The Bear, released in 1988 by famous French director Jean Jacques-Annaud is a movie that not so many of the younger generations have heard about, even when was relatively famous title in the 80s when released.
For many, the movie is considered one of the best “animal” movies ever shot in cinema history, following the story of a bear cub that gets orphaned, losing the bear mother in a tragic accident at the beginning of the film, and then ending following and pairing up with a huge alpha Grizzly bear male while they are tracked and hunted by some human hunters in astonishing beautiful forest and mountain landscapes.
But I think the movie is just much more than an “animals” movie, even when is starred by animals.
First is already to raise the hat to the director and the crowd to create such a beautiful film when is well known that movies starring animals and children are the most difficult to shoot and control. The landscapes and movie pictures are beautiful and outstanding, some of the most beautiful nature shots you will ever see on film, and the little cub is just totally cute and adorable all over the movie.
But if you forget for a second that the movie displays mainly bears and it has not much dialog, apart from the scenes when humans communicate, the movie is really an amazing tale where you have everything you would have dreamed in a classic drama starred by only humans: you have tragedy, you have humor (the scene when the cub eats some magic mushrooms and hallucinates with grotesque frogs is hilarious), it has sex encounters, it has revenge and it has redemption.
On top of that, it also has 2 of the best cinema scenes ever filmed that will be forged into your memory forever: the epic scene when the huge grizzly bear confronts one of the hunters and lets him go, and the scene when such a hunter stops his colleague from shooting, one that has made more than 1 tear fall from my eyes.
The Bear is a sublime cinema opera, and it is just amazing that with so little dialogue was able to accomplish so much. A masterpiece, and one that I cannot stop encouraging you to discover if you never watched it, or revisit it again.