Because I often fish along the Central California coast, I enjoy watching pelicans cruise majestically along the top of the bluffs and dive for fish in surgical strikes. The California Brown Pelican is the subject of Judy Irving’s meditative documentary Pelican Dreams. You may remember Irving’s surprise 2004 hit The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, a documentary so captivating that it played 28 weeks in San Jose.
Wild Parrots had two things going for it – the oddity of birds from tropical rainforests living wild in a cold and grimy city, along with a compellingly unusual human star. Pelican Dreams doesn’t have those OMG features, but it has the very interesting stories of two individual birds, along with the riches to rags to kinda riches story of the species. The California Brown Pelican was named as an endangered species in 1970, but the ban of DDT has allowed the population to rebound, so they are no longer listed as endangered, but still face threats from oil spills, fishing tackle and climate change.
Irving had been looking to do a pelican documentary and met with the director of a pelican rescue facility, but she didn’t know how to begin the movie. Then, two weeks later, a pelican landed in the middle of traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. Irving takes us through the life of that pelican, known to biologists as Pink 193 and named Gigi by Irving (for Golden Gate). Irving has a decidedly non-clinical view of the birds: “I would like a pelican in MY back yard”.
Pelican Dreams has a dreamy and meandering pace; like listening to Wyndham Hill New Age music for 80 minutes, it’s not a bad thing, you just need to be ready to settle in.
One more thing – the movie’s final shot (through a Panorama camera) is spectacular and unforgettable – a pelican diving at sunset – against a pink sky and purple coastline.
Here’s the trailer.