This is simply the most perfect animal movie done, the bears- a huge grizzly and cute little cub- are better actors than 95% of Hollywood and the British Columbia scenery is breathtaking. It captures one's heart with the plight and adventures of a cub after it's mother is killed in a rockslide, and the close in photography of these obviously well-trained bears (Strassburg?) is incredibly- never obvious. Shot with ambient sound, the animals are the stars in this movies, the one dimensional humans aren't cookie cutter monsters, but part of the landscape and capable of growth. The idea that man can change his murderous ways is the most hopeful thing in this film- and I didn't think the denouement unlikely. The only thing a tiny bit hokey is the human making cute breathy noises for the cub.
Bears are truly magnificent beasts- several decades ago a black bear lunged at me outside the Smokey Mountaintop shelter at 3am, and I still have the scar (from running into the wire with cans that alerted us when the bear came in- other shelters had heavy chain link fences). At Bear Country, SD I watched 400 pound bears play tag 30 feet up a scrawny tree, leaning out on branches too thin for me, waiting for the inevitable crack and tumble. CRACK! The bear, without missing a beat flipped his claws into the trunk and didn't drop an inch. When you see these huge creatures ride a little bike in the circus, they really transcend their clumsy brute image. I hiked into Yellowstone River canyon in the beginning of June when the bears were coming out of their dens, hungry and irritable, and spent much night time blowing my whistle at the night (like when a buffalo came up to a foot from the tent). Once I watched a grizzly running down the canyon slope at 30 mph on a grade so steep a human would have picking his way step by step. Later a listened to lecture, snowed in at Old Faithful, where a ranger explained how the bears ate a Swiss tourist: "they only found the arms". Owww-ey.
Michael Hammerschlag
Bears are truly magnificent beasts- several decades ago a black bear lunged at me outside the Smokey Mountaintop shelter at 3am, and I still have the scar (from running into the wire with cans that alerted us when the bear came in- other shelters had heavy chain link fences). At Bear Country, SD I watched 400 pound bears play tag 30 feet up a scrawny tree, leaning out on branches too thin for me, waiting for the inevitable crack and tumble. CRACK! The bear, without missing a beat flipped his claws into the trunk and didn't drop an inch. When you see these huge creatures ride a little bike in the circus, they really transcend their clumsy brute image. I hiked into Yellowstone River canyon in the beginning of June when the bears were coming out of their dens, hungry and irritable, and spent much night time blowing my whistle at the night (like when a buffalo came up to a foot from the tent). Once I watched a grizzly running down the canyon slope at 30 mph on a grade so steep a human would have picking his way step by step. Later a listened to lecture, snowed in at Old Faithful, where a ranger explained how the bears ate a Swiss tourist: "they only found the arms". Owww-ey.
Michael Hammerschlag