Driving through Los Angeles and joking with her companion, Terry Masear the plainspoken star of “Every Little Thing” appears on screen. If there’s no repartee in return, that’s understandable Riding shotgun, in a minuscule nest inside a lovingly built coop, is a hummingbird named Wasabi.
If this sounds dangerously cute or precious, I promise you it’s not. There are darker undertones within the documentary’s bright opening sequence the way Masear tells her passenger, “You’re safe, you’re totally safe,” hints at a past and they are teased out in ways that deepen but never eclipse what is at hand: Masear and her relentless care for orphaned, injured and battered hummingbirds.
Masear’s book “Fastest Things on Wings” serves as the basis for Sally Aitken’s film (Aitken also made “Playing With Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story,” about another woman’s devotion to misunderstood animals), which knows there has been more than enough poeticizing of hummingbirds over time. It provides its own visual poetry when it focuses on rehabilitation an endeavor both practical and spiritual but what Aitken and her ace team have done with a few birds that are a few inches long and weigh a couple grams each is no small thing.
The particular beauty and mystery of birds has been strikingly captured by films as diverse as “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill,” “Pelican Dreams” and last year’s indelible “All That Breathes,” which looked at the labor of healing among the wounded. A worthy entry into this world, Aitken’s movie never lets go from start to finish; its emotional hold is as strong as these creatures’ fragility.
Masear has run a hummingbird rehabilitation hotline since 2008, this documentary follows her through 2022′s busy spring-summer season (lots of newborns). The hills and canyons of Los Angeles are painted by elegant drone camerawork, while amazing macro shots provide a rare opportunity to get a good look at these birds, which usually move too fast whether through slo mo footage of them suspended in air or ultra close ups of nonflying patients on the mend. (Nathan Barlow and Dan Freene shot the rehab story, Ann Johnson Prum handled the birds in the wild angle.)
In her homespun ICU, Masear tends to damaged wings and feeds motherless nestlings with the slenderest of syringes. “Their lives depend on me,” she says, without hyperbole. As to why this role as caretaker means so much to her, Aitken offers hints drop by drop, like from that tiny syringe, when the necessary details finally come out, there is no need for luridness the clarity and conciseness of Masear’s words, and the quaver in her voice, tell us all we have to know.
No explanation is given in the film about how she ended up in that large, partly unfurnished hilltop house where L.A. residents bring her injured hummingbirds, you’d have to read the production notes to learn that it’s a rental chosen for the documentary (Masear was coming back to town after moving during the pandemic). Setting aside niggling questions about fiscal realities, the location with its open air aviaries and feeders and fountains set among trees and other natural elements functions like a spa retreat for hummingbirds. In her infirmary indoors, Masear performs such treatments as “physical therapy flight training,” using a beloved twig she calls a magic wand. But this is magic born of dedication and concentration and hope against hope.
There’s technique and experience behind Masear’s bird whispering, prognosis delivering, personality reading skills. “I believe Jimmy will grow up to be a very successful hummingbird,” she asserts. She cracks wise about Mikhail’s unrequited love for Alexa, takes note of the strong spirit in Cactus (whose multiple injuries are mystifying) and mourns what seems like sheer meanness on behalf of Sugar Baby (whose wings were permanently damaged when someone doused her with sugar water).
“It’s not just this one bird,” Masear says through tears. It involves “a whole way of viewing the world that a lot of humans have.” Every Little Thing is not only an exquisitely affecting portrait in her respect for these littlest winged beings, in how directly she speaks to them, in how much they still surprise her after all this time but also suggests compassion as a modus vivendi. Given that we’ve more than doubled down on war instead of outgrowing it, that feels monumental.
When Masear buries those birds who don’t make it beneath layers of fresh petals some might scoff. Some might ask if it matters that Sugar Baby gets a few days or weeks of tender care and affection before dying. Aitken’s quietly electric film, however, supplies a thunderous answer Yes, it does.
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