EVERY LITTLE THING (Sundance FF 2024) – Review by Leslie Combemale
A celebration of some of our tiniest and most magical creatures, Every Little Thing follows one woman’s mission to save injured hummingbirds in and around LA, and it represents the sort of transformative journey we need right now. Documentary writer/director Sally Aitken’s new release is the same kind of emotional narrative as her 2021 Sundance release Playing With Sharks. Both juxtapose a woman working with enigmatic creatures, and though one is sharks, the other hummingbirds, Every Little Thing is, surprisingly, sometimes just as intense as her last film. In Every Little Thing, for both the lead human subject, hummingbird rehabilitation expert Terry Masear, and the birds that come into her care, trauma and resilience are central to the story. It is a story sometimes as suspenseful as any action flick, but is also, in equal parts, tender, beautiful, heartbreaking, and joyful.
Masear comes from what she calls “a nail biting childhood”, including abuse that landed her in the hospital and almost killed her. A woman with four graduate degrees, she also had a loving partnership with her husband Frank for 33 years, before losing him to a debilitating illness. To her, working to save and restore these smallest birds in the world is her own rehabilitation.
All this information about Masear, who wrote the book that inspired Aitken to create the documentary, Fastest Things on Wings, is presented without sentimentality, and is only secondary to the real subjects. Birds come in, and are promptly given names like Cactus, the Sydney Twins, Charlie, Sugar Baby, Mikhail and Alexa, and on and on. Viewers follow the drama of trying to get them from triage through to health and release, or “rewilding”. Anchored in a gorgeous show of slow motion footage of these bright beauties in flight, which can’t help but calm and slow the heart rate, the various arcs are an emotional rollercoaster. Will Cactus, wounded when she landed in a prickly plant, survive? These are fragile creatures, which becomes only too clear when Masear says she tries very hard not to become attached.
The film, as one might imagine, is a feast for the eyes, and that is, in great measure, to the credit of wildlife cinematographer Ann Johnson Prum and editor Tania Nehme. Aitken knows how to surround herself with talent equal to her own. That includes multi award winning composer Caitlin Yeo, who beautifully articulates the joy and sadness so much a part of Masear’s calling with a soaring score, used in almost every sequence of the film.
As an animal lover, I’m one who will warn potential viewers away from a narrative film that has an animal death, and even warns folks when documentaries get too graphic with the circle of life. This film, however, is so full of compassion and joy, that it’s worth a few tears for the rescues that don’t make it. It’s tough work, and each survival and success seems almost like a miracle.
Masear believes showing compassion is an act of greatness, repeatedly speaking of the kindness of those who bring in birds in distress. She says, “I don’t measure a rescue by the outcome, only by the compassion that went into saving the bird.” That philosophy is baked into every frame of Every Little Thing, and that is a little bit of its own miracle.
5 out of 5 stars
