The Best Film of the Year Wasn’t Nominated

Happy awards season, everyone! Time for the stars to shine in all their splendor! For the rich and famous to saunter down the red carpet like they’re senators from Krypton! For Hollywood to congratulate itself again, and for the Academy to draw a line between winners and losers. This year, as all the A-listers pack into the Dolby Theater, there will be two listers sitting at home who fall short of B- or even C-level status. They are the makers of a documentary that never made a dent at the box office. And it happens to be the most unlikely best film of the year.

Listers, a documentary available for free on YouTube, features two brothers (Owen and Quentin Reiser) who, after smoking some weed, stumble upon a field guide to birds and spontaneously decide to set out and find 700 different bird species in the United States within a single calendar year (a lofty goal for even the most accomplished ornithologists). The story that unfolds is an American odyssey. They drive 30,000 miles in a 2010 Kia Sedona, eating beans and sleeping in Cracker Barrel parking lots while diving headfirst into one of the strangest and snobbiest subcultures: the world of birding.

The Reisers are genuinely hilarious, but don’t let their irreverence distract you from their skills behind a camera. Their footage is not just eye candy; it’s food for the soul. As you take in the slow-motion splendor of a northern harrier in flight or the striking underbelly of a painted redstart, it is impossible not to marvel over the obvious fact that these birds actually exist. The world, it turns out, is a gorgeous place. To their credit, the Reisers let creation speak for itself. No moral lessons about recycling, no global-warming guilt trip, just beautiful clips of flapping wings and flashes of bright color.

But what makes the film so enthralling is Owen and Quentin’s unreserved joy. They approach the birding world with enough wide-eyed curiosity to spark a sense of wonder in anyone, expert or novice alike. Their impulse to drive 300 miles to see a crested caracara flying around a California landfill may seem like stoner material, but escape from reality is not their goal. On the contrary, their eagerness only drives them deeper into reality. They make you wonder: If the point of life is not to drive 300 miles to see a crested caracara fly around a California landfill, then what exactly is it for?

Here’s the inevitable catch: a newfound hobby is a slippery slope. In order to feed that sense of joy, we often want to develop expertise. Whether it’s drumming in a rock band, writing short stories, or knitting sweaters, the more seriously you take something, the more fun it becomes. Ask any Civil War reenactor, and he’ll tell you the sooner you can manage not to be embarrassed by whatever it is you’re doing, the more likely you will transcend to a world beyond yourself. But that’s the nature of this slippery slope. Whatever we choose to take seriously runs the risk of being taken way too seriously. 

Early on, the brothers are introduced to a popular birding app called eBird, a crowd-sourced logbook that connects them with other enthusiasts and posts a leaderboard that ranks the nation’s best birders. At first, eBird makes this newfound hobby more appealing. It allows them to track their progress (“We just saw our 500th bird!”) and gives them a clearer goal. But the competition that first inspired them ends up crushing their spirits. Quentin becomes so distracted by his own ranking that birds are simply a means to victory. “This country is so big, and you have to go everywhere in the country to see enough birds to be in the power rankings,” he bemoans in a moment of clarity. “I like bird-watching, but I don’t like it in the competitive sense.” As humans, we need to care, but we also need to not care. 

This is where the Reisers get to the crux of our American affliction. All too often, our pursuit of happiness falls prey to an insatiable desire for more. More than our personal best. More than the other guy’s personal best. It is often not long until a hobby is not only a hobby but the outer shell of one’s search for self-justification.

In a review of Listers in the Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper confessed his need to track and optimize his running hobby. “I used to log my runs, until I realized I was putting on my sneakers and getting out the door simply because I wanted to see my stats go up,” he writes. Harper then compares the gamification of hobbies to the survival method of a parasitoid wasp. Once it injects its eggs into a hapless caterpillar, the larvae eat the host from the inside out. From all appearances, the host is still a caterpillar, but it is hollowed out. It looks alive, but it’s actually dead. Such is the hobbyist that has lost touch with that first spark of joy.

For the most part, the Reiser brothers return to what is true. Birds are absolute wonders. The world is more splendid than we will ever realize. Life is a total miracle. And our drive to compete and ambition to succeed distracts us from that reality. In a recent interview, Quentin explains their decision to release the film for free rather than sell it to Netflix or HBO. “I like the idea that a homeless guy can walk into a library somewhere and watch it, you know?” This is a man who is not striving to succeed but who has fallen in love. The only thing that could heighten his experience is sharing it with you. Your joy may not make the headlines or win an Oscar, but it is far more valuable.

The magic of Listers is that it is not trying to win an Oscar. It is not selling you anything. It simply wants to remind you that, despite everything, life is beautiful. This reminder is not a means to jumpstart your life but a source to return to whenever the well runs dry. Researchers have concluded that birds are objectively good for you. Articles have covered how birdsong is good for your mental health, but birds do not exist in order to ease our anxiety. Birds, like love or grace, are an end in themselves. In fact, it’s best not to control or overanalyze it. “Before the meaning comes the joy,” Simon Barnes writes. The joy of birdwatching doesn’t come from an understanding of birds; it comes from experiencing them. Like Jesus saying “Come and see” to the first disciples, Barnes invites the casual observer to dive in: “Stop ogling [birds] from afar and make your big move. Stop admiring birds; start falling in love with them.” It is not something that will earn your justification or make headlines, but it will undoubtedly make you feel like a new creation. 

I grew up loving birds, but I first got the birding bug in my twenties from my brother-in-law. He would call me on his bike, speeding through Central Park on his way to work, ecstatic about the number of migratory birds he was seeing (Central Park is known for its vast diversity of birds who fly up the East Coast to cooler weather every spring). “So when do you go birding?” I asked him. He was confused. Birding was not something you “go and do.” He was always birding — glancing out his office window, looking up at the bus stop, always keeping one eye on the sky. For him, birding was not an activity. It was a way of life. Like the grace of God, you do not venture out to find it; rather it comes to you. And once you were given eyes to see it, you couldn’t possibly unsee it.

James Parker once wrote, “Beautiful world-altering things, when they enter history, when they enter time, it kind of happens off to one side. The cameras are always pointing in the other direction. The crowd is always looking the wrong way.” So, this awards season, give the bigwigs their due. Let them have their golden trophies and long-winded acceptance speeches. Owen and Quentin Reiser have something far more eternal and far more valuable. And it’s available for free on YouTube.