Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

Watching Andy Abrahams Wilson's (Bubbeh Lee & Me [VL-5/98]) latest, a documentary about San Francisco poet/painter and alcoholic Beau Riley's artistic homage to his late lover David, a man born without legs, I was reminded of a partial verse from Richard Baskin's score for Alan Rudolph's Welcome to L.A.: "Now, lying here remembering it/better than it used to be/is loneliness." Which is not to say that the ambitiously titled Hope is the Thing with Feathers is simply one man's attempt to elevate personal history into art through the supercharged transformer of poetic deification...though I'd be lying if I said it didn't even flirt in that direction. Lines like "O bird-angels of the ether, clear a way for him above the naked tree" are both (in my opinion) awkward in and of themselves and tough to effectively convey through visual media; at the same time, the more mundane but precisely heartbreaking line "your clothes are trickling out the door" nails (in my opinion) the ramshackle, far-from-methodical way we resume our lives after devastating loss. Were it simply a matter of line by line poetic appreciation, I'm afraid my thumb would tend to the lateral, neither wholeheartedly embracing nor dismissing the film. What tips it skywise, however, is: 1) Wilson's excellent visual sense; when Riley's words are equal to Wilson's eye, the synergy is palpable, and 2) Riley's (who also died of AIDS, six months after the interviews) emotional commentary about tending to his partner in the end. Alternately uplifting and depressing, this beautifully lensed film is recommended overall. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)