Nuisance Bear

This tension between profit and protection, between exploitation and conservation, is explored in much more depth in Vanden and Weisman’s latest feature, thanks to yet more stunning compositions and some crucial historical context provided by Inuit narrator Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons.

A shot of a bear sitting on a clifftop gazing out over Hudson Bay while waiting for the waters to freeze — flashes of seals, beluga whales and other prey shuffling through its head along with images of traps, cages and vehicles in pursuit — is one of the more heartrending movie images in recent memory.

The overall point or purpose, beyond showing how a polar bear deals with a nearby human presence and vice versa, is conveyed relatively quickly, leaving the rest of the film to rinse and repeat until that final shot of a drowsy bear, resting atop a snow pile before a setting sun. It’s undeniably gorgeous, but what’s the greater message?

Nuisance Bear is at its most powerful when its message has been condensed down into a single image.

Nuisance Bear is many things at once – a critical look at the traces the erosion of long-held practices and vanishing ways of life added to technological encroachment and human interference making for another tangle of unintended consequences.

There are no easy answers, and Nuisance Bear presents none of them.

The filmmakers’ connection to the material is always palpable and undeniably affecting.