I saw “The Big Year” on Sunday afternoon. Since it was the first sunny and mild day we’ve had in three weeks, and only the second such day we’ve had on the weekend since the Big Sit on Oct. 9, I was torn between birding some more and paying $3 extra for the night show or going to the early show. Since I had already purchased the early show ticket in advance, I embraced my inner cheapskate and went to the early movie. The reported eared grebe in my county that I was hoping to add to my Life List yesterday will have to wait for next year.
There were 11 people in the theater. Two tweens entered the theater with a thirtysomething couple, but the other seven moviegoers were all “silver panthers”. Interestingly, at the end of the flick when they rolled the credits and flashed photos of the 751 birds spotted by Bostick in the movie (or at least the species of birds), the girls and their parents left but the rest of us stayed until every bird was shown. The Magnificent Seven had to be birders because they weren’t staying to read the names of the “Best Boy” or “Key Grip” or “Costume Designer”!
While the comedy/adventure was not a laugh a minute, as some might have expected, given the three leading “funny men,” I thought the movie was entertaining as well as educational.
I found it curious if unlikely that none of the three competing birders carried a spotting scope. Other birders did, but not these three, they always managed to get within fairly close rang to ID the bird with binoculars.
The scene where a fellow birder ID’d a bird by his call and Bostick (Owen Wilson) insisted on confirming it since the birder himself was making bird calls put to rest concerns by the other two competitors, Stu Preissler and Brad Harris (played by Steve Martin and Jack Black respectively), that Bostick might be cheating.
Knowing how much being #1 meant to Bostick and how clever he was at distracting his fellow birders and keeping secret that he was going for another "Big Year," I wondered if this was merely another distraction for his competitor’s sake and that he would do anything including cheat to keep his title. But perhaps not. Being the best birder wouldn't be as meaningful if it wasn't won fairly. Still, I had my doubts about him. Ambition can be "blind".
Since the contest employs the honor system, no-one but the birders themselves will ever know how many birds they actually saw (or heard, for the contest, identifying a bird by call is as good as a visual ID), which brings us to the ”moral tale”.
WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD....
In the end, Bostick traveled the world and broke his own record, but he lost his wife (forgot if she was his third or fourth wife) and his chance at making a real life legacy by creating a baby in her fertility-drug loaded womb. Being a well to do contractor, I wondered why he also didn’t lose his business. He had people working for him, but unlike the other two characters we didn’t see what was going at his business while he was gone. Instead, we saw a competing contractor making renovations to his house, which his wife hired just to bust his chops.
The second place (Harris/Black) and fourth place (Preissler/Martin) winners fared better in their home lives than Bostick. Black won over the girl birder he liked, and Martin’s daughter-in-law had a boy, who they named “Stewart” after him. Martin got the “legacy” he was seeking in his grandson instead of winning the “Big Year” or in becoming CEO of the company he founded, which other execs we’re trying to twist his arm into doing. I half expected him to click his heels together and repeat... there's no place like home.... there's no place like home...
Besides Black not having a mate to long for at home like his two competitors after the three watched two eagles hold talons in a beautifully photographed freefall (if it was CGI, it was damn good), the other subplot that underpinned Black’s character was his relationship with his father, played by Brian Dennehy- good casting, Black even looks like Dennehy (who no doubt also likes to eat the largest piece of chocolate cake
.
His father’s brush with mortality after a heart attack caused him to embrace his son’s ambition to be the best birder in the world rather than continue to put him down as a “slacker” who at 36 couldn’t keep his marriage together or stay at one job for the rest of his life as he had done.
There was a touching if not saccharin moment btwn them where Black realizes his father is more important to him than chasing the next bird and turns back on a snowy path to look for his father who is toting an oxygen tank and finds him looking at the snowy owl he was chasing. What made it saccharin for me was the CGI owl. Too “ET”.
I also liked the bit where a Brit birder sees the three competitors rushing to catch a glimpse of another bird to add to their Big Year list and says, “Americans, they even have to make birding into a competition”. If I had written the screenplay, I would have had him use the word “Yanks”. It has a more derogatory tone. Seemed like a comment on American vs. British attitudes toward birding.
In some ways the story was typical Hollywood fare, the underdog pitted against the "Champ," ("Rocky" but with birds
, but it was more interesting visually.
The rare birds and the remote vistas, the storms and blizzard and “The Birds” shots of thousands of migrating birds in flight (probably CGI). Lots of “eye candy” in the movie including Rashida Jones from “The Office”.
I can imagine how a non-birder might see this (if indeed any will see it as Bob suspects won’t happen) and might think all birders are cuckoos, but are they any different than those who “live to hunt” like a former neighbor who spent every free moment out in the woods tracking deer (even analyzing their feces) and target practicing?
Or how about gamers who have to get the latest X-box version and latest game out? Or amateur astronomers who drive to remote locations and stay up all night to do Messier Marathons? Or stamp collectors who if they had the money would pay $825,000 for an “Inverted Jenny”?
I don’t have the wherewithal, ambition, or skill to go for a “Big Year,” but the movie did boost my interest in birding or at least in “birdwatching”. As I learned in the movie, you don’t call a serious amateur a “birdwatcher”.
The “Big Sit” earlier this month also sparked my interest. When I left I told the group that what I had learned was that the ability to recognize bird calls was as important as learning to visually identify the birds.
Contrary to the movie, the Big Sit made me realize that a scope is not an option but an essential tool if you want to get serious about keeping a Life List.
Birds are tiny creatures and 8x or even 10x doesn’t always cut it for making an ID or for seeing satisfying detail of birds of prey riding the thermals on the ridges or small, shy birds who won’t let you get close (unlike that friendly CGI Snowy Owl) and force you to traipse for miles through the woods to see them with binoculars. Too much work for me. I’ll leave that to Bostick, Harris and Preissler.
Brock
