The Bear (1988 film)


The Bear is a 1988 French adventure drama family film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and released by TriStar Pictures. Adapted from the novel The Grizzly King by American author James Oliver Curwood, the screenplay was written by Gérard Brach. Set in British Columbia, Canada, the film tells the story of a young orphaned bear cub who befriends an adult male grizzly as two trophy hunters pursue them through the wild.
Several of the themes explored in the story include orphanhood, peril and protection, and mercy toward and on the behalf of a reformed hunter. Annaud and Brach began planning the story and production in 1981, although filming did not begin until six years later, due to the director's commitment to another project. The Bear was filmed almost entirely in the Italian and Austrian areas of the Dolomites, with live animals—including Bart the Bear, a trained 9-foot tall Kodiak bear—present on location. Notable for its almost complete lack of dialogue and its minimal score, the film was nominated for and won numerous international film awards.

Plot

In 1885, in the mountainous wilds of British Columbia, Canada, Youk, a young grizzly bear cub, is orphaned by the death of his mother from a rockslide while digging and searching for honey. Forced to fend for himself, Youk struggles to find food and shelter. Elsewhere in the mountains, Kaar, a large and strong male grizzly, is being pursued and hunted by two trophy hunters, Tom and Bill. Although Tom attempts to kill Kaar, his shot injures the bear in the shoulder and thus fails to take the animal down while the wounded bear flees.
Coming across Kaar a short time later, Youk attempts to befriend him. Upon stumbling across the cub and that he has noticed his wound, Kaar warns him away by growling since he doesn't need help and is deeply not interested in Youk. The young grizzly, however, follows Kaar and approaches him again where he manages to soothingly lick away the bear's wound. A friendship begins between the two bears as Kaar adopts Youk and takes him under his wing, teaching Youk how to catch fish and hunt animals. At night, Youk suffers from nightmares, reliving the tragic death of his mother.
Determined to find Kaar, the two hunters are joined by Joseph and his pack of hunting Beaucerons. A chase ensues in which both bears are driven toward a cliff with the dog pack catching up to them in pursuit. While Youk hides, Kaar violently fights the dog pack while defending the cub, but was able to kill some of them before escaping over the pass with the remaining dogs chasing after him, leaving Youk behind in the process. The hunters arrive to find their dogs dead or wounded, one of them being the favorite Airedale Terrier of one of the hunters. Upon finding Youk, they take him to their camp, where he is tethered to a tree to prevent him from escaping, and tormented by the hunters and their dogs. That night, the hunters plot how to massacre Kaar.
The next day, the hunters separate, with Tom manning a spot high on a cliff near a waterfall. He descends from his post to wash up in a small waterfall in the hills. His gun out of reach, Tom suddenly finds himself confronted by Kaar, who viciously growls at the sight of the man upon recognizing him as the one who shot him earlier. Faced with certain death, Tom cowers in fear. However, Kaar, upon seeing that the hunter is at his mercy and driven with fear, turns away and leaves rather than killing Tom. Tom, impressed by the bear's act of mercy, attempts to scare him off more quickly by shooting his gun in the air. When Bill joins him, having heard the gunshots, Tom lies to him that the bear is dead. However, spying Kaar ascending a scree, Bill raises his rifle to shoot, only to be stopped by the other man. The three hunters return to their camp empty-handed, where they free Youk and then ride off into the wilderness.
Alone again, Youk is soon attacked by a cougar, who corners the young bear near a stream. Trying to defend himself against the cougar's attacks and getting injured, Youk growls viciously in pain. At that moment, Kaar appears behind Youk and saves his life by letting out a blood-curdling roar which chases the cougar away. Youk happily reunites with Kaar and runs to the bear's side where he is comforted before being taken under his wing again. As winter approaches, the two bears enter a cave for hibernation and fall asleep together.

Cast

Development

After the commercial success of Jean-Jacques Annaud's previous films, including the Academy Award-winning Black and White in Color and Quest for Fire, producer Claude Berri offered to produce Annaud's next project, no matter the cost. The French filmmaker had first considered the idea of making a film that included mammal communication through behavior, rather than language, while working on Quest for Fire. He became particularly interested in making an animal "the star of a psychological drama", so he "decided to do an entertaining, commercial adventure and psychological film" that would have an animal hero. He discussed this idea with his longtime collaborator, screenwriter Gerard Brach, who within a few days sent Annaud a copy of The Grizzly King, to which the filmmaker quickly agreed.
Although Brach began writing the screenplay in late 1981, Annaud took on another project, that of directing a film adaptation of Umberto Eco's book The Name of the Rose. Between preparing for and filming his next film, Annaud traveled and visited zoos in order to research animal behavior. In an interview he later gave with the American Humane Association, Annaud stated: "Each time I was fascinated with the tigers, to a point that I thought to do a movie called The Tiger instead of The Bear. In those days I felt that the bear, because they're so often vertical, would give me a better identification, or would provide more instant identification from the viewers." The finished script was presented to Berri in early 1983.

Filming

Shot from 13 May to late October 1987, The Bear was filmed almost entirely in the Italian and Austrian areas of the Dolomites. Several additional scenes were also filmed in a Belgian Zoo in early 1988. The crew consisted of 200 individuals. Husband and wife team Tony and Heidi Lüdi served as the film's production designer and art director, respectively, alongside set decorator Bernhard Henrich. In their book, Movie Worlds: Production Design in Film, the Lüdis state that as the film's production designers, they "were constantly faced with the question 'What did you have to do?' To which we answered 'We turned the Alps into British Columbia.'" Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot noted that "the only thing Jean-Jacques was unable to control" while filming in the Bavarian Alps "was the weather: he did not manage to have the clouds take part in pre-production meetings."
While animatronic bears were used for several of the fighting scenes, live animals—including bears, dogs, horses, and honey bees—were used on location for filming. A trained, 9-foot tall Kodiak bear named Bart played Kaar, while a young female bear named Douce took on the role of Youk, with several alternates. Three trainers worked with Bart, eleven with the cubs, three with the dogs, and three with the horses. One day during production, Bart injured Annaud while the two posed for photographers; Annaud's wounds, which included claw-marks on his backside, had to be drained with a shunt for two months. In addition to the real bears, there were animatronic bears which were used in specific scenes that were made by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

Themes

With its intersecting storylines of animals and humans, The Bear includes a variety of thematic elements. These themes include orphanhood, peril and protection, and mercy toward and on the behalf of a reformed hunter.
Film critic Derek Bousé has made the connection between The Bear and Disney's model of wildlife films, comparing not only the sympathetic characters but also the filmatic structure, to the animated Bambi and the live-action Perri. In his 2000 book Wildlife Films, Bousé makes a stronger correlation between Annaud's film and Disney's Dumbo, in that both young animals lost their mothers at an early age, creating an unfortunate situation that allows the rest of the plot to develop. Dumbo and The Bear also share a similarly purposed dream sequence, brought on by alcohol in the former and hallucinogenic mushrooms in the latter.
The theme of the reformed hunter is a direct reference to the original novel and its author. James Oliver Curwood, himself a past hunter and trapper, considered The Grizzly King to be a "confession of one who for years hunted and killed before he learned that the wild offered a more thrilling sport than slaughter". During its American release, the film used one of Curwood's famous quotes as a tagline—"The greatest thrill is not to kill but to let live"—and the film was endorsed by both the American Humane Association and the World Wildlife Fund.

Release

The Bear was released on 19 October 1988 in France, and 27 October 1989 in the United States. An official tie-in to the movie The Odyssey of 'The Bear': The Making of the Film by Jean-Jacques Annaud, a translation from the French edition, followed in November. In addition, Curwood's original novel—out of print in the US for fifty years—was republished by Newmarket Press, and a children's book titled The Bear Storybook was published by St. Martin's Press.
By August 1989, The Bear was reported to have grossed $90,685,310 and was yet to open in the United Kingdom, the Far East and the United States and Canada. The Bear later grossed $31,753,898 in the United States and Canada taking its worldwide gross to over $120 million. It was then presented in the following countries:
The film was a critical success, holding a 92% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. Some critics pointed to The Bear's adult handling of the wildlife film genre, which is often dismissed as belonging solely to children's films. While positively reviewing the film, critic Roger Ebert wrote that The Bear "is not a cute fantasy in which bears ride tricycles and play house. It is about life in the wild, and it does an impressive job of seeming to show wild bears in their natural habitat" and that scenes from the film, especially those "of horseplay and genuine struggles - gradually build up our sense of the personalities of these animals".
Janet Maslin of The New York Times, however, believing that the film was less about its wild characters and more about personification, wrote: "The Bear...is a remarkable achievement only on its own terms, which happen to be extremely limited and peculiar...its true emphasis is not on wildlife. Instead, it grafts the thoughts and dreams of more commonplace beings onto bear-shaped stand-ins." Writing for the hunting and fishing magazine Field & Stream, editor Cathleen Erring stated that The Bear not only stripped its human characters of "all sympathetic traits and them to the bears", but it also created "a caricature that will subject anyone embarking on a bear hunt... to the kind of scorn previously reserved for 'Bambi Butchers'."
Some reviewers were critical of the film's dream sequences, which heavily utilize special effects and deviate from the overall naturalistic feel of the film. In his review for the St. Petersburg Times, Hal Lipper called the dream sequences "existential flights of fancy are accompanied by psychedelic images that seem better suited for '60s 'happenings.'" In addition, one scene in which Kaar mates with a female bear while Youk looks on was criticized as being unfriendly for children viewers. David Denby of New York Magazine stated as much in his review of the film, noting "I would like to be able to recommend The Bear as a movie that parents and children could see together, but I'm afraid there's a scene in the middle that would have to be... explained."

Awards and nominations

Won:
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