Above: Mark Ruffalo stars in Ms. Forbes' new movie. Photo ©Sony Pictures Classics
It’s no secret that the great Mark
Ruffalo plays pessimistic men with luxuriant ease—in his movies, he often
allows his shoulders to droop backwards, while dropping his voice to a low
sludge and smiling with bitter amusement at life’s cruel tricks (which, in his
case, have ranged from a ghostly Reese Witherspoon to a very green
problem). Yet in Maya Forbes’ “Infinitely
Polar Bear,” Mr. Ruffalo is fierce and sharp. As the frazzled father Cam Stuart, he bursts out
of the frame, screeching across streets and messy rooms and smashing any
household appliance that dares irritate him.
Cam is manic depressive.
Years ago, he had a breakdown. Now, he’s recovered, yet while watching
the movie, I was terrified for the people around him; even when Cam offers to
help a neighbor carry their groceries, you feel as if he might hurl the bags
against the wall any second. Just his
luck, then, that his ex-wife Maggie (Zoë Saldana) asks him to live with their
daughters, Amelia and Faith (Imogene Wollodarsky and Ashley Aufderheide) while
she tears into her business degree.
And so “Infinitely Polar Bear” becomes a witty and
jarring story of a man flailing his way toward parenthood, a twenty-first
century “Kramer vs. Kramer.” Yet while
that movie crystallized its patriarch’s redemption in a clean courtroom scene,
“Infinitely Polar Bear” is made of subtler stuff. The storytelling may be straightforward, but Ms.
Forbes, with an eye for the kind of sloppy life moments that defy cinematic
convention, casually follows the Stuart family from parks to schools to rumpled
apartments.
There is no climax; there is no romance; there is no
grinding third act where Cam screams, “That’s it! I can’t take it anymore! I’m going to live in the Bahamas!” But there is all the emotion that Cam,
Maggie, Amelia, and Faith feel for each other.
And above all, there is the moment where Cam watches his daughters leave
for a friend’s house, the affection and anguish in his eyes making him look
much younger than he really is.
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