Wonderfully offbeat film!

Great Film overall

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Man Bites Bear It's easy to see why this film was rated so highly. It's awfully likable. The principles are Youk, a bear cub, and Bart, a 1500 pound fully grown male Kodiak bear. Poor Youk. His mother is digging out a honeycomb and dislodges a large chunk of granite which crushes her head. Youk, whimpering, must take off on his own, wobbling along through the grasslands and crags of the Wasatch Mountains in Utah, an inhospitable place to everyone but skiers.We are then introduced to the mammoth Bart, who shoos off the rugrat, clearly a bear with dependency issues. Still the cub follows Bart around, though unwanted. Then, enter the enemy, two sinister hunters collecting bear skins to sell for the manufacture of robes, rugs, coats, hats, and whatever else they make out of bearskins. Pow! And Bart is wounded in the shoulder, wobbling off painfully until he manages to heal his wound by rolling around in a muddy pond. His convalescence over, Bart adopts Youk, and teaches him the rules of the game.But during his escape from the two hunters, Bart has killed one of their horses and wounded the other, so now revenge joins profit in motivating the two hunters, who bring in a pack of hunting hounds. Well, I'll tell you, it's one tribulation after another, both for the bears and for the hunters. Youk is hunted by the angriest mountain lion known to man or beast and is saved at the last minute by the intervention of Big Bart. Big Bart also traps the meanest of the hunters, scares the crap out of him, and then after roaring, bearing his teeth, and scraping some dust on the cowering human ("Please, don't kill me!") he wanders off, satisfied that he's made his message clear through his body language and prosody. And he HAS too. The mean hunter has an epiphany. Later when he has a clear opportunity to kill Bart, he spares him.What makes the film so appealing, chiefly, are two of its features.First, Youk is both ugly and cute at the same time. He's pretty funny too, rolling around, eating psychedelic mushrooms and tripping out, so that a floating mushroom turns into a real butterfly. The hunters manage to capture him and in their absence from the camp he rummages through their possessions and winds up covered with feathers. Cute. He witnesses a primal scene involving Bart and a sluttish female and falls asleep while they copulate.Second, although we are constantly on the side of the bears, the humans are not shown as resolutely evil in their actions or their emotions. Having captured Youk, they tie him to a tree, tease him, and laugh at his antics. He's not treated badly. When the men ride away, Youk is perfectly willing to follow them so they must scare him away. And the humans don't show any animus towards bears or other animals. They like their dogs and their horses. They're just depicted as making a living. The living involves killing animals, but the bears kill deer too. Everybody has to make a living.The framework for the relationship between humans and their natural environments was described by an anthropologist, Florence Kluckhohn, who observed that people had three ways of dealing with nature: they could live in submission to it, they could live in harmony with it, or they could try to conquer it. The hunters in this film are more or less living in harmony with nature. The iconography suggests this story takes place in the late 19th century. By that time -- up to and including now -- not everyone felt that way. We have no more passenger pigeons in North America, though they used to darken the skies. If you want to see an American buffalo, you must go to a zoo now. Wolves are disappearing and grizzlies are increasingly hard to come by. I won't go on about this point, though it would be easy to do.One annoying element of the film is that, well, I'm afraid some of Youk's whimpers, screams, and inquiries were dubbed by either a pre-adolescent human child or a fully blown human woman. We can clearly hear little Youk uttering, "Huh?" and "Wow" and "Oh" and "Wassup" and "So's your old man" and reciting Hamlet's famous soliloquy -- "To be or not to be". Under the influence of those psychedelic mushrooms he fantasizes himself at the Metropolitan opera singing "La Donna e Mobile" to a packed house.I kind of enjoyed it, despite the cuteness, not because of it.

I've always been a big fan of Bart the Bear (1), and whenever I think of Bart, this movie always comes to mind as the highest achievement of this amazing bear and his trainer.There are two things that surprised me about the film. First, I've lived in Kodiak, Alaska where Bart's relatives originate, and I've visited much of the Rocky Mountains and the mountain ranges of Alberta, Canada. The mountains in the film seemed strange and unidentifiable to me. Later, I discovered that the film was actually shot in the mountain ranges of Italy. The other, more natural surprise, was that a male bear had been coaxed into accepting the presence of a baby bear - something very strange in the real wilderness. Most bear cubs who get anywhere near daddy bear end up as lunch meat, unless momma comes to the rescue. distasteful as it may seem to us, it's just part of the real bear world. In fact, much of the natural behavior of living bears was altered or ignored in this film for the sake of the story. Yet, somehow you simply become immersed in this charming tale of childhood survival and learning. And, those of us who are familiar with the species of mushroom the little bear ate, were rolling in the aisles with laughter.For those who may consider the face off of the Bear and the Hunter near the end of the film as pure fantasy, this encounter is actually quite possible. Bears are very predictable in many respects, but their behavior under duress can often be startling and unexpected. Bears are built by nature as the perfect killing machine. But, they are also extremely intelligent and capable of incredible survival instincts. We were told in Alaska that a simple coke can with a stone inside makes a sound that bears are scared of. Bears also react to strange smells. People have been known to drop their shirts or coats while being chased by a bear. More times than not, the animal will pause to sniff the garment, and cease the attack because of the strange scent. However, to be even more prepared, a hiker or camper should carry a fully charged pepper spray canister in the back country just in case. They really do work.

Enjoyable kiddie film about the adventurer life of an awesome bear and the feats on the wildness , as the animal has to survive on his own , facing off dangers and risks . Picturesque story about an orphan bear cub hooks up with an adult male as they attempt to dodge human hunters played by Tcheky Karyo and Jack Wallace . He's an orphan called ¨Bart the Bear¨ at the start of a journey throughout meadows , woods and mountains . Bart stars this dangerous journey to survive and being relentlessly pursued by two stubborn hunters.This is a wonderful film , an ecologist story dealing with orphaned bear cub that is adopted by an adult male bear and must avoid two obstinate hunters . The tale of the extraordinary existence and times of a little bear is well written by Gerard Brach , Roman Polanski's usual , being based on novel titled "The Grizzly King" by James Oliver Curwood . The impressive scenery , photography and music enhance the story of Bart and his adoptive father . The scenes featuring the bears were breathtaking , plenty of pranks and frolics , their legs moving together in smooth rhythm , they were all absolutely beautiful . There are some rousing animal shots , it must have been hell getting the bears to "act" . The story is treated in good sense and high sensibility ; environment , mountains , forests combine to enhance the glories of nature, one of which, after all, is silence . Because in the wild, male bears usually eat bear cubs if they can, the filmmakers prepared the adult Bart the Bear for the cub by having him play with a teddy bear the size and fur color of the cub , when the trainers felt he was ready, he was introduced to the cub and he greeted the cub affectionately . Glimmer and colorful cinematography by Philippe Rousselot , splendidly filmed in spectacular landscapes from Dolomites , Italy . Sensitive and emotive musical score by Philippe Sarde . For the music lover, ¨The Bear¨ is a sensible ride in which the music all too well toys with the soul , it is so delicately composed, performed, and chosen for the movie that it is worth seeing just to enjoy the soundtrack . The magnificent filmmaker Annaud creates yet another picture in nature with almost no human dialogue such as ¨Quest for fire¨ in this agreeable flick . Excellently directed and produced by the French Jean Jacques Annaud , an expert on animal films as proved in ¨Running Free¨ about horses and ¨Two brothers¨ dealing with tigers . The bottom line is if you love animals at all , then you will completely adore this film . Rating : Better than average , worthwhile watching .

Almost 20 years later, this remains the best of "animal" movies I've ever seen - where there is little dialog and animals dominate the screen. The amazing photography with the bears, the stunning cinematography overall and the great landscape (British Columbia) all make this a visual treat. Even better, it's an interesting story and has remained that with each of the viewings I've had of this film since discovering it in the mid '90s.It's a solid adventure story, and the little bear in here is lovable. The "bad guys" (the hunters) aren't really all that bad, either. The bears' performances are fascinating, simply amazing. It must have taken incredible patience to film this movie.Outside of a couple of "damns," there is no profanity and, I would think, is a great film for any age person to see. Highly recommended.