“A Bird of the Air” (2011), romantic comedy-drama, starring  Rachel Nichols and Jackson Hurst, filmed in Santa Fe.

Based on a Joe Coomer’s novel “The Loop,” this is a story of how a parrot brought two people together. Hurst’s character is Lyman, a man who knows little of his past and spends his present cleaning up a New Mexico interstate on the graveyard shift. (In Texas, loops around large cities are common, not so much here.)  Lyman meets a wacky librarian, Fiona, who embarks with him on a journey to find out about a parrot that flies into Lyman’s trailer, squawking: “I’m an eagle” and “”Prepare to meet your maker,” among other things.

Their journey leads them to a variety of past owners including character actors Judith Ivey, Buck Henry and Gary Farmer. While Fiona tries to find out about his life in books, Lyman follows a human thread in that reveals a varied tapestry linked by a single relationship to a creature that speaks in riddles and commands.

The title comes from Ecclesiastes 10:20: “A bird of the air shall carry the voice” and, while it is tempting to dwell on the specific spiritual meaning the bird had in the lives of others, the strength of the movie is in the journey. It is also its weakness as the plot’s emotional roller coaster is a bit exhausting due to both the numerous ups-and-downs but also the almost apocryphal feel as Lyman patrols a highway that will forever be the scene of carnage, burning cars and despair of those who travel late at night on uncaring roads.

Ironically, it is the juxtaposition of opposites that redeems the movie. Its hopeful message that we are all bound by something, even something like the brief time spent in the presence of a shared parrot, shows us that the small and chance meetings revealed on a common journey may not result in the answers we want, but they represent the relationships that make us more human and humane in the long run.