The Heart of the Bear (2001)
A young Estonian goes to the Siberian Taiga to live as a hunter in a remote forest hut. He hopes to find his true self far from civilisation. The natives he meets introduce him to the myths of the north. The first is a young village teacher who wants to be a good wife to him. The second is a wild and untameable native who becomes his mythical bear-woman. When he accidentally kills a great black bear, his own shadow-creature, he burdens himself with guilt. However, he is given a chance of finding his inner balance. A romantic drama with mythical elements and breathtaking landscapes.
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Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.
disgusting, overrated, pointless
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.
This movie is based on autobiographic novel "Bear's heart" written by Nikolai Baturin. It is a movie about an Estonian man Niika who travels to north, where nganasans live. He becomes a hunter. The story explains how Niika learns from ancient nature and people who are shaped by the ways of this nature the principles of life and death. He tries to become (a real) human ("nganasan" means human in Nganasanish). The movie tells a story how the hunter journey is really an inner journey, to find peace and inner tranquility, all this is done by mythical cognition. It is a real pearl in Estonian literature as well as in filmography. The scenery is pure (authentic) and meditative. It contains scenes that may be shockingly hmmm.... natural. The part is played very well by Rain Simmul who performs flawlessly. It is needless to say that the movie includes quite many best Estonian actors and actresses. The two-hour long feature film only uses part of the text and there are some factual differences e.g. the events take place in 80-s in a book, but 90-s in a movie. In any case the timing has no meaning in a place where time has stood still for centuries. The movie is definitely very beautiful (as it was the most expensive movie in Estonia at the time it was released), but it has an inner side which gives us a glimpse of personal journey of a hunter. The movie is rich of ancient finno-ugric elements e.g. the bear is considered to be Estonian ancestor. The author of the screenplay is considered to be a real word artist that has changed Estonian literature forever. The movie is absolutely enjoyable even to usual western people who are indifferent to nature. In that way we can say that the movie is very "exotical".
The cinematography is beautiful in this mess of a film. I heard the director speak somewhere and he mentioned that the film was originally intended to be a ten-part miniseries for Estonian TV. That is apparent when you watch the film jump from one moment to the next completely unrelated moment and feel utterly confused. It's a mythological tale and it seems that the director and editor use the genre to justify it's lack of continuity. Unfortunately, it is irritating. It sometimes feels like a vanity piece for lead actor, Rein Kotov who does a good job in the role of a man haunted by "the heart of the bear". It's a very stange film that's seems torn between being an art film and being mainstream. If you see it, see it for the cinematography and to see something in the Estonian language, which is interesting enough.
It has some beautiful landscape shots and really good cinematography but it ends up being dull and sluggish. The best part of the movie contains the bear scenes, which were truly impressive considering that they used a real animal in these scenes. It is a big movie for east European standards. But stays short of an epic, which it had a potential to be. Overall slightly disappointing experience.
It's one of the best movies I have ever seen. I really recommend you to watch it. Karu süda is not just some Hollywood junk. It has a deep meaning hidden somewhere in the movie. 10points out of 10 :)