1 review
Nice try but misses the mark
Somewhere in this documentary is a heart felt plea about the frustrations of getting anything, even modest low budget projects made. In the face of such unimaginative films like Transformers 3 making over a billion, the film industry is increasingly risk averse. So step forward "Chasing the Bear" and an explanation and meditation about movie making and the difficulties of getting your dream realised. It is a love letter to the obsession of turning your dreams into a reality and the mixture of tenacity, ability and hustling needed to get anywhere.
So why 5 stars? Because its been edited into an incoherent mess. There is no momentum, no narrative, and no discernible character arc. At one point after the hero goes to America he returns and is told by a friend to "go to America"- surely he's already done that? There's endless footage of the girlfriend and as cute as she is she is irrelevant to the central point. This lost its way badly in the editing room which is a shame because had there been an attempt to make this more coherent (which wouldn't have taken much) it would leap from self indulgent student cinema to a truly great documentary about film making being an almost impossible dream.
So why 5 stars? Because its been edited into an incoherent mess. There is no momentum, no narrative, and no discernible character arc. At one point after the hero goes to America he returns and is told by a friend to "go to America"- surely he's already done that? There's endless footage of the girlfriend and as cute as she is she is irrelevant to the central point. This lost its way badly in the editing room which is a shame because had there been an attempt to make this more coherent (which wouldn't have taken much) it would leap from self indulgent student cinema to a truly great documentary about film making being an almost impossible dream.