Film about mental illness avoids difficult places
Infinitely Polar Bear (out of 4) Starring Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Imogene Wolodarsky and Ashley Aufderheide. Written and directed by Maya Forbes. 88 minutes. Opening Friday at the Varsity. 14A
Infinitely Polar Bear often approaches mental illness as a wacky inconvenience, but Mark Ruffalo’s appealingly full-on performance as manicdepressive father Cam Stuart prods the movie into overcoming some shortcomings.
The film is based on writer-director Maya Forbes’ childhood, with her 12year-old daughter and first-time actress Imogene Wolodarsky doing a solid job playing the young Forbes, here named Amelia. Its awkward title is drawn from younger sister Faith’s (cutie Ashley Aufderheide) misheard version of her father’s bi- polar diagnosis.
It’s not the only time Infinitely Polar Bear is a tad too precious for its own good. Set in late 1970s Boston, where Cam’s colourful past included posing as a street-corner Jesus, being kicked out of Harvard and breakdowns, his wife, Maggie (Zoe Saldana in a solid performance match for Ruffalo), and two daughters are unified in taking care of daddy when his illness forces him off the rails.
He comes from Beacon Hill blueblood stock, but the eccentric family matriarch keeps an iron grip on the purse strings. So times are tough for Cam, whose mania and depression make work impossible in late 1970s America, where mental illness is more feared than understood.
Maggie has a plan to get the family out of poverty, but it means she’ll need to go to graduate school in New York for 18 months, leaving him to look after the girls while she comes home weekends. It’s hardly a good idea. Even Cam, who had been living in a halfway house, seems shocked at the thought.
The movie is more a series of vignettes than a narrative, but Ruffalo holds Infinitely Polar Bear together. He’s fascinating to watch as chainsmoking hoarder Cam, who dresses like a homeless person but moves with regal bearing, passing platters of cinnamon toast to kid guests like it was foie gras.
Meanwhile, Cam holds out hope that if he can get this right and care for the girls — and darned if he doesn’t do it sometimes — Maggie will move home permanently and they can be a family again. But his urgent questions about their future are met with reminders to take his lithium.
Issues of sexism briefly arise when Maggie can’t get a job in Boston because she has kids and race is dis- cussed quickly when Amelia wonders how to convince people she is black when she looks white. But Infinitely Polar Bear doesn’t like to spend much time in difficult places.
It’s lacking balance to be sure, but you can do a lot worse than watching Ruffalo wring everything out of a character, doing a drunken Watusi in a rundown bar, cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth in time to the music on the jukebox.