{"id":96191,"date":"2022-04-25T16:24:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T10:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/why-polar-bear-is-the-saddest-disney-movie-ever-made\/"},"modified":"2022-04-25T16:24:01","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T10:54:01","slug":"why-polar-bear-is-the-saddest-disney-movie-ever-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/why-polar-bear-is-the-saddest-disney-movie-ever-made\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Polar Bear Is the Saddest Disney Movie Ever Made"},"content":{"rendered":"
For a company as renowned for its family friendly product as Disney, it has a history of scenes or sequences that are horrifying (if not outright depressing) \u2013 Mufasa getting trampled by the wildebeests, Bambi\u2019s mother disappearing into the forest and pretty much everything that happens in \u201cPinocchio.\u201d (Not to mention live-action atrocities like the end of \u201cOld Yeller\u201d and the beginning of \u201cPirates of the Caribbean: At World\u2019s End.\u201d) But nothing can prepare you for how sobering and deeply unsettling Disneynature\u2019s \u201cPolar Bear\u201d (streaming on Disney+ this Friday, Earth Day) is.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolar Bear\u201d is very much like other Disneynature entries that came before it (things like \u201cDolphin Reef\u201d or \u201cPenguins\u201d) \u2013 it\u2019s beautifully shot, featuring moments you never thought you\u2019d seen (like when a beached whale becomes an unlikely polar bear pool party) and has top notch narration (this time courtesy of Catherine Keener). But in other ways it\u2019s more somber and introspective; the narration is first-person, putting the viewer more directly in the plight of the polar bear. And it\u2019s so overwhelmingly sad. By the end of the movie, you aren\u2019t just worried about the fate of the polar bears; you\u2019re concerned about the livelihood of the planet.<\/p>\n
spoke to directors Jeff Wilson and Alastair Fothergill about what it was like making \u201cPolar Bear\u201d and whether or not they think we\u2019re all doomed.<\/p>\n
Are you running out of animals? You\u2019ve done so many movies.<\/strong><\/p>\n Alastair Fothergill<\/strong>: Do you know that\u2019s one of the most intelligent questions we\u2019ve had all through this junket and I tell you why \u2013 it\u2019s very, very challenging to find a star animal that people will love to watch. That\u2019ll fill 75 minutes of drama. You might think pandas, we all love pandas. That\u2019s true, but pandas do very little apart from eat bamboo and fart, so you would never do a Disneynature film on pandas. We chose polar bears because from our experience of working in the arctic, we absolutely knew there was an amazing story to be told about them and there\u2019ll be no trouble at all in developing a powerful narrative that would last 75 minutes.<\/p>\n You bring up the narrative and this documentary feels very different from other Disneynature features. How did you establish the tone and voice for \u201cPolar Bear,\u201d especially after looking at so much footage?<\/strong><\/p>\n Jeff Wilson<\/strong>: You\u2019re right, and actually it was something that Alistair and I worried about a lot. We thought long and hard about presenting the narration in the first person and actually there were quite a few people who warned us against it because there\u2019s not many films in the history of cinema that have pulled off first person narration for 75 minutes. It\u2019s quite a rare thing, but we persisted with it and what we\u2019ve found in doing so is that we were able communicate the important messages of the film by giving people a polar bear\u2019s perspective. And by doing that through the first person we were actually kind of engaging our audiences more wholeheartedly in the story. I also think that it\u2019s kind of crucial to bringing a different perspective to the climate change message.<\/p>\n That was very important for us to get across. To know what it\u2019s like to be a polar bear experiencing that uncertainty, to experience the things that are happening around you that you don\u2019t have any comprehension of. It actually mimics the human experience and by telling it in the first person, I think, is a very, very powerful tool that hasn\u2019t been used before. Of course, we didn\u2019t know it was really going to work until Catherine Keener\u2019s fantastic voice was brought to the table and she embodied absolutely everything that Alistair and I dreamt about in terms of presenting this film and the character that\u2019s central to the film. When she started reading that first person narration, was probably the first time that we really knew it was going to absolutely work.<\/p>\n