Das Herz des Bären

The cinematography is beautiful in this mess of a film. I heard the director speak somewhere and he mentioned that the film was originally intended to be a ten-part miniseries for Estonian TV. That is apparent when you watch the film jump from one moment to the next completely unrelated moment and feel utterly confused. It's a mythological tale and it seems that the director and editor use the genre to justify it's lack of continuity. Unfortunately, it is irritating. It sometimes feels like a vanity piece for lead actor, Rein Kotov who does a good job in the role of a man haunted by "the heart of the bear". It's a very stange film that's seems torn between being an art film and being mainstream. If you see it, see it for the cinematography and to see something in the Estonian language, which is interesting enough.

I noticed I credited the lead actor as Rein Kotov and his name is Rain Simmul, a very well known actor in Estonia. Sorry for the mistake, if you noticed. I said the film was a vanity piece for him, which isn't very nice anyway, but I just wanted to clarify that Mr. Simmul is the lead actor. Kotov is a Russian name and he was actually the real star of the film, in my opinion because he was the DP (Director of Photography) and the cinematography was spectacular. But my congratulations to both men since Mr. Simmul's performance was quite brave as well. He has to "Simmul"ate sex with a bear and to run around naked in the cold - something few actors would do if they were really vain I guess.

It has some beautiful landscape shots and really good cinematography but it ends up being dull and sluggish. The best part of the movie contains the bear scenes, which were truly impressive considering that they used a real animal in these scenes. It is a big movie for east European standards. But stays short of an epic, which it had a potential to be. Overall slightly disappointing experience.

It's one of the best movies I have ever seen. I really recommend you to watch it. Karu süda is not just some Hollywood junk. It has a deep meaning hidden somewhere in the movie. 10points out of 10 :)

This movie is based on autobiographic novel "Bear's heart" written by Nikolai Baturin. It is a movie about an Estonian man Niika who travels to north, where nganasans live. He becomes a hunter. The story explains how Niika learns from ancient nature and people who are shaped by the ways of this nature the principles of life and death. He tries to become (a real) human ("nganasan" means human in Nganasanish). The movie tells a story how the hunter journey is really an inner journey, to find peace and inner tranquility, all this is done by mythical cognition.

It is a real pearl in Estonian literature as well as in filmography. The scenery is pure (authentic) and meditative. It contains scenes that may be shockingly hmmm.... natural. The part is played very well by Rain Simmul who performs flawlessly. It is needless to say that the movie includes quite many best Estonian actors and actresses. The two-hour long feature film only uses part of the text and there are some factual differences e.g. the events take place in 80-s in a book, but 90-s in a movie. In any case the timing has no meaning in a place where time has stood still for centuries. The movie is definitely very beautiful (as it was the most expensive movie in Estonia at the time it was released), but it has an inner side which gives us a glimpse of personal journey of a hunter. The movie is rich of ancient finno-ugric elements e.g. the bear is considered to be Estonian ancestor. The author of the screenplay is considered to be a real word artist that has changed Estonian literature forever. The movie is absolutely enjoyable even to usual western people who are indifferent to nature. In that way we can say that the movie is very "exotical".