Sometimes, you must admit you’re a bit of a softie. I came to this realization while tearing up at the end of the new documentary Every Little Thing. In form, it’s largely unremarkable. Yet something connected with me about this work––that something being a sensitivity to animals (after all both of my cats joined me for the viewing*) which primed me to like the film at least a little bit. What can one do?
The documentary takes on as its subject Terry Masear, the founder of Los Angeles Hummingbird Rescue, a non-profit dedicated to healing countless injured creatures. Every Little Thing is, to say the least, as modest in scope as that sounds. Functioning as a portrait of this great woman, but also a nature doc-of-sorts––with a lot of up-close, slow-motion hummingbird footage to make animal fans squee––the film is lodged somewhat awkwardly in several modes. The editing patterns––which basically come down to drone shots of Los Angeles then archival footage then stuff that looks like reality TV––makes the film feel a little shapeless, as if it’s striving to reach feature-length throughout.
Yet Masear, as a subject, rubs off on the viewer in a positive fashion, the biography she’s willing to provide us making her instantly sympathetic. Beyond just her selfless work with birds, we get the portrait of a woman still grieving from her dead husband and reckoning with childhood trauma, to which she makes the connection to her mission to care for these animals very clear. Yet part of what makes her a great subject isn’t just her nobility. We see her snippier side when ranting about people who clearly don’t care about birds or nature on the whole. She’s the kind of older person one can tell holds a lot of pain at every moment. You see through her the idea of life as a series of compartmentalizations. After all, many of the birds she takes care of do end up dying, which the film doesn’t shy away from in its hardest-hitting scenes, even if her steely acceptance of how that’s just the way it goes tries to give us some reassurance.
Masear ends the film powerfully by saying true greatness is showing love and care for something without being asked to, with triumphant music scoring a recovered hummingbird hovering in the air. The degree to which she’s evidently coping with her own traumatic past seems like something the film doesn’t quite want you exiting the theatre thinking about. Maybe we’re not seeing the real––or rather full––story of this woman and it’s disingenuous to send the viewer out on a high note, but regardless, I still cried. Who knows what you’ll choose to take away from it?
(*I’ll admit that my cats would likely rip the hummingbirds in this film to shreds if given the chance. But I try not to think about it.)
Every Little Thing is now in limited release.