Moreover, the use of deer is telling. After their first escape from Denahi, hiding in the crevice of a glacier, Kenai asks, “Why is he chasing me?” Koda replies, “That’s what they do!” After their second run-in with Denahi—which ends with Denahi falling off a cliff and into a river, echoing Kenai’s escape from Denahi on the mountain—this conversation is resumed:Kenai: So, you, you know how they are. Kenai, filled with even more hatred than before, wants to kill the bear to avenge Sitka. (Sitka’s totem is the eagle of guidance.) “Those monsters are really scary, especially with those sticks.” Who is the real monster? However, I wish the filmmakers had also included a moment where Kenai apologizes to Koda’s mother and asks for her forgiveness.
They are still ethnically and culturally Jewish and Greek. Kenai is returned to human form, and Sitka reveals himself. A man wouldn’t just sit here and do nothing.Kenai refuses to confess his complicity in Sitka’s death, and chooses hatred over love, literally forsaking his totem, the bear of love, by tossing it into the ashes of Sitka’s funeral pyre.
He taught me that love is very powerful, and I passed on the wisdom of his story to our people: the story of a boy who became a man by becoming a bear.” Again, the film’s verbal presentation of love leaves much to be desired. Sitka is setting the stage for the final resolution of this drama.
Even so, I will attempt to make a case for the film’s greatness, not for the sake of nostalgia or to be contrarian, but because I believe the film’s craftsmanship, and the surprising richness of its many thematic preoccupations, ought to be recognized and discussed. When Koda repeats the same mantra Kenai grew up with, that the great spirits are responsible for all transformations and changes, Kenai lets his guard down a little. Denahi, the middle brother, sees him as a bear and he thinks that this bear has killed Kenai. But I’m fascinated by the fact that Koda—the titular brother bear—appears almost exactly at the thirty-minute mark. Of course, there is also the theme of brotherhood between man and beast and between all living things whenever the film’s pantheism kicks into high gear. The gathering of the bears at the salmon run is essentially an annual family reunion. Beary Friendly: A genuinely nice bear cub and a well-meaning companion. Their final scene blends low-brow comedy with thematic heft. If this reading is correct, I think the film betrays its supposed pantheism, showing in itself the limits of its mantra that “we are all the same.” Second, the film doesn’t offer a compelling way for sins to be atoned for and forgiven. But from where does this forgiveness come, particularly when the sin to be forgiven is so, so evil? But then his tone changes: “What do you expect from Most seasoned film-goers probably saw the third-act reveal coming from miles away.
If souls are separate love is possible. He receives a rude awakening and is confronted with the existence of Koda, a very real being with a very real heart and very real hurts. We see the events of the first act from another’s eyes. Love desires personality; therefore love desires division. But no amount of good deeds can atone for sin. He is surprised to find that Koda was taught the same thing. Amusingly, Kenai’s lack of facility with ropes and knots becomes a running joke. But when Christ destroys the dividing wall between Jews and Greeks, he does not abolish all distinctions. If he is the patron saint of Disney’s unpopular live-action films (I can understand why Christian viewers, especially responsible Christian parents with impressionable youngsters, would have qualms about the film. Kenai’s hatred of bears, Koda’s fear of humans, and the misconceptions the two groups have of each other, are clearly meant to allude to real-world conflicts.