Brigsby Bear

A film that begins in a bunker. James is twenty-five. He grew up underground in a closed space; outside is said to be poisonous and he has never left. At the centre of his life is a television programme. Brigsby Bear arrives weekly, is watched on tape, and James knows every episode by heart. One night the police come to the door. His parents are not real. The man and woman took him as a baby and kept him there for twenty-five years. James goes outside. He is returned to his real family. He has a sister, there are neighbours, there is a school, and he knows none of it. Then he learns. No programme called Brigsby Bear was ever broadcast; the tapes were made for years by the man who took him and shown to him alone. The show has stopped because the man who made it is in prison. From there the film becomes a story about a shoot. James decides to make the series finale himself. He finds a camera, sews costumes, looks for actors. His sister's friends, a boy from school and a police officer get involved. What the narrative is interested in is not trauma but ownership: the film does not try to erase what happened to James; it describes him taking back the only thing that was his. The family line is the hardest. His parents see his attachment to the programme as an illness and try to break it. The therapist is the narrative's most honest figure. The man means well and still gets it wrong. The tone is balanced. The narrative neither mocks nor asks for pity; it carries the strangeness as it is. Mark Hamill plays both the man who took him and the voice of the bear in the show. Kyle Mooney, Mark Hamill, Greg Kinnear and Claire Danes are in the cast. Dave McCary directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes odd, warm independent comedy. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism; the people around him respond far too generously and the narrative skips the hard parts.