It’s important to remember that Infinitely Polar Bear is a film about sentiment, not a serious mental condition. It may be difficult to remember that because a serious mental condition forms the core of writer/director Maya Forbes’ story, about a woman recalling the year-and-a-half when her mother, played by Zoe Saldana, went to college and left their bi-polar father, Mark Ruffalo, to care for their young, precocious daughters.
The situation raises serious issues about parental neglect and the dangers of raising children in an unstable emotional environment, but Infinitely Polar doesn’t really care. The film is told from the perspective of the elder daughter, played here by Imogene Wolodarsky, who eventually grows up and wants us all to know that she turned out all right, and that her father, Cam, was a deeply flawed human being whose heart was big enough to overcome his frailties just enough to not screw up his kids.
This comforting tone would seem to be Infinitely Polar Bear’s mission statement: although Cam is sometimes frightening and dangerously irresponsible, he is at heart a real father, and ultimately won his daughters’ affection. Nothing in Maya Forbes’ film ever implies that genuine tragedy is coming; instead, hard decisions are made and lived with, and everyone in the heroine’s family works things out more or less for the better, if not necessarily the best. No spoilers: Infinitely Polar Bear is a film of sweet reassurance, preaching that shaky foundations aren’t always destined to crumble, and a happy-ish ending feels inevitable from frame one.
Mark Ruffalo may be remarkable as Cam. He may also be a caricature. It’s difficult to tell given the nature of Cam’s personality, feeling at one moment on stage for his kids’ benefit and at others like a victim of their conventional neediness. He has mature needs that he must sacrifice to be their sole caregiver for this period in their lives, a relationship with a once-loving wife that has dissolved but not disappeared entirely, and honest hopes that some semblance of utopian family togetherness – and yes, sex with his wife – may be just over a horizon that seems to constantly retreat as he walks towards it. Dear god, does he have our sympathy, and the understandable frustration his daughters have for his unreliable nature and idiosyncratic behavior (and lousy housekeeping skills) are just rational enough to come across as a teensy bit unfair, given Cam’s poor coping abilities, even though it’s the bare minimum anyone should be able to ask from their dad.
Infinitely Polar Bear doesn’t come to many meaningful conclusions but it’s not about curing mental unhealthiness, and it’s not about the meaning of life. It’s about a particularly tough time for a family with difficulties and likable quirks, and earning an audience’s empathy in the process. That’s one job it accomplishes, although Forbes’ leisurely pacing and refusal to ask tougher questions leaves Infinitely Polar Bear feeling a little more finite than was probably necessary. It’s a tender love note to someone else that we’re invited to read anyway, just to prove how much the author cares. Fair enough, but Infinitely Polar Bear could have reached further, connecting its personal, forgiving story with some sort of universal truth that would have made the film a little less voyeuristic, and a little more significant to the rest of us.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
