The Bear - with many spoilers

The Bear is a film based on “The Grizzly King”, a novella by James Oliver Curwood that was originally published in 1916. Curwood was a hunter in British Columbia who reportedly had his life spared by a Grizzly bear after dropping his rifle from a cliff. Following this experience, he gave up hunting and became an avid conservationist.

Bart the Bear who played the lead role in the movie gave such a moving performance that there was a campaign at the time for him to be nominated for the Academy Award for best actor. The academy would not allow a non-human actor to be nominated.

Verdict

My movie ratings consist of thumbs up or middle fingers as sometimes one starring something doesn’t shame it enough. 5 thumbs up = an absolute triumph. 5 middle fingers = a complete piece of shit, go fuck yourself.

The Bear - 1 thumbs up

Long-winded, repetitive, and not engaging enough.

Favourite quote “The greatest thrill is not to kill but to let live” - James-Oliver Curwood. This quote pops up pre-credits at the end of the film. It is made much more powerful given Curwood’s own story, choosing conservation over his former hunting lifestyle.

Favourite scene

Obviously, it was the two bears shagging whilst the cub didn’t know where to look.

Best meme from the movie

Analysis

The Bear felt a lot longer than its 93 minutes. The pace of the movie was incredibly slow, to allow the animal actors to portray human emotions for the benefit of the camera through slow, drawn-out sequences of cuddling, crying, or whimpering. This Disneyesque stylizing, with the rivalry from the hunters, appeared to be the only thing pushing this into film territory at all. Without these, The Bear is nothing more than a nature documentary founded on lies.

The bears in the movie are behaving like humans, not bears. A fully grown male bear would immediately kill and eat an orphaned cub in the wild. In fact, Bart the Bear had to be trained specifically not to do this. The themes such as becoming an orphan and fostering, are put in place to humanize these creatures to get the audience on their side and rooting for them. This obviously happens in every single Disney movie featuring an animal. Something I believe works better as a cartoon/animation.

The roar from the bear was very impressive. One of the few of the creature’s noises that actually seems right. The baby bear’s whimpering - clearly dubbed over by a child’s voice, was the most annoying thing I’ve ever heard and really put me off.

A few scenes, particularly the dream sequences seemed really out of place. The claymation frog dream, for example, stuck out like a sore thumb and I'm not sure it really added anything. The cub was having nightmares because his mother had died? Can bears even have nightmares? The mushroom high was just as strange.

I believe the hunters were captured quite well throughout the movie, despite having barely any dialogue. I imagined they would be the villains of the movie, and to an extent they were, winding up the baby bear cub with the milk and laughing outrageously. Their story came across as well, though. This was 1895, leading up to the great depression. A lot of people would have earned money any way they could. People on the frontier were still murdering Indians at this time. It comes across that the younger hunter may have just moved into this line of work as it is mentioned that the two main hunters have only known each other for 3-5 months. His inexperience is evident when he shoots the bear in the wrong leg also. He obviously has a lot of respect for the bear that spares his life.

The bottom line

I didn't particularly enjoy this movie, but it wasn't bad enough for a middle finger score either. It was just about BEAR-able.