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Infinitely Polar Bear　Today Abnormal Parent-Child Relationship

“Infinitely Polar Bear” is a film of abnormal Parent-Child Relationship. The first film of genius writer, Maya Forbes direct and write by her. In the big screen, her childhood has been shown, the dissimilar father, the dissimilar childhood…

Entry Film Tilt Your Heart

One of the entry films of Sundance Film Festival, “Infinitely Polar Bear” that is the childhood of Maya Forbes, director of the film. She imitates story teller to talk her childhood impressively. How to repair the relationship with her father? How to grow up? What’s the memories of laughter and tears. The actor of “Avenger 2”, Mark Ruffalo and the actress of “Avatar”, Zoë Saldana, have a new trial of warmth pieces, along with the biological daughter of Maya Forbes, Imogene Wolodasky that she would like to reappear the childhood of her mother. This is her first screen, this is her touching performance.

The story of Maya Forbes

She loves personal, idiosyncratic films about families: films that connect us to each other and to our humanity. Yet she had been working in Hollywood as a writer for fifteen years, busily not writing the kind of film that she loves best. In 2007, she resolved to finish a personal script about my childhood.

When she was six, her world imploded. Her father suffered a series of manic breakdowns and her parents separated as a result. They moved from a house in the country to a tiny apartment in the city of Cambridge. Her mother was finding it impossible to get a decent job. My sister and I were attending our local public school, which was rough and underfunded. My father’s family, one of the most established in New England, would not help us financially because of the bizarre family rules about money: you were never supposed to ask for it, and if you did, they shamed you.

Her mother was desperate. She wanted her daughters to get a good education. So in 1978, when Maya Forbes was ten, she enrolled in Columbia Business School in the belief that an advanced degree would save their futures. She left her daughters in the care of their manic-depressive father and came back to help every weekend, sleeping on the sofa. This is the context and the difficult time of INFINITELY POLAR BEAR.

Screen-Reality Parent-Child Relationship

Her mother’s plan seemed crazy. Her sister and she were sad and furious and ashamed of the way they lived. And yet, in the end, it worked. We became our own version of a family -- just like so many families out there who survive, and even thrive, in unconventional ways.

Maya Forbes believed that INFINITELY POLAR BEAR is a film which she wanted to see: a film that was funny, sad, authentic and warm. Warmth was very important to her. She wanted to see a humane film about the effects of mental illness on a family. She wanted to see real, resilient children. She wanted to see a movie about love and the hard choices people have to make every day.

And now, she has two daughters and she always tells them the same things her mom told her: take creative risks; don’t be afraid of being the boss; be bold; you can only truly fail by not trying. For her daughters, Maya Forbes had to take this leap. She had a vision and I followed it.

Likewise, education and parent-child relationship need funny, touching, impressive, sincerely, laughter and tears, taste sweet with bitter, empowered, autonomy, brave to try, faithful, adaptive and resilience, but the most important is LOVE.

Synopsis

While most fathers spend their days at work, CAM STUART (Mark Ruffalo) is more likely to be found mushroom-hunting, cooking elaborate meals, or working on one of his many half-completed projects. His family’s wealth keeps his family just barely afloat, while Cam struggles to live with manic depression. When Cam has a manic breakdown that lands him in a mental hospital, his wife MAGGIE (Zoe Saldana) and their two young daughters, AMELIA and FAITH, are forced to leave their house in the country and move into a cramped apartment in Cambridge, where Maggie tries to find a decent job, with no luck.

Broke, stressed, and overwhelmed, Maggie applies to business school and is accepted to Columbia University’s MBA program. Seeing this as her chance to build a better life for their daughters, Maggie asks Cam to become the primary caregiver for the girls while she completes her degree in New York. After all, routine is what the doctor ordered and the girls miss their dad. Cam agrees, hoping to rebuild his family. But the two spirited girls are not interested in making things easy for him.

With Maggie away in New York, Cam quickly realizes that he’s in over his head. Over the course of the next 18 months, as Maggie rushes to complete her degree, he learns, through trial and a lot of error, how to take care of his precocious daughters as well as himself. After years of struggling to finding his place in the world, Cam may finally have found where he fits in.

Based on a true story, INFINITELY POLAR BEAR is a funny and heartbreaking portrait of the many unexpected ways in which parents and children save each other.