic Living is severely hampered by his jones for junk food.
Harrelson, who will never shake off having been a notorious pothead, seems to know his stuff; he speaks with disarming fluency about everything from mass extinctions to the dairy industry (though preaching to a choir of approving rich white college students). But his vision comes across at times as gluey and self-righteous-clearcuts in Oregon are horrific enough; they don't need to be annotated with slo-mo pained looks and ponderous utterances ("someday we'll look back on this as the Dark Ages") or, worst of all, sententious protest-song music-video moments. There are a few genuinely fascinating, unstaged scenes (such as one in which Steve shares seaweed snacks with a pickup truck full of small-town kids huffing computer keyboard cleaner) but for the most part
Go Further
settles into its own complacency, equating conscience with consuming. Sadly, it probably won't convince anyone who isn't already on board the bus.
On the other hand,
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
, while it doesn't really bill itself as environmentalist, winds up being far more moving and thus more effective. Unemployed musician and full-time eccentric Mark Bittner is able to spend so much time with the cherry-headed conures which orbit his neighborhood that he's done something no professional ornithologist has: he's observed their personalities and social relationships. No
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one's certain how the flock of South American birds
was initially formed, though an amusing segment is devoted to the various urban legends surrounding their release into the wilds of San Francisco, but now they thrive in its semi-tropical flora. Director Judy Irving's photography is astonishing: it seems you can actually read the birds' facial expressions, feeling the palpable isolation of Connor, a blue-crowned conure who's rejected by the other parrots and whose only companion is an escaped budgie-or the shy affection of Picasso and Sophie, an ill-fated couple. Bittner's goodbye to an emotionally disturbed bird named Mingus is heartbreaking, rivaling any assisted-suicide Oscar nominee for hanky usage.
Wild Parrots
, for all its endearingly amateurish touches (an ill-advised soundtrack, an occasional melodramatic stop-frame), develops from a nature documentary in the tradition of Goodall into a surprising love story that sends you out of the theatre feeling hope spring eternal in the human breast. And wondering if Southwest has any ticket specials to somewhere warmer.
