The Bear

If you enjoy wondering aloud to yourself how filmmakers were able to make a movie at all, 1988’s almost wordless tale of two bears trying to survive the Canadian mountains was somehow shot with real, expressive bear “actors,” despite the film being a work of fiction. A cross between a stunningly photographed nature documentary and a brutal folktale, The Bear gets right to the uncompromising conditions out in the wild, where human beings are portrayed as just as savage—and just as merciful—as the beasts they hunt. Clever editing and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s directorial vision hide all the seams in the movie’s magic tricks, allowing us to fall in love quickly with these majestic bears and the all-too-human emotions they seem to be expressing.

An orphan bear cub hooks up with an adult male as they try to dodge human hunters.