'Birders: The Central Park Effect' aims to make birdwatching cool
Birders have always had a bum rap as binocular-wearing geeks. Jeffrey Kimball鈥檚 documentary, 鈥淏irders: The Central Park Effect,鈥� aims to change all that. First broadcast on HBO and now released into theaters, it鈥檚 an affectionate movie about people who are delightedly obsessional about all manner of birds, specifically the more than 100 species that congregate at various times of the year in New York鈥檚 Central Park 鈥� about one quarter of the total bird species in the United States and Canada.
Kimball is himself a birder, which means he isn鈥檛 condescending to the dozen or so birders he interviews. And although this is his first feature film (he鈥檚 spent most of his career doing sound work in movies), he knows how to capture revelatory shots of birds in flight or in repose. The trick is patience. A lot of patience. Hours can be spent waiting for that one moment when a red-tailed hawk or a hermit thrush alights or takes to the sky.
Most of the people he interviews are defiantly upfront about their passion. Chris Cooper (not the actor) says that birding 鈥渢urns every morning into a treasure hunt.鈥� His friends understand that from the high migration dates of April 15 to Memorial Day, they 鈥渨on鈥檛 see me nowhere.鈥�
Jonathan Rosen says, 鈥淚f you鈥檙e not out birding, you鈥檙e missing something, not just intellectually but almost in a bodily way. It鈥檚 just some deep human impulse really.鈥�
Jonathan Franzen (yes, the author) talks about the first time he really noticed the birds in Central Park 鈥� it was as if 鈥渢he trees were hanging with ornaments.鈥� He鈥檚 very funny about the usefulness of birding as a way of avoiding writing, but it鈥檚 clear that the head-clearing that comes with it is vital. (Although not mentioned in the movie, Franzen鈥檚 New Yorker essay 鈥淢y Bird Problem鈥� is one of the best pieces ever written about how birding can change one鈥檚 life.)
Franzen is also very funny about the dweeb factor in birding.
Unlike the other people who are interviewed, he acknowledges the stereotype and even agrees with it. 鈥淵ou鈥檝e got the binoculars up, and you鈥檙e demonstrating that you need something. That鈥檚 the essence of uncoolness.鈥�
A legend among birders is the matriarchal Starr Sapphir, a former Shakespearean actress who has been guiding birder tours through Central Park for more than 30 years. (At $8 a pop, it looks like a real bargain.) Terminally ill with breast cancer, she still manages her seasonal schedule with no-nonsense exactitude.
She鈥檚 compiled more than 80 notebooks over the years, logging all the species she鈥檚 sighted. 鈥淭he fun is in the counting,鈥� she says.
The appeal of birding in Central Park is obvious: It鈥檚 a little piece of nature right in the city. As Franzen says, 鈥淚t鈥檚 one of those rare times in an adult鈥檚 life where the world suddenly seems more magical, rather than less.鈥�
Kimball doesn鈥檛 delve deeply enough into the lives of these birders, perhaps because he doesn鈥檛 want to upstage the birds, or maybe because he feels that everything nonbirdy about birders is for the birds.
He also is a tad too touchy-feely about the ornithological wondrousness of it all. One observer notes that birds can be ruthless in search of food, but this comment is a brief blip in the lovefest. Still, I鈥檓 glad Kimball doesn鈥檛 go in for a lot of tooth and claw close-ups. One of my pet peeves about nature documentaries is that we always end up watching some poor beast being stalked and gored.
In 鈥淏irders,鈥� by contrast, nature is one big entrancing show; a world of tweets without 鈥渢weets.鈥� Grade: B+ (Unrated.)
