A Bear Named Winnie

I am a judge for the Indianapolis-based Heartland Film Festival. This feature film is a Crystal Heart Award Winner and is eligible to be the Grand Prize Winner in October of 2005. The Heartland Film Festival is a non-profit that honors Truly Moving Pictures. A Truly Moving Picture "…explores the human journey by artistically expressing hope and respect for the positive values of life."

The film centers around a Canadian army veterinarian, who buys a bear cub from a hunter while on a train ride east across Canada with his army comrades. They are going to a training camp, and from there they are going to Europe to fight in World War I. For a while, the bear cub becomes an army mascot. However, the bear becomes too troublesome and the order comes down to get rid of the bear. And that is where the story gets interesting.

The young army men have a boring, uneventful life as they train for war. The bear becomes one of their centers of interest. Their other center of interest is developing relationships among each other as they prepare for the then unknown-to-them horrors of war. It becomes obvious that the real purpose of training is to develop loyalty and friendship among each other so that they can rely on each other in stressful war times.

The film has wonderful art direction and costuming and you are truly placed into the early part of the 20th century.

A.A. Milne learned of this true story and this became the basis for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.

FYI – There is a Truly Moving Pictures web site where there is a listing of past Crystal Heart winners that are now either at the theater or available on video.

Here's a quote from the CBC website along with my personal comments at the very end:

"It is August 1914 and World War I has just begun.Lieutenant Harry Colebourn (Michael Fassbender), a veterinarian with the 34th Fort Garry Horse Division, is traveling by train with other soldiers when he buys a bear cub at a rest stop. He names her Winnie, after his home town of Winnipeg and, in spite of all common sense warnings from his fellow soldiers, takes her with him to the camp in Valcartier, Quebec where the Canadian expeditionary force is gathering.

Winnie is a breath of fresh air for the young soldiers faced with the prospect of war, and she travels with them all the way to Salisbury Plain in England.

When Harry's regiment is sent to fight in France, the young vet knows Winnie cannot go. He finds a home for her at the London Zoo, promising to return as soon as the war is over and take her back to Canada.

While Harry and his friends fight in France, Winnie becomes the star attraction at the zoo. For the children of London, living in the shadow of a frightening war, she becomes a symbol of friendship and hope."

What a good way to spend 2 hours. The acting was great, well directed, the sets were appropriate and I did get choked up! (This doesn't happen often, except in Zombie movies).

However, there were some VERY annoying slow-motion shots that looked terrible. Lots of flickering during the slow-motion scenes and bad timing. It should have been omitted.

Final verdict...A very entertaining and educational story about a beloved bear for the whole family.

My children were very much entertained by this movie. Historical and semi-factual movies are not really their thing at ALL. It was nice to get them to discuss WWI, bears, relationships, zoo history.. you name it. The bear was really charming. I've never been a huge Pooh fan, but I am a bear fan. I love bear movies. This made me set aside a little love in my heart for Winnie the Pooh. It did bring some tears to my eyes when the bear is in the hospital visiting...

I think it's better than average as kids' animal movies go. I don't think my husband would want to watch it again, however. I personally think this movie is rated a little high on this site. Perhaps it doesn't have enough votes yet to get a good measurement. It's a good movie, but by no means is it high cinema. It's a made for TV movie, for sure.

Good movie ruined by terrible audio. Music and background noise very loud, but near impossible to hear voices that are far lower volume.

I've already nitpicked about a few minor errors. But on the whole this is a pretty accurate, well produced and heart tugging movie that explores a little known tidbit of Canadian history. CBC hopes it will become an annual Christmas favourite. Interesting they cast David Suchet and Christopher Fry rather than Canadian actors. Do they perhaps want star names to help foreign sales? Okay, the ending is a little drippy. But again, this isn't a documentary but a fuzzy feel good animal movie and in that genre, it works well. Again hats off to CBC for fulfilling its mandate to produce original Canadian drama. (FYI-I meant to vote 8 but accidentally hit 9. It's very good but not that good.)