Mark Ruffalo has had to keep a whole lot of impulsively manic emotions in check this year.
Last seen reprising his role as Dr. Bruce Banner in this year’s currently second highest-grossing film, Avengers: Age of Ultron, his comic book character scientist was once again faced with having to contain his radioactively raging impulses that, if left alone, would transform him into the destructively green smashing machine, the Hulk.
Yet where Ultron explored these self-checks in existentially self-confronting nature (in however contrived and momentary washes they be), Ruffalo’s newest film, Infinitely Polar Bear, in which he stars as a family man with manic depressive disorder who also struggles to to keep his manic mood swinging impulses in check, seems to counter in character dramatics by instead breezing through life with a celebratory, happy-go-lucky nature, which unfortunately makes for a much more hollow and less-affecting experience on the topic.
Written and directed by Maya Forbes, the film is more or less a loving tribute to this well-intentioned family man and his wife and two little girls, who love him endlessly through his quirky, socially oblivious self. The film’s roots are clearly seen in the director’s own life and experiences, as Forbes’ own father suffered from the affliction, and to whom the film is dedicated to in the end credits.
In Infinitely, Forbes seems to have successfully crafted the movie she wished to make – a heart-warming tribute to this character, and to the honorable strides he makes to be there for his family. Although, what is sacrificed is any deeper pain or hardship at the heart of this story, which is left relatively unacknowledged. Forbes’ intentions to sand off but all of the movie’s rough edges, then, leave us feeling emotionally short-changed, and left wondering what truer power and bigger heights it could have reached, if only it allowed itself to go there.
Like the character itself, who fails to see the harsher or more inconveniencing reality that surrounds him and seeing through rose-tinted glasses of life’s manic optimism, Infinitely is guilty of braving ahead with the same undisturbed positive persistance that doesn’t hit at the harder truth at its core.
Those looking for a piece of feel-good cinema, with all its funny anecdotal life-affirming happenings and cute-kid performances, will be met with satisfaction here, as Infinitely delivers in spades in this respect. In this ’70s-set piece, cigarette-lipped Cameron (an always wonderful Ruffalo) is introduced as who he will continue to be for the remainder of the movie – a highly energetic outcast who serves as Most Embarrassing Father of the Year to his two young girls, Amelia (Imogene Wolodarsky) and Faith (Ashley Aufderheide), and lovable headache to his sympathizing yet committed wife Maggie (Zoe Saldana).
In the earliest scene, a briefs and robe-outfitted Cameron turns from charmingly goofy to scaring his family, moving him to sadness, which is followed by his leaving a check-in facility, drugged up and dulled out. It’s about as much as the film wishes to hang around in the not-so fun aspects of living with a bipolar person, as it then brushes itself off and re-starts to the beat of his spirited drum.
The driving plot of the film begins when Maggie, the family’s main bread-winner, accepts admission to graduate school in New York, with the hopes that doing so will open the door to better paying jobs where she can support her struggling family, who lives in a poverty-stricken neighborhood (her parental devotion is evidenced in her willingness to work a loophole of sending her kids to a better public school in a jurisdiction they technically don’t live in). However, she also accepts that it will leave her unable to take care of their children, and so Maggie negotiates with Cameron, instantly anxiety-ridden at the thought of it, to take care of them for the summer. Although Maggie is pained to go, Cameron agrees with his trademark acceptance, and his upbeat self spurs the action and story forward with clear eyes and hearts.
What follows is a chronicle of the year to come, cataloged by each season and its passing, and with them, new follies and fumbles that are wrapped up nicely after each learning moment. Cameron struggling to keep order to the apartment earns continual laughs, as he pushes through each anxiety with fervent energy and overly positive attitude, at once manically cleaning and building knick-knack conveniences, and just as suddenly living in a junkyard of even more hoarded garbage. His Mr. Brightside gung-ho attitude is also played for laughs in his blindness to the jalopy of a car used to transport the girls. The fact that the rusted out floor leaves a gaping whole underneath their feet is seen as the lovable intentions of a guy who sees the best in life, seemingly forever unburdened.
More honest moments are given a short treatment though, seen when an overwhelmed Cameron slips out for the night, leaving his sleeping children to drink at a bar (a mild flair of alcoholism is attributed to him), or spurts of confrontations between he and Maggie. Additionally, peripheral messages that the film half-throws in involve the character of Maggie, struggling to gain employment and the respect of the banking world as not only a woman, with children, but as a woman of color. While wholly personal and felt, these moments are tacked on to an already folksy-free form film that confuse the movie further to what its larger story even is.
Like Cameron himself, whose happy-go-lucky and manically optimistic nature disallows him to see the more painful, more inconveniencing realities that surround him, Infinitely Polar Bear is guilty of braving ahead with the same undisturbed positive persistence that denies a harder truth at its core. Those looking for a warm movie with heartfelt performances and tender makings, will find an infinite amount of it here.
Infinitely Polar Bear is now playing in theaters.
